How did this happen?

I can honestly say I am not sure how I got here. One day, all the sudden it seems, I am headed to Africa for 3 months. I can look back at the last few months and years and see little bits of time that foreshadow this fate. But there is no big ah-ha moment in which I chose this... it just evolved into truth. And it feels right. I can tell, this is what I am supposed to be doing.

There are many hands along the way that nudged me in this direction. In no chronological order; the girl that came to Lutheran Campus ministry who went to Argentina, my clinical instructor during a medical surgical rotation at Longmont United hospital who showed me her coworkers blog as she nursed in Africa, my friend Hannah H. who is nursing in Madagascar, Pastor Sarah who kept encouraging me to nurse abroad, my sister who first told me about Mercy Ships (and who ever told her), my bestie Elizabeth who heard about Mercy Ships from her mother, Sarah from 'Young Adults in Global Mission' who took me out to dinner, and my partner in crime Karyn.

I first met Karyn (KP) two-ish years ago when she came to the PICU as a travel nurse. She is from Connecticut. My first impression was that she was a super cool chick. That was right on the money. One of the perks of nightshift is that in the middle of the night (on nights that are not insane) the nurses all gather at the dim nurses station by the central monitor, usually wrapped in blankets from the warmer and chit chat (a main tactic to not falling asleep). It was on a night like this that KP first showed me the pictures of earthquake relief in Haiti where she worked in a PICU made out of a tent.  They were vividly graphic pictures of bili babies in open suitcases as isolettes, and vented kids two or three to a bed.  I was in awe. And, intrigued...

We had both heard of Mercy Ships individually. She knows people who have served/are serving now. And over the last couple years we have had little conversations along the way about how cool it would be to go. There was never a big life changing convo, like I said before it just sort of became reality.  Occasions such as the night we sat in 'Market Square' over pizza chatting about wanderlust and humanitarian relief, or the time she dropped me off at my place after seeing a movie and I told her I had downloaded the application, and then when she called walking away from Fed-Ex that she had just faxed the application in.

Then... Boom... going to The Republic of Congo as PICU nurses at the end of August.

image belongs to Mercy Ships