William Barrett MD, Robin Johnston RN, Mark Palmer (Mercy Team Leader & Liason), Sheila Swenson RN, Debbie Deisher RN, Carol Bradford RN.

View outside a window of a JFK operating theatre.  During the war, people had moved to the capitol city of Monrovia once it was liberated, building shacks close to the shore, trying to be as safe as possible. They still live here in extreme poverty.

One of the beautiful orphans at the Liberia Children Rescue and Educational Foundation Orphanage. Some of the happiest children I've ever seen!

Holding the hand of Abraham, a strong and tough Liberian soldier, during his appendectomy.

Going over an assignment with one of my nursing students, Keba, during clinical time.

Teaching a class of junior nursing students how to do proper wound care.

Singing and dancing with some of the village children.

Eating a special meal prepared for us by the villagers. This took courage, and thankfully it was delicious!

With Sakie, the victim of a robbery. Many robbery victims are brutalized afterward as the perpetrators pour acid over them. Read Sakie's story here.

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When Jesus walked this earth, He showed His love to those around Him in revolutionary ways. He touched the unclean, He forgave the condemned and He loved the unlovable. Today, ordinary people like you and me are reaching out with the same kind of revolutionary love to the helpless, the hopeless and the lost. Robin Johnston, a nurse from southern Ontario, recently traveled to the African nation of Liberia, on a voyage that would change her life forever. Robin shares her story below:

Sometime in the last several years I became a full-out Love Revolutionary.  I finally realized that revolutionary love was part of what it means to be an “ambassador for Christ” and that I had to take it seriously.  I had seen disgruntled Christians blame their church for not creating the right programs to assist them in reaching out. I saw people planning and getting excited for the weekly 90-minute church services and then barely getting through the rest of the week because they were tired, stressed, burdened and unfulfilled. 

I knew there was much more to Christianity than this, so I did everything I could to find out the way Jesus had shown.  I wanted to live each day as He had done in the New Testament stories, for Him to live His life out through me beyond the services and walls of my church. It took a lot of painful un-learning and re-learning, but I came out as a Love Revolutionary and I’ve never looked back. In my revolutionized life, every day is now filled with purpose and adventure as the life of Christ in me touches people in my world.

You cannot be afraid if you’re a Revolutionary because much of the time you will have to do things that seem uncomfortable at first.  Courage is required, which is actually something God commands of us (see Joshua 1), and when you step out in courage, miracles happen. I began really talking to God about each shift I had as a nurse in the ICU and ER. I took the worst assignments with a sense of purpose and discovered that God plans every detail so He can show His love to people. Each insignificant errand both in and outside my house also became a chance to invade someone’s life with God’s love.  When this is the goal, the most incredible miracles happen as ordinary days turn into a series of extraordinary events.

That’s how it was the day I saw an email from Mercy Ships calling for volunteers to be part of a Surgical Teaching Team to Monrovia, Liberia.  I vaguely remembered that Liberia had just gone through a civil war, and that this probably would not be the safe and ordinary African-safari kind of adventure. But I have a passion for teaching. I had recently taught surgical nursing at the university level and I knew this was one of those God-orchestrated moments in my life.  As a Revolutionary, I operated with courage through all the hundreds of details required to prepare for the trip, to step on the plane, and to enter a foreign world.

For 17 days I lived and worked in Monrovia, Liberia at the JFK Memorial Hospital and the Tubman National Institute of Medical Arts (TNIMA).  JFK was once a state-of-the-art regional referral hospital for all of West Africa until the country’s brutal and devastating 14-year civil war. When the war ended in 2004 and a new government was finally in place, the infrastructure was all but completely destroyed, and its people have been rebuilding with a fierce determination ever since. At the invitation of the Liberian President, the trip was sponsored by Mercy Ships, one of several organizations that has been partnering with the Liberian Ministry of Health to rebuild the JFK Hospital.  At this time the surgical wing had been up and almost functioning and the hospital and TNIMA had been in dire need of experienced surgeons and nurses to share their knowledge and expertise while working alongside Liberian counterparts.

My time there ended up being a whirlwind couple of weeks and the mandate of responsibility grew larger every day. In this war-torn country and hospital, my team and I found ourselves doing such things as teaching approximately 200 nursing students, speaking to an entire staff of nurses and administrators, meeting with lawyers and the Minister of Health, holding the hand of a tough Liberian soldier throughout his surgery, seeing worms crawl out of the intestine of a 10-year old boy as he was operated upon, kneeling on the dirty floor beside the hospital beds of patients who had been given up on while hugging and praying for them, mentoring doctors, staff and student nurses, holding and playing with orphans, dancing and singing with children of a remote village and being honored by the same people of this village by eating the meal they prepared for us. In it all, I loved the Liberian people. 

I could tell you stories of the culture shock I faced as I looked upon extreme poverty. Shanties and dirty marketplaces are everywhere as the people attempt to rebuild their lives.  I could tell you about seeing courage in the eyes of many, or seeing the blank and tough eyes of those who have seen too much, ones who possibly had to commit wartime atrocities as part of the child army.  But everything I experienced translated into love. I fell in love with the Liberian people, and I realized that I would do anything just to let them feel that love.  I hugged them, listened to their stories, held their hands, encouraged them, prayed with them and told them simple stories about the greatness of God and his love for us, taught and imparted nursing knowledge to them, and invested myself into them.

Liberia was eye opening for me.  My unique life experiences had prepared me for such a trip and I was ready the instant the opportunity came forward, even though it was one of the wildest things I’ve ever done. I came back with a new intensity to love people around me and to love them with courage no matter how inconvenient. Since coming back, an opportunity is opening for my husband and me to go to the Congo in November, and I know the details will unfold as we step out in courage.

In the meantime, I’ll keep being a Love Revolutionary to the people here at home with whom I live and work.

SGM Radio wishes to thank Robin for her thought-provoking story of what it means to be a Love Revolutionary. For more information on Mercy Ships, log on to http://www.mercyships.org/