Finding comfort in the uncomfortable

Samantha Scoles (‘22)

When Rachel Parks (’19) chose to attend MVNU, her decision was easy. She was in the Post Secondary program, her parents worked on campus, and her siblings attended so she was familiar and comfortable with the campus and the MVNU community. She was confident this was the right place to study nursing and prepare to work with underserved populations in the inner cities of the United States.

As a freshman, Rachel began to struggle in her faith. During the next year, she surrendered herself to God to redefine her faith.

“I remember a specific experience during Chapel when we sang a song called, ‘Call Me Higher.’ And in that moment, I said, ‘OK, I’m here for a purpose and I’m here to do more than what my own plans are. Here is all of me. I don’t know what I’m doing but I’m willing to do whatever you lead me toward.’”

During her sophomore year, she took advantage of a servicelearning opportunity to travel to Swaziland, now known as Eswatini. Admittedly, she signed up because she was interested in the experience, not because she felt called. However, it was in moments of discomfort, thousands of miles from home, that she began to see the life God had planned for her.

Working through the Luke Commission, MVNU’s students provided medical care amid the country’s HIV crisis, interacted with families, and shared the word of God.

“We did a lot of mobile clinics with them where we would go to a school and set up in classrooms and test people for HIV. We would do other things such as vision tests, give away free shoes, and help with circumcisions, which was a big thing to prevent the spread of HIV,” Rachel said.

Using the nursing knowledge and skills acquired back at Hunter Hall provided the confidence to assist with wound care, provide immunizations, pack clinic supplies, and any other assistance requested. These duties only scratch the surface of what was happening between students like Rachel and the families they encountered.

“We would pray with the patient and just talk to them about who God was and His healing powers for whatever they were going through,” she said. “We also played with their kids and interacted with them outside while their family was going through the different stations.”

Despite all the good work that was happening on the trip, Rachel was uncomfortable being away from her family and with a group of people she knew but had not bonded with.

“I was in a moment of my faith where I was kind of lost, so I wasn’t totally sure what I was doing there,” Rachel said. “There was a turning point during that trip when I got comfortable in knowing that I was there for a purpose and that purpose was for God to show me new things. I knew that I was in the right space at the right time.”

Finding comfort in the uncomfortable opened Rachel’s heart and her understanding of God’s plan for her, which continues to include trips back to Africa to provide care and minister to people who need to learn that God exists, and He loves us all.

“Before I went on my trip to Swaziland, I did not think going overseas was anything I would ever want to do long term. I thought it was a huge sacrifice being away from my family,” she said. “But when you are open to what God is calling you to, He’s going to make sacrifice a little bit easier for you. He’s going to move you in ways that you don’t expect him to move you and open doors to new opportunities and experiences you didn’t expect to see.”

As Rachel accepted the sacrifice of her calling, she had hoped to return to Africa to work with the Luke Commission after graduation. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out for her. However, God had other plans and through the International Missions Board, she has returned to Africa on two trips to Uganda — for four weeks in 2021 and six weeks in 2022.

“The clinic had been closed since COVID, so we were the first group to come back as a team and run the clinics for a couple years. We saw people who couldn’t afford to go to the local hospital, which was pretty low quality. We would do a free check up on them, diagnose their problem and give them medication. If we felt they needed to go to the hospital, we would pray over them before they would go.” who Jesus was, and what he can do for our lives, that was more monumental to me than providing any medical care.”

They would also pack up their supplies and go out to the villages with their translators to provide medical care and minister.

“We worked with the Karamojong people, a tribe that’s in northwest Africa. It’s one of the unreached people groups left in the world. A lot of times, we were telling Bible stories to people who had never heard the word ‘Jesus’ before. Getting to introduce them to Rachel Parks is currently a pediatric ICU nurse in Columbus, Ohio. She recently returned from a one-week trip to serve a different clinic in Eswatini.

While it is a hard culture to read emotionally, and with the language barrier, it was difficult to get a pulse on how the Karamojong felt about what they were learning in the moment.

“For me, it was just the opportunity to do something that I knew was spreading the word to corners of unreached parts of the earth, which a lot of people don’t get to do. I realized the Holy Spirit can move in people who don’t even know who He is and then to see them ask good questions and talk about they had things happen in their lives that were unexplainable,” she said. She would later learn members of the villages would continue to ask questions and even attend church services.

Rachel is currently working on her master’s degree in global public health. While her early college dream was to work in the inner cities of the U.S., she knows her calling is to go where she is needed domestically and internationally.

“I just tell people to always be open to what God is calling you to. Don’t allow little things to get in your way. Don’t make a ‘what if’ list, just be open to how he’s going to direct you and be willing to be uncomfortable in settings that you know you won’t be comfortable in, because that’s when he will draw closest to you.”