Through SIMS, students see health care and spirituality in a different way
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| Victoria Thornton, a School of Nursing student, attends a patient at Kendu Adventist Hospital while on a seven-week mission trip sponsored by Students for International Mission Service. |
Last June, three students from the School of Nursing set off to experience the unknown. They were embarking on a seven-week trip to Kendu Bay, Kenya, through Students for International Mission Service (SIMS).
"We basically were there to get experience in nursing, and to see a different point of view and a different world," says Allison Jackson, who was accompanied on the trip by Victoria Thornton and Martha Lopez. "We found it was very different from what we were used to."
What the three found at Kendu Adventist Hospital was a critical shortage of medical supplies and the high-tech equipment they had grown familiar with here at Loma Linda.
But they also discovered a focus on spiritual care that was very moving. A profound comfort came to the patients as the local pastor preached on the wards every morning and prayed with each patient scheduled to have surgery that day. The nurses continued this spiritual care by gathering every morning to sing worship songs to the patients.
"I think the most awesome thing was just getting to know the people," Ms. Jackson says. "In seven weeks, when you're living right next door to everybody, you get to know people really well and you can really make friends. The people are so giving, so loving."
In the last decade, hundreds of students and professionals in health fields
have served at mission sites around the world just as Ms. Jackson and her fellow
nursing students did. Through this service, SIMS hopes to help mold students
into professionals who are concerned with others' needs as they become part of
the health-care field.