Compelled to go

Four years ago I left for Kipkaren, a small village in Kenya, Africa, willing to be used to minister to the people physically, yet painfully aware of my own inadequacies as a nurse. I was unaware that this four-week mission trip would change my life. I helped deliver a baby on the floor of a mud hut. And I washed the open sores of a man dying of AIDS. I experienced brokenness and poverty. At the same time, I saw rich joy and inexpressible faith. I encountered a people and a culture that captured my heart and I knew I had found a place to serve.

But I had more to learn first. I earned my bachelor’s degree in nursing at Azusa Pacific University and have been working in the infectious disease unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for the past two and a half years. After two more summer trips to Kenya, I realized that to truly give quality care, I would need even more education. In September 2002 I went back to school at Cal State Los Angeles to get my Masters in Nursing, with an emphasis in international healthcare, and become a Family Nurse Practitioner. I am currently in the process of completing my final project, creating a framework in which music is utilized within the home-based palliative care settings in Kenya to educate the family and caregiver and to promote dignity for HIV/AIDS patients during the dying process. My heart cries:
I see you, I hear you,
Though no words you say.
You are not alone,
You are not unknown.
Though sorrow may last for this night
May joy come with morning’s light
As peace rests upon your soul,
For you are not alone.

These are the lyrics of the song I’m writing for my final project, an example of the music that will be used to educate and to minister to the people of Africa where AIDS has ravaged through cities and villages indiscriminately destroying the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of life. The implications of this disease have affected not only individuals and families but also communities and a continent at large. Within Kenya alone, it is estimated that nearly 2.5 million people are living with HIV/AIDS. Over 500 people die of AIDS every day, most between the ages of 15 and 49.

It has been said that “the ultimate tragedy is depersonalization – dying in an alien and sterile environment, separated from the spiritual nourishment that comes from being able to reach out to a loving hand, separated from a desire to experience the things that make life worth living, separated from hope.” AIDS has done this to too many in Kenya – it has stripped them of their dignity and left them to die by themselves. This is the burden God has put on my heart: that people should not have to die alone.

So this September I will be returning to Kipkaren to work with Empowering Lives International, a small non-profit organization working in Central and East Africa. ELI’s mission is to “empower the poor and oppressed that they may be able to know, worship and serve God without hindrance, and to motivate and involve others worldwide to invest their lives and gifts in this same mission.” They are dedicated to helping people in impoverished countries recognize their importance in the eyes of God and to breaking the cycle of poverty that chokes out the potential and hope for a better life physically and spiritually. For more information on ELI, please visit www.empoweringlives.org.

While in Kipkaren, I will be working out of a small clinic doing community development and health education and caring for the medical needs of the people there. Once a week I will travel to Ilula, a village in which ELI will be opening an orphanage, where I will be in charge of the health of these children. I will also be in the Congo for about a month where I will be doing physical examinations including immunizations and de-worming for 277 children at a school in the slums.

Already as I prepare to leave, I have been overwhelmed with the way God has brought people into my life to partner with me in this ministry. I know that I cannot accomplish the things He has called me to without the ongoing support of family and friends. One of the greatest ways you can support me is through constant prayer. Pray for wisdom to know how to best educate the Kenyan people about the consequences of AIDS in such a way that it will lead to true life change. Pray that the cycles of disease will be broken. And pray that God’s love for these people will be recognized and received through the physical touch we are able to provide.

I am amazed and truly humbled when I consider the journey that has led me to this place.
My life has been transformed as God has revealed His heart for the financially poor and the poor in spirit. Step by step He has been placing within me a passion to join Him in such a powerful way that moving to Kenya does not feel like a huge leap. It’s simply another step. Without a doubt, the challenges ahead are vast. The AIDS crisis alone feels overwhelmingly too hopeless to face, but it is real and must not be ignored. It is the love of Christ that compels me to go; and I do so, utterly dependent on the God who says He is able.