Meet Shireen
“Mike said, ‘You want to go to Africa?’ I said, ‘Yeah!’”
Shireen has been involved in H3 since almost the beginning. She has been to Uganda every year since 2012 and her skills in administration and nursing are indispensable to the clinics.
I had gone on missions trips before, to Swaziland, India, and Turkey. I became a nurse so that I could learn skills and use them overseas, helping people.
Shireen has a sincere love for the Ugandans that she serves, and she maintains friendships with our Ugandan partners, who affectionately call her “Boss” on clinic days.
It’s interesting to see how patient the people are. They walk from so far and patiently wait hours for their turn. That astounds me. My job usually doing the clinic is controlling chaos. I make sure the clinic runs as smoothly as it can. I meet the needs of the doctors, nurses, and volunteers.
Shireen is a missionary kid but is committed to her own lifelong mission work.
I love H3 primarily because of the docs that work there. I know they are there for the right reason, to share the gospel first and to then share the medical skills. I like how this group has grown from nothing, to getting the Ugandans excited about taking care of their own people, to seeing them coming aboard wanting to take care of their people. I love seeing it grow and seeing God’s hand in everything. Our money just goes so much farther to help there.
She shares some of the more African pathology that she has seen in Uganda:
You see a lot of strange dermatology because there are more parasites and funguses than we have here. They have something called mango worm that gets in the skin and the patient gets tiny boils like blisters that spread everywhere. I saw measles for the first time in clinic. Last year we had a woman come in who was giving birth. I was ready to go with trash bags, clamps, and sterile gloves. Mike had to remind me that if something happened we would be in trouble. One of our Ugandan volunteers drove her down to a clinic and we paid for it, but I was ready! ER training kicked in.