Pennsylvanian never planned to be medical missionary

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Bradford, Pennsylvania

When Dr. Erin L. Meier graduated from Bradford Area High School in 1996, she planned to study medicine but she didn't plan to become a career medical missionary in a Third World country.

Yet, since completing her residency, that is exactly what she has been doing in Papua New Guinea, the Pacific Island nation off the coast of Australia.

In fact, until 6 years ago she wasn't even aware of the country's location, she said Friday at the home of her father, Mark Meier and wife Laurel.

Through high school, she and twin Megan were best known locally for their basketball, volleyball and softball prowess. Now they are both doctors, with Megan marrying attorney and Bradfordian Joe Nash, having four children, and practicing medicine near Slippery Rock.

Although she no longer plays softball, the unmarried 33-year-old said the swing is the same for using a machete.

"The machete is symbolic of PNG," said Meier.

"Everyone uses a machete," she said, even three-year-olds. Machete injuries, called "chop-chops," are the most common injuries she treats at Kudjip Nazarene Hospital.

The hospital serves 500,000 people in the Highlands region of the California-shaped country. There are 6.8 million people, three official languages and about 860 other ones. Three-fourths of the people live a subsistence lifestyle with chronic tribal warfare and endemic gender violence. In 2011, the hospital logged 5,540 inpatients and 55,356 outpatients.

Meier said she was always interested in medicine, and that interest only grew stronger when her mother, Debbie, died unexpectedly of unknown causes the same year the twins graduated high school.

On the one-year anniversary of their mother's death, the sisters were studying at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Raised Roman Catholic, the girls decided to commemorate her by attending church, and then began attending regularly.

Both also played on the school's basketball team, and were asked by a UPJ wrester if they wanted to help start a chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

"We were athletes, and we thought we were Christians because we went to church," she recalled. More than 40 students gathered every Wednesday night for Bible study where she and Megan both grew into personal relationships with Jesus Christ, she said.

After graduating with her B.S. in biology, Meier went to Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine where she "wrestled" with how to balance her vocational and spiritual passions. 

During medical school, she went on a mission trip to South Texas and Mexico where "for the first time" she met doctors "who prayed with their patients" and knew that was the kind of doctor she wanted to be. So she went back to South Texas to the Harlingen Family Practice Residency Program to complete her family practice residency training and then the question became where to serve.

She also spent two months overseas at a hospital in Ghana and "loved what I was doing," she said, but she returned there later she found the language barrier frustrating.

She was accepted to the World Medical Mission's Post Residency Program of the interdenominational Samaritans Purse organization, meaning she would spend two years wherever she went.

"I decided I wanted to go to some place where it was easy to learn the language and that was open to the Gospel," she said. Her then-pastor mentioned PNG, saying the Pidgin spoken there was easy to learn. In Texas, she trained under a doctor who had served in PNG and thought she would like it. Finally, at a mission conference she met Dr. Jim Radcliffe, long-time surgeon at Kudjip and "that started communication." 

For five months, she agonized over her decision until one day while in prayer, she "heard God in my spirit" saying PNG. "I was at total peace at that moment," she recalled.

In September 2007 she went to PNG, where she has been ever since, including time as a volunteer and now as a Nazarene medical missionary.

Usually, she comes home once a year for part of a three-week vacation. Every other year, she gets a three-month home furlough to raise support for the work. This furlough ends Oct. 3, but she is leaving Bradford on Monday.

"Skype is my connection" to home, Meier said. In PNG, of course, Internet services and even electricity are notoriously unreliable. Nevertheless, Meier regularly posts photos and updates about the work in PNG at www.erininpng.blogspot.com.

Her typical work day starts with 8 a.m. rounds in the 32-bed medical ward, but sometimes in the pediatrics, surgical or obstetrics wards.

Afterward, she works in the clinic which averages 150 patients a day to be seen by four doctors. Clinic work, she explained, is filled with interruptions from the Emergency Room where she might need to treat patients for dehydration, tumors, machete wounds, or a complicated delivery.

She and the other six missionary doctors on staff perform their own ultrasounds and X-rays, and read their own lab results.

The day "is torn between the clinic, ER and delivery," she said.

Clinic work usually ends about 5 p.m., she said. Meier works five days a week and is on call.

The mission "station" where she lives is a fenced-in area about a half-mile square and houses about 500 people. She cannot leave the station alone, and at night, can't travel alone even from her house to the hospital a quarter-mile away.

"That is the reality of living in a Third World country" where violence reigns and women are not respected, she said, though "we are trying to show them" other ways.

At one time, the missionaries at the the 45-year-old hospital lived in the villages but the constant tribal warfare threatened them and the work there, she explained.

Still, she said, "I don't at all feel unsafe." Further, she feels part of "a great missionary family," and credits mentor Dr. Bill McCoy for helping her adapt to the life and medicine there. For recreation, Meier enjoys hiking, gardening, reading and playing tennis.

She says the rewards in her work including "seeing the faces of the folks that I'm helping and being able to share His love with people who need to know of the Savior."

Challenges include personal spiritual growth, sometimes being angry and discouraged, and "struggling with the lack of supplies" which results in "having to turn patients away... we just run out of things."

Asked what one thing she would take back with her to improve the work, she said, "more grace."

"It's not enough to have a piece of medical equipment," she explained. If the hospital were to acquire a ventilator, staff would be needed to operate and maintain it. Armed with an ultrasound and a stethoscope, she said, she feels confident in tackling most situations.

"I know this life isn't for everyone," she said, but even with being separated from her family. "I really couldn't imagine doing anything else right now."

As to the future, she cited Proverbs 3:5-6: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understand; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."

"No matter what He asks of me, I can trust Him. He's got a plan better than any I could ever imagine," she said. 
--Reprinted with permission from The Bradford Era. Originally published on Wednesday, September 19.

 

< back to Asia-Pacific

next article >