Forging Ahead: Linda Greene Takes on the Needs of the World One by One
By Karen Schmidt
Published in Fall 1996 edition of Journal of Christian Nursing
When the small Caribbean island of Haiti underwent a coup in 1986, the world saw aversion of upheaval through television camera and newspaper photographs. Linda Greene, RN, saw it from the inside out; she and a team of North American health care personnel were in Haiti, performing surgeries for needy residents when the coup began. Though that was Linda’s first time to witness a governmental takeover in a Third World nation, it was certainly not her first experience with serving health needs of disadvantaged people. Linda is a president of International Services of Hope/IMPACT Medical Division (ISOH/IMPACT), a humanitarian aid organization based near Toledo, Ohio. From her office, Linda corrals health care supplies, recruits personnel, seeks volunteer medical help and then goes where the needs are: places such as Haiti, where tens of thousands of children lack basic nutritional sustenance; struggling lands like Croatia, where healthcare is often unavailable; and to Rwanda, where civil war created escalating needs for food and medicine. Our mission,” Linda states, “is to send aid to the physically weak, feed those who are hungry, visit those who are captive and lend a helping hand just because we love them.”
Linda recalls a phone call she placed to her husband back in the U.S. while the Haitian coup swirled about her and the ISOH/IMPACT team. “I needed him to send me $200 so I could pay the anesthesiologist, so we could finish our work and get out of there. As we came out of the village, we noticed antagonistic activity against the American missionaries. Soldiers came to the village, planning to drug the missionaries and beat them to death. But the father of a child we had helped intervened. He told them, “Don’t touch these people because they saved my son.” From that I could see that we had made a definite impact on that Haitian community.”
Not all of ISOH/IMPACT’s trips are as dramatic as that encounter. But in each case, ISOH/IMPACT leaves both a legacy of better health and a testimony of the grace and love of God. That was the idea the organization was founded on in 1982 as an offshoot of an evangelistic ministry, Impact with God Crusades. ISOH/IMPACT is “a team working together in the body of Christ, desiring to meet the spiritual and physical needs of men, women and children.”
Haiti Ministry
Now ISOH/IMPACT accomplishes its task varies. Sometimes it means bringing a child to the U.S., where specialists and therapy can remedy a serious medical problem over several months’ time. Jentia, a ten-year-old girl from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is one such child. Jentia and Linda Greene met for the first time during an ISOH/Impact trip to the islands. Jentia who had been abandoned by her parents and was being cared for by sisters of Charity Catholic Order, had a progressive worsening disease, not yet diagnosed, that was destroying her nose and sinuses. It was eventually identified as tuberculosis. When Linda met Jentia in Haiti, she was dehydrated and malnourished due to the effects of the disease on her sinuses and palate. Knowing that Jentia could not receive the necessary care in Haiti, Linda returned to the U.S. and sought out an ear, nose and throat specialist to take on the case. A passport, visa and airfare were arranged, and Jentia came to New York. Meanwhile Linda had located some Creole-speaking translators and asked a local hospital to provide care for free. She even found some people to provide Haitian foods which would make Jentia’s hospitalization a little less disorienting. Than she and her husband, Stan, an ISOH/IMPACT board member, set up a bedroom and settle Jentia in their home for the duration of the treatment. Months later, shy Jentia was healing well, learning English and playing with Lego’s. She since has been legally adopted by the Greenes.
Linda’s trips to Haiti to provide health care for the disadvantaged began in 1981. She was in LPN at that time; soon after, she enrolled in an external degree program through the University of New York. “It took me ten or twelve years to get my RN license, “she says. “I challenged some of the nursing exams and studied part-time with ISOH/IMPACT.” Linda received a PhD in health science management earlier this year.
Entering China
Linda did not wait until graduation to forge new directions for the health care ministry. In 1986 ISOH/IMPACT accepted an invitation to take a team to China. Working in collaboration with a Korean congregation, the ISOH/Impact team of volunteer health care personnel provided care for a variety of patients. They also discovered that certain types of care, such as cardiac surgery, where rare in many areas of the country. Linda than put together a cardiac team who in 1987 not only performed surgical procedures, including the first coronary bypass in China, but also lectured and demonstrated techniques to Chinese physicians. Nurses on the team instructed their Chinese counterparts in techniques, aiming to improve post-operative care. One of the doctors on the trip noted that, compared to North America, “Nursing care was different in China. One nurse would take care of two wards, each ward with about twelve patients, plus their relatives. The patients’ families are an integral part of the care; they assist the patient with toileting, bathing and meal delivery.”
Interestingly, the cardiac surgeon who headed that particular team was not an evangelical Christian, but a Hindu. Including non believers on ISOH/Impact trips has drawn some criticism, but Linda is not deterred.” I say to the critics that I’m not going to be responsible for a non-Christian going. If God takes them out of the picture, fine. But what happens if we are supposed to be ministering to that person? We have seen many people who have changed their attitude toward Christianity after going on a team. ”To illustrate, Linda describes a physician from Ohio who joined one of the first teams to Haiti. “ He was a good man, but he didn’t know the Lord, “ she says. “ On the last day in Haiti, he stood up and wanted to pray. He told how the Lord had changed his life. Six months later, he died. Until his time in Haiti, he was not a Christian.”
ISOH/IMPACT’s work in China spawned another branch of aid: exchange programs, where doctors of other nations are invited to the U.S. to work alongside physicians for a time, learning new procedures and improving techniques. The first Chinese doctor arrived in 1989. Following his return to China, ISOH/IMPACT supervised the donation and shipment of medical supplies to China: tubing, syringes, cardiac monitors, etc.
Sending Equipment
Acquiring equipment and shipping it to underprivileged areas is another aspect of the ministry. Linda says that since 1991, ISOH/IMPACT has provided more than several million dollars’ worth of medical equipment, supplies, food and clothing to at least a dozen countries. She marshals these items from an array of companies, hospitals and private donors. Containers of goods have been sent too many corners of the World: Croatia, Malawi, Guatemala, China, Haiti and Romania, to name a few. Linda accesses for the funds to acquire supplies and get them shipped. For instance, ISOH/IMPACT is registered with the U.S. government as a private, voluntary organization, making possible matching grant funds for shipping via ocean freight. But as she twirls through her Rolodex seeking donors to fund a project, Linda keeps in sight her primary objective: Individuals in need. Individual care is the focus of our ministry. We do the shipping of relief goods, but that’s putting on a bandage.
Focus: Touching children
“Our focus is more on children than ever before. I read that 65 percent of the world’s population is fifteen years and under. So we are trying to take it individually. If you help seventeen children in Croatia, for example you are touching seventeen families. The families come from communities, which ere then touched by the ministry”. Communities are impacted not only by the medical assistance, but more vitally, by the love of God displayed by the visiting teams. Linda cites the story of marina. A thirteen-year-old from Kiev, Marina met up with Linda in Moscow during an ISOH/IMPACT trip to Russia. A cyst on her iliac bone, which had kept Marina from walking for ten months, required surgical intervention. Linda arranged for Marina and her mother to travel to Kentucky, where a Shriner’s Hospital provided complete care. But it was North American Christians who gave time and encouragement during marina’s stay that made the eternal difference.
“Marina and her mother, from an Orthodox background, were not believers when they arrived here. They both accepted the Lord during Marina’s treatment “explains Linda. Each child who comes to U.S. for health care represents an enormous investment of time, as well as free treatment provided by doctors and institutions .Local families volunteer to supply a home to the youngsters during their stay. ISOH/IMPACT endeavors to provide this type of assistance to a minimum of ten children each year. It coasts approximately $5,000 to bring one child to U.S. for help, not including medical care,” Linda says. “As finances and services become available, more children will be sponsored.” It’s obvious there is no scarcity of children needing the care ISOH/IMPACT makes possible. In some cases, the medical treatment is only one facet of a life-changing experience. When Linda first met Sasha in Russia, he was seven years old. “Sasha was an orphan, abandoned by both his birth parents and his adoptive parents because of his condition: an imperforate anus with incontinence and hydronephrosis.” But life took on hope when Sasha’s medical visa was approved, and a church in North Carolina underwrote the cost of his travel and U.S. stay. A series of operations was required to correct his medical conditions. But there was an even better ending to his story: “Sasha is now living in Ohio with adoptive parents, whom he calls his Forever Mama and Papa,’ “Linda concludes.
Reaching Out Locally
A relatively new branch of outreach for ISOH/Impact is local ministry. Linda counts off a long list of activities aimed at helping the disadvantaged closer to home. Parties and dinners in Toledo are organized at Thanksgiving and Christmas, in cooperation with local churches. Children and families, often from inner city neighborhoods, receive food baskets and gifts. Victims of natural disaster have also been the recipients of ISOH/IMPACT help: food and supplies were shipped to North Carolina to aid victims of Hurricane Hugo in 1991 and to the Midwest in 1993 after the flood. An innovative Adopt-a-Family program was set up in 1992 assist families after Hurricane Andrew. Linda not only dives into these projects headfirst but also seeks to involve the community, business and churches in the relief efforts.
Linda sees the scope of the ministry widening every year, as opportunities arise to extend the message and the ministry. A pediatric cardiovascular team is scheduled to travel for the first time to Lusaka, Zambia. Health conferences are being set up throughout Europe. As the outreach grows, Linda is enthusiastic about the need for more Christian health care personnel to become involved. “We need more volunteers, especially nurses who are strong in the Lord,’ she explains. We also need people who are willing to help their own church become active in missions.” She believes Christian nurses can take part in worldwide ministry by finding sources for equipment and supplies which Third World countries desperately need.” Medical items that American Hospitals commonly throw away could be reused at cost savings, “she explains.
The needs of the world’s people are endless. Linda would be the first to tell you that. But by helping individuals, one by one, she is striving to fulfill the biblical mandate to offer a cup of water, to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Even if fulfilling that mission means caring for people in the chaos of a coup, Linda Greene and ISOH/IMPACT will endeavor to be involved.
