A Life Transformed

by Michele Zeller

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2 Corinthians 5:17)

This passage isn’t just words on a page to me; it is a picture of my life over the last six years.

Today, I am sitting on my bunk in a cabin I share with five other women, here on a ship named Africa Mercy, now docked at Monrovia, Liberia, West Africa, and reflecting on how I got here. I look back to where I was before all this began. In January 2001, I was living my version of the American dream, without an inkling that my dream was about to be shattered. At 36, I had a great life — I was in a 15–year marriage; I had worked my way up into senior management in a software company, traveling all over the world and making a six figure income. We lived in a large house on a private golf course — the country–club lifestyle.

And then my husband told me he didn’t want to be married anymore. Shock, denial, depression, anger, hatred — those are the emotions I experienced in those early days. But then God showed up in a life-transforming way. I wasn’t much of a believer back then and, honestly, I had never thought about whether or not there was a God. But mysteriously, a few weeks before, my husband and I had decided we should start going to church.

I don’t know why we had decided this other than that God put the desire in my heart because God knew what I was about to go through. We started Christian counseling and I was introduced to Jesus Christ. After two months, I was baptized and the transformation began. I knew immediately that my lifestyle and my priorities were in no way aligned with God’s purpose for my life. While the divorce was being finalized, I spent months researching different careers and lifestyles including social work, teaching, the Peace Corps, and even tasting ice cream for a living.

A life-changing article
And then one day in the doctor’s office, I picked up a magazine and read an article about Mercy Ships, the non-governmental hospital ships that bring free medical care to people living in some of the poorest countries in the world. As soon as I read it, I knew that is what God wanted me to do, to become a nurse and serve with Mercy Ships. It was confirmed the next day when my pastor/counselor asked me if I had ever thought of being a nurse.

The journey was a long one. I experienced depression and insomnia as I dealt with the after-effects of the divorce. I spent three years in nursing school and then had to get two years of work experience before I could join Mercy Ships. I also had to downsize my lifestyle since those who serve on Mercy Ships are volunteers who receive no salary but pay for their own room and board and airfare.

Thanks to the emotional, spiritual, and financial support of my family, friends, and the staff at Lutheran Church of Hope, West Des Moines, Iowa, I arrived in Liberia in June 2007, where I now work for Mercy Ships as a palliative care or hospice nurse.

Liberia, one of the poorest countries in the world, is home to about 3.2 million people. Its 14-year civil war ended in 2003. Most Liberians have no electricity or access to sewage. Unemployment is about 85 percent. The average annual income per person is $130. Of every 1,000 children, 235 die before their fifth birthday; that’s among the five highest mortality rates in the world. The average life expectancy is 42 years.

Since 1978, Mercy Ships (www.mercyships.org) have followed the example of Jesus Christ, bringing hope and healing to the poor.

Life-changing surgeries are performed on board the ships at no cost to the recipients. More than 400 volunteers from more than 40 countries and from several Christian denominations have come together on the Africa Mercy to serve the people of Liberia.

Working as a palliative care nurse in a country with no health care is heartbreaking and frustrating. Cancer in a country like Liberia has a 100 percent death rate. There is no chemotherapy or radiation treatment. There are no oncologists or surgeons. There is no money for medication to help control the pain.

The upside to this job is that I get to show the love of Christ to people in need every single day. My nursing partner and I travel to our patients’ homes weekly to provide nursing care, pain medicine, and emotional and spiritual support. I get to tell them how much God loves them, and we talk about eternity with Jesus.

Each one of them has a name
Most of my patients are children with cancer, and all live in abject poverty. The stories you read of children dying in Africa are true, and each one of them has a name and a family and a history.

There’s Nush who died one day after his eighth birthday. I had bought him a football, and we were on the way to give it to him when we got the call that he had died unexpectedly. Mercy Ships had provided his tuition the week before his death and he was so excited to finally start school. He was a beautiful beautiful, animated little boy with huge eyes and big dimples.

There’s 15-year-old George who had an aggressive cancer that took him away in less than a month. He died alone in the hospital.

There’s 19-year-old Gbah who was taken to the hospital in critical condition. He needed a blood transfusion but the hospital had no blood, so his father took him by taxi to another hospital to see if it had blood. But the lab was closed. He died at home the next day.

There’s 11-year-old Candy who is still alive even though she has battled cancer for almost two years. She is from Ivory Coast but came to Monrovia seeking treatment. Though we could offer no treatment for her cancer, she and her father remained here so that we could take care of her extremely painful wounds. Candy and her father have lived apart from her mother and five siblings since March 2006.

There’s five-year-old Survivor and 12-year-old Joseph and 11-yearold Junior and two-year-old Armstrong and six-month-old Joanna and three-year-old Korto and Yatta and Winifred and Liaa and Rose. The list goes on and on.

If someone had told me six years ago that I would be living on a ship and working as a hospice nurse in Africa caring for dying children, I would have said they were crazy. Nothing in me wanted to serve others, let alone serve in such heartbreaking, unjust conditions.

That is where the transformation from 2 Corinthians comes in. There isn’t an ounce of my old life or self left. I see the world differently now. God has given me the gifts of mercy, encouragement, and serving. I didn’t have these before, and I didn’t do anything to earn them. They just appeared by grace along the journey.

God has used my divorce for good. It has given me the freedom to serve in a place I couldn’t have served if I were still married. I live very simply now. I don’t have stuff except for a few items of clothes and my laptop. I don’t have a car here or a cell phone or a television. I love being away from all the busyness of my old life.

My new life philosophy is wrapped up in Micah 6:8: "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"

While not everyone is called to leave their family and friends to serve the desperately poor on the other side of the world, we are all called to justice, love, kindness, and walking humbly with God. God will show us the way.

Michele Zeller is a volunteer hospice nurse on a Mercy Ship docked at Monrovia, Liberia. She is a member of Lutheran Church of Hope, West Des Moines, Iowa. You can read more about her work and her life on the Africa Mercy at www.mzellerafrica.blogspot.com.