Our History

After graduating in December of 2010 from Whitworth University and Washington State University with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, I filled a substitute role at a private elementary school while searching for and praying about what God would have me do.

I had unrest in just getting a nursing job, for fear that I wouldn’t ever be obedient to the call/desire I had always felt to serve the Lord in Latin America. I remember reading in a book by a Whitworth grad that last year of college- and it felt like he wrote the words that were flowing out of my heart. “How could I start down a path that could lead to a string of numbing jobs and binding mortgages and decisions based on what you have to do, rather than what you believe in?

Without giving myself any of the credit monastics deserve for their seriousness and without ever considering it as a possibility for myself, I felt like I needed to commit to all or nothing because I am so weak and lazy that if I didn’t enter a monastic-like promise of poverty and service sworn to the Almighty, if it wasn’t marked daily by an itchy, rough-hewn robe with no pockets to keep anything in, then I was destined to constant compromise” Life of servitude and discipleship to Christ is as possible in North America as it is in South America… It came down to the desire of my heart.

After seeking advice, praying, searched out opportunities, I chose to believe that God was giving me excitement and joy and peace in moving to South America for a reason. Ultimately when it came to a ER job in Colorado Springs or working in a rural missions hospital in Cochabamba, Bolivia- my heart was only content with the latter.

In June of 2011, I moved to Bolivia and took a volunteer position at Hospitals of Hope working full time as a surgical nurse and helping coordinate a guest house that received short term medical volunteers from North America and Europe. I spent a year growing in community with the hospital staff, organizing rural medical clinics, and assisting in countless surgeries.

During that time, a dear friend, Rachel and I became aware of a population of young men and women living on the streets of the city, addicted to alcohol and sniffing glue. Our hearts broke for this group that is beyond despised in society. Friday afternoons, and any times we had free, we would go to the plaza where they lived, bringing food and medical supplies, preaching the word, praying, and most of all getting to know these people that became very dear to us.

It became clear that while practicing sterile technique on sedated patients in an Operating Room is good, it was not an environment in which I could speak true healing into peoples lives, or introduce them to the only one that can REALLY HEAL. After a year working at the hospital, Rachel and I moved to the center of the city and worked full time with the “cleferos” (literally meaning glue sniffers). We watched as child after child of addicted mothers were born into street life. That is where Talita Cumi was birthed in my heart. More than 3 years later after having learned what it is to fail in my own strength time and time again, God has opened this door.