Inspiring Stories

Let me share why I became involved and how you can join me on this important mission. I have felt God leading me to the mission field for a long time. After college, as a youth leader, I supervised a work team to Edisto Island, S.C. One night that week, lying on my cot with my eyes closed, I saw an image, very vivid, of a woman in a lot of pain. I can still see very clearly her dark, thin face. She was wearing a wrap around her hair and had tears of anguish wetting her cheeks. She was motioning to her legs as the source of her pain. Seeing her, I understood that I needed to help her, but didn't know how or why I was seeing her at that moment. I never forgot what I'd seen but had struggled with its meaning.

Two years ago, I was invited by John Coleman, the husband of the nurse I work with, to come to Haiti as part of a medical team. I was excited and daunted by the opportunity to go and set up a temporary clinic inside a church. Though we mostly took care of simple problems, we had the chance to get an expecting mother the care that saved her and her newborn daughter's lives. The most amazing thing though was seeing another young woman who had fallen. She looked just like the woman I had envisioned 16 years before. She lay on her back before me in intense pain in her back and legs. She had that same anguish in her eyes. As I saw her tears, though, transformed into a smile days later, I felt such peace and understood at that moment, that I was right where God needed me.

- Kevin Finely, M.D.

What Keeps Us Going