I am passionate about people.
From the time I was a tiny girl, I remember loving and caring for other people. I might have started on dolls when I was a toddler, but then I got to love on siblings, kids I babysat for and before too long, my own children who joined our family by birth and adoption. I became a nurse and then a midwife because of my love of other people and desire to help where I could.
I love people from different cultures than my own. What a pleasure to learn to see the world through another’s eyes! I grew up as an “Air Force brat” and moved around – a lot. For three years in my mid-to-late teens, we lived in France and traveled all over Western Europe. Later, when we began adopting internationally, I had the opportunity to travel to a number of other countries, some in Eastern Europe, some in Africa and more. I find that the more I have been able to travel, the more I have become curious about the people and cultures in this world. I can learn something from every one of them.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
Mark Twain, “Innocents Abroad”
Humanitarian work
When we began adopting in 1991, we always made it a point to help how we could with the orphanage and with the local communities. Beginning in 2007, I began going on international humanitarian trips and since 2017, I’ve been able to focus my volunteer work on refugees, and other marginalized groups. I have been so blessed by their stories.
Elder Patrick Kearon said of refugees that it “may not define them but our response will help define us.” He also cautioned in 2016 that “we must be careful that news of the refugees’ plight does not somehow become commonplace.” May love and compassion win the day.