My Story.

Albert Schweitzer said “in everyone’s life, at sometime, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit”

Many of you know me as “the Beautiful Meg”, a term of endearment bestowed on me by my sweet boyfriend. Today I wanted to share a little of myself. I feel like I know so many of you, because of meeting you in person or online. I am continually blessed by the people connected to HKW and your selfless ways of loving on others.

My story is of receiving a heavenly call to go and serve in Milot, Haiti just a few months after the 2010 earthquake. I’d never led a medical team, I’d never served oversees as a nurse and yet it wasn’t about all of my uncertainties, it was about obedience. My story is of meeting others and witnessing a way of life that shook me to my very core—I’ve truly been wrecked by Jesus, been deeply affected, and I’ve never recovered.

I’m a nurse, educated and trained to help others; to deliver healing, to promote health. Despite differences in culture and language barriers, at the end of the day we’re flesh and blood, water and molecules. None of us want to hurt, none of us want to be sick. I’ve been called to be a difference maker, turning illness into health . In the dust and heat of Haiti I felt that inner fire flame into an inferno. It wasn’t that I was unhappy with my place in life, I had just always felt that my call into nursing was going to be more than staying at the local hospital in my home county. I simply didn’t know what that feeling of “more” meant. So when I stood in Haiti, 24 hours after landing, I felt that inner spark surge and knew that THIS was what I was made for. THIS is why I was called into the field of medicine. THIS is what I would commitment my life to.

Eight weeks later I returned to Haiti and watched a country reel in fear and injustice. Political corruption laced with a disease that was killing people by the thousands created a perfect storm for a societal melt down. . People lay on cots in a hot cement room. IV bags ran dry and flies landed on still children. Pants were left looped around ankles and the ten gallon Home Depot buckets placed under cut holes in the cots filled with all that was inside those sick bodies. The word cholera became real to me and sent chills down my spine. It became so very obvious that for as long as I could treat those that were sick and dying- the vicious cycle would not end as long as healthy people were being returned to a dirty water source. All the medicine, all the vaccines, all the time and energy would not change the water where cholera still raged.

My spirit writhed and screamed that it shouldn’t be this way. The words infrastructure, clean water, and sanitation took root in my heart. I just didn’t know what it would look like. I didn’t know how I could impact what seemed like an insurmountable problem. I didn’t know that Humankind water was being planted in another’s heart and that two years later one small conversation would impact my life so greatly.

I believe in HKW because I’ve seen the other side. What life is like without safe drinking water. I’ve heard the wails of mama’s that will be burying their children, I’ve watched a country torn by lies-where fear and anger has reigned and riots have developed, I’ve looked into the eyes of someone who thinks I’m their only hope. So I tell their story, what I’ve seen and what I know and it may not be much but I passionately know this-it doesn’t have to be this way.

My story is of theirs, of serving those with no voice, and how it forever changed mine.