Bob and Marsha: Missionaries at the Wesleyan Hospital on the Haitian Island of Lagonave, Part One

BOB AND MARSHA: MISSIONARIES

AT THE WESLEYAN HOSPITAL ON THE HAITIAN ISLAND OF LAGONAVE, PART ONE

Bob and Marsha Vermaire have been serving at the Wesleyan Hospital in Haiti for the past seven years. Last week they sat down with MKR founder, John Hollis, and I to share a bit about their work and how they manage their mental health in the midst of life as missionaries.

Becky: You’ve both been taking shorter term trips to work in Haiti for years. What was it like starting out and adjusting to Haiti this time, knowing you were signed on for a much longer period of time?

Bob: Well, I’m a family physician, I have a practice in Michigan and I love what I do. I didn’t leave the practice because I was dissatisfied, but just really felt drawn to Haiti. Our call has been to follow Jesus from day one, and now just happened to be the time God said to us, we felt, “go to Haiti” but before that we were no less following God, I pray. In 2013 we signed up with the Wesleyan Hospital in Haiti and said “we’re willing God, for two years we’ll go.” I began doing clinical work and teaching young docs, I loved it, I was right in my groove.

Marsha: I had a harder time settling in, I really wrestled with God during the first couple years we were there. I felt like George Baily in It’s a Wonderful Life, like “okay I just want out of here.” After I wrestled with God for a while, I felt like I came to terms with some things. A lot of it for me was really believing that if God says “this is my best for you” then it’s what’s really best for you. A friend who works for WISH, He used to say: “you come down here and think you’re going to do all this work for Haiti and then you realize God is really working on you” It’s all individual, it’s all about what God is doing. It’s all about God working on each one of us, our Haitian brothers and sisters, each one of us. It’s been a great place to see God’s bigger vision. John: What is it like as a missionary to have to deal with the day-to-day struggles of dealing with helping other people, because eventually it’s got to come back to you and how do you deal with it. Because if your attitude changes, that’s going to now have a repercussion on the people you’re working with.

Marsha: There’s a lot of dysfunction in all of us and I think knowing God and knowing yourself are just incredibly important. They’re incredibly important here, but they’re even more important in a place like Haiti. You don’t go to a place like Haiti without dealing with those kinds of things. And then, you go and you try to live with other missionaries. It’s like living in intentional community anywhere, you rub against each other, and if you don’t deal with that, sometimes that’s not pretty. We had a lot of things that we all dealt with together very early on in the time we were there.

Bob: We have “Toro time” where a group of us from the hospital get together and some drink Toro, the local soft drink. It’s a time to share with each other informally what is going on each week. That’s been really helpful.

John: What are some things to help you with your mental health? Because listen, we get depressed, we have anxiety, we go through all of those things, we’re human. At the end of the day, what are you doing to help yourselves so you can help others?

Marsha: Both of us, over time, have realized more what we need, and one thing we need is time alone with God. That has to happen, there are certain things we have to have and they’ve become disciplines. One is devotional time that we do every day together before we even get out of bed—read scripture and pray. Another one for

me is once a week I take a morning and go somewhere quiet.

Bob: The other thing is, in our family history, there’s a lot of depression and suicide. A lot of our family is on Prozac. Medications are something we don’t deny the benefits of, and we pay attention to our mental health.

Marsha: Expectations are so important in how you handle things. If you like control and results, Haiti is a tough place to go to. People would go down there and someone doesn’t live up to their expectations that they’re working with and it’s easy to push that person aside and say “okay I’m done with that person…” Bob: For us, maybe through our history, maybe through the kind of personalities we have, we’ve kept an attitude that says we ALL fail. We’re not going there because we’re the saviors of Haiti. We fail, you fail, let’s keep trying to learn together. We have to still love each other. Adjusting expectations is a big deal in being able to handle it well.

MARSHA TAKING A BLOOD PRESSURE. DOCTOR BOB PERFORMING AN ULTRASOUND.

Part 2 coming in the next issue of MKR Magazine.

Interested in helping out? Send an email to Bob and Marsha at mbvermaire@gmail to find out how!