Ask and it will be given to you
Sandy Horton, DNP MSN BSN RN
Assistant Professor, Division of Graduate Nursing
Indiana Wesleyan University School of Nursing
As a teenager Bible quizzer, I memorized Matthew 7:7 which reads “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” When Terry Neal asked me to lead the academic trip to La Gonave, Haiti for DNP 04 in October of 2015, I received countless blessings and demonstrations of fulfilled scripture. Here are a few of them.
This was a return trip for me. I visited La Gonave as a student in DNP 01 in October 2014. When contacting the translator we had used, I asked if he was willing to serve as our translator again. He was only available one week during October - the week we were traveling to Haiti! We received continuity between trips making planning much easier.
While planning, our translator asked if we could bring two bottles of glaucoma medication for his wife. They were unable to obtain this medication on La Gonave. I did some checking and was unable to get this medication without a prescription, and the cost was $110 for a 2.5 ml bottle. I contacted a friend in Michigan who is an optometrist. After several attempts to obtain the medications were unsuccessful, Dr. Harris asked for and received $1200 of glaucoma medications at no cost which we were able to deliver to our translator’s wife. Praise God!
The goal of our trip was to provide lay midwife training in villages. My nursing experience never included obstetrics, so this was a stretch from my comfort zone. I spent hours searching and networking to find educational materials related to pregnancy care that would be appropriate in the most remote of settings. Two weeks before the trip I was frustrated with my lack of evidence based materials with which to train the doctoral students so that they could train the lay midwives. While in front of my laptop I asked God out loud, “If you expect us to deliver this education, why haven’t you provided the tools to work with?” My computer dinged. I received an email from Sarah Taylor. I thought to myself, I don’t know anyone with that name. I opened the message. It said, “Hello, you don’t know me, but someone told me a few weeks ago that you need this to teach midwives in Haiti.” Attached was a 128 page PDF document. I had received a book on educating lay midwives with illustrations of Haitian women! It was the perfect teaching tool.
When I visited La Gonave as a doctoral student in 2014, the Wesleyan School of Nursing Sciences had just opened. Dean Janice Catrone asked later that year if anyone was interested in teaching anatomy and physiology. I asked my chiropractor if he was interested in doing this. After a few months of talking and praying, Dr. DiIorio accepted the role to teach musculoskeletal and neurology. His teaching time coincided with our DNP 04 global trip. In preparing for the 2015 trip I asked my medical Facebook friends if anyone had models of shoulder, knee or elbow joints to help Dr. DiIorio with his teaching sessions. No one was able to help with joint models, but I received the cross section of a female pelvis from my college roommate from 32 years ago! What could be more helpful when teaching midwives?! Next I received a message from another college friend offering to purchase the model joints we needed for the trip. I had previously created a wish list totalling $300.91. I received a check in the mail for $300! God is so good! We were able to purchase joint models, a birthing pelvis model, and life size muscle posters and two sets of birthing dolls.
Janice Cotrone said the one thing she really wanted for the nursing school was a model heart that the students could open and study. I asked a cardiologist friend if he had such a heart. We received a wonderful model heart to use with students from Dr. Dickey. He had visited La Gonave the year before and understood the environment and the healthcare needs there.
Three weeks before we left for La Gonave I awoke one morning to discover a shingles rash on my abdomen. During a staff meeting that day I asked for prayer. I saw the doctor and started on medication that afternoon. Within 48 hours the rash was completely gone. I had received healing!
At church in Michigan the Sunday before the trip there was an overstock of shirts from a previous event. Someone said if I knew of anyone who truly needed shirts, I could buy shirts for $2 each. I said I was going to Haiti and was sure I would find people who needed shirts. I didn’t even ask, and I received 20 shirts for free!
The next day at home while suitcases, my home church called with the offer to donate soccer shirts, shorts from our local park district and 120 bars of soap someone wanted to go to Haiti. I had been trying to collect 30 hotel size bars of soap to give to the midwives. Now we had ample bars of full size soap and more clothes, and I didn’t even ask!
The DNP team met in Miami for travels to Port-au-Prince. Those traveling from Indianapolis were transporting 17 fetal pigs packed in formaldehyde for the nursing students to dissect during anatomy and physiology. We were all nervous about getting the pigs through customs. We prayed that the pigs would get through customs without problems. When our group assembled to go through customs in Port-au-Prince, they asked if we had medications to sell (no), clothes to sell (no) or other items to sell (no!) We sailed through customs without a single suitcase being opened.
In planning for the trip with our translator, Met Yves and I both felt it was unlikely that we could train more than 30 midwives. In my prayers I asked that we would have midwives show up in all three villages we were visiting. God helped the DNP students (Carla Brewer, Jill Buchholz, Wendy Shannon-Harden, Tamika Turner, Svetlana Watson) do a wonderful job teaching prenatal, labor and delivery and post-partum teaching so the village midwives could learn signs and symptoms of high risk moms and babies to get them transported to the only hospital on La Gonave to improve their outcomes. In La Fontina we trained 10 midwives, in Grand Lagon we trained 10 midwives from twon and one midwife from Pointe Latannier, and in Anse-A-Galet we trained 11 midwives. We trained a total of 32 midwives. We were welcomed everywhere we went and asked for more training and teaching. We came away having earned tremendous respect for these midwives and the environments in which they practice.
We knocked, and the doors were thrown open.
Sandy Horton, DNP MSN BSN RN
Assistant Professor, Division of Graduate Nursing
Indiana Wesleyan University School of Nursing
As a teenager Bible quizzer, I memorized Matthew 7:7 which reads “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” When Terry Neal asked me to lead the academic trip to La Gonave, Haiti for DNP 04 in October of 2015, I received countless blessings and demonstrations of fulfilled scripture. Here are a few of them.
This was a return trip for me. I visited La Gonave as a student in DNP 01 in October 2014. When contacting the translator we had used, I asked if he was willing to serve as our translator again. He was only available one week during October - the week we were traveling to Haiti! We received continuity between trips making planning much easier.
While planning, our translator asked if we could bring two bottles of glaucoma medication for his wife. They were unable to obtain this medication on La Gonave. I did some checking and was unable to get this medication without a prescription, and the cost was $110 for a 2.5 ml bottle. I contacted a friend in Michigan who is an optometrist. After several attempts to obtain the medications were unsuccessful, Dr. Harris asked for and received $1200 of glaucoma medications at no cost which we were able to deliver to our translator’s wife. Praise God!
The goal of our trip was to provide lay midwife training in villages. My nursing experience never included obstetrics, so this was a stretch from my comfort zone. I spent hours searching and networking to find educational materials related to pregnancy care that would be appropriate in the most remote of settings. Two weeks before the trip I was frustrated with my lack of evidence based materials with which to train the doctoral students so that they could train the lay midwives. While in front of my laptop I asked God out loud, “If you expect us to deliver this education, why haven’t you provided the tools to work with?” My computer dinged. I received an email from Sarah Taylor. I thought to myself, I don’t know anyone with that name. I opened the message. It said, “Hello, you don’t know me, but someone told me a few weeks ago that you need this to teach midwives in Haiti.” Attached was a 128 page PDF document. I had received a book on educating lay midwives with illustrations of Haitian women! It was the perfect teaching tool.
When I visited La Gonave as a doctoral student in 2014, the Wesleyan School of Nursing Sciences had just opened. Dean Janice Catrone asked later that year if anyone was interested in teaching anatomy and physiology. I asked my chiropractor if he was interested in doing this. After a few months of talking and praying, Dr. DiIorio accepted the role to teach musculoskeletal and neurology. His teaching time coincided with our DNP 04 global trip. In preparing for the 2015 trip I asked my medical Facebook friends if anyone had models of shoulder, knee or elbow joints to help Dr. DiIorio with his teaching sessions. No one was able to help with joint models, but I received the cross section of a female pelvis from my college roommate from 32 years ago! What could be more helpful when teaching midwives?! Next I received a message from another college friend offering to purchase the model joints we needed for the trip. I had previously created a wish list totalling $300.91. I received a check in the mail for $300! God is so good! We were able to purchase joint models, a birthing pelvis model, and life size muscle posters and two sets of birthing dolls.
Janice Cotrone said the one thing she really wanted for the nursing school was a model heart that the students could open and study. I asked a cardiologist friend if he had such a heart. We received a wonderful model heart to use with students from Dr. Dickey. He had visited La Gonave the year before and understood the environment and the healthcare needs there.
Three weeks before we left for La Gonave I awoke one morning to discover a shingles rash on my abdomen. During a staff meeting that day I asked for prayer. I saw the doctor and started on medication that afternoon. Within 48 hours the rash was completely gone. I had received healing!
At church in Michigan the Sunday before the trip there was an overstock of shirts from a previous event. Someone said if I knew of anyone who truly needed shirts, I could buy shirts for $2 each. I said I was going to Haiti and was sure I would find people who needed shirts. I didn’t even ask, and I received 20 shirts for free!
The next day at home while suitcases, my home church called with the offer to donate soccer shirts, shorts from our local park district and 120 bars of soap someone wanted to go to Haiti. I had been trying to collect 30 hotel size bars of soap to give to the midwives. Now we had ample bars of full size soap and more clothes, and I didn’t even ask!
The DNP team met in Miami for travels to Port-au-Prince. Those traveling from Indianapolis were transporting 17 fetal pigs packed in formaldehyde for the nursing students to dissect during anatomy and physiology. We were all nervous about getting the pigs through customs. We prayed that the pigs would get through customs without problems. When our group assembled to go through customs in Port-au-Prince, they asked if we had medications to sell (no), clothes to sell (no) or other items to sell (no!) We sailed through customs without a single suitcase being opened.
In planning for the trip with our translator, Met Yves and I both felt it was unlikely that we could train more than 30 midwives. In my prayers I asked that we would have midwives show up in all three villages we were visiting. God helped the DNP students (Carla Brewer, Jill Buchholz, Wendy Shannon-Harden, Tamika Turner, Svetlana Watson) do a wonderful job teaching prenatal, labor and delivery and post-partum teaching so the village midwives could learn signs and symptoms of high risk moms and babies to get them transported to the only hospital on La Gonave to improve their outcomes. In La Fontina we trained 10 midwives, in Grand Lagon we trained 10 midwives from twon and one midwife from Pointe Latannier, and in Anse-A-Galet we trained 11 midwives. We trained a total of 32 midwives. We were welcomed everywhere we went and asked for more training and teaching. We came away having earned tremendous respect for these midwives and the environments in which they practice.
We knocked, and the doors were thrown open.
