There are moments in this work that take your breath away – in both beautiful and devastating ways. For those of us serving off ship, those moments often happen unseen. The ship is, understandably, the heart of the story. It’s where the surgeries take place, where hope is visible and…

There’s something about the unpredictability of mentoring that keeps me both excited and on edge. You never really know how the week will unfold – who will show up, how engaged they’ll be, or whether the seeds you’ve previously planted will have taken root. This particular week, though? It was…

I arrived at the hospital last week and was immediately pulled into the kind of scene that forces your brain to shift into high gear – the kind where time warps and your senses sharpen. A group of nurses were at the bedside of a restless patient, physically restraining him.…

Recently, someone asked me what it’s like to live out in Freetown rather than on the ship – like the 99% of people serving with Mercy Ships here in Sierra Leone. My surface-level answer was trying to explain both the chaos and the joy that life in the city brings.…

“No.” A simple word, yet it carries so much weight. As a nurse mentor in Sierra Leone, I have learned that “no” is often the hardest part of the job. In a place where medical resources are scarce, where suffering is woven into the fabric of daily life, and where…

Some moments in the hospital stay with me long after I leave. Admittedly, these often come from the paediatric ward (I am a paeds nurse after all!) but they don’t always come from big, dramatic events, often they come from the smallest interactions—ones that don’t seem significant until I take…

“Why Sierra Leone?” It’s a question I hear often, and I’ve become adept at giving the quick, digestible answer. “The need is just so big” I’ll say. “The lack of access to healthcare and education.” Those answers are true. They’re compelling and easy to understand. They satisfy the polite curiosity…

In the pediatric ward of Connaught Hospital, a heartwarming friendship has blossomed between two little boys, just six and seven years old, who are facing unimaginable challenges. Both sustained serious injuries to their arms, but complications arose when their families, desperate to find help, first turned to traditional healers. Now,…