Emily Parker spoke with author and nurse Sheila Leech, about her new book 'God Knows What I'm Doing Here,' and her adventurous life going around the world nursing people in places like Ecuador, Ghana, and in the aftermath of natural disasters in Haiti, Indonesia and Pakistan and during war in Lebanon.

Sheila with Patrick

Emily: First of all, tell me a bit about yourself.

Sheila: I was born in the West Midlands in Solihull. I was one of six kids. I grew up in a fairly normal family, living in a village. I went to the local grammar school, which was in the area.

I became a very rebellious teenager. There was a point in my life where I was in a pretty bad state and a pretty bad place. That was a time when God stepped in to help me. From that time on, things turned around a bit.

I spent 37 years, most of my life, overseas, working in various places around the world. I'm a nurse and have been using some medical skills to bring hope and healing to people around the world in difficult situations.

Emily: When you were growing up, did you have an understanding of Christianity?

Sheila: I was sent to a little Brethren Sunday school, which is an interesting small denomination in the UK. All the kids in my village went to their Tuesday club.

We heard the Bible stories, but it never made an impact in the way I behaved. I was a naughty child and my Sunday school teacher used to ask God every week not to send me to Sunday school. She would say, "Please God don't send Sheila Leech, because she's so awful and disruptive." So I kind of understood the basics, but it didn't make any difference to the way I behaved in my life.

Emily: Tell me more about when God intervened.

Sheila: I was living in Solihull and by that time I'd got myself involved in drugs and all the things that go with taking drugs these days. So I'd gotten into trouble with the police and I was a pretty miserable teenager.

I was trying to pull myself up by my own bootstraps, by just deciding I'm not taking any more drugs, I'm gonna stop going to the pub, I'm gonna stop hanging out in these places and I'm gonna try and make something of my life.

I was kicked out of school and was wandering and lost. In those really hard times I was the most miserable person on the planet and felt like my life wasn't even worth living at times. It was that kind of desperation.

Then I met somebody who had been on the drug scene, who invited me to go along to church with him. He invited a bunch of us. I could see there was something really different about him. We all had bikes and leather jackets and stuff like that. He invited us all to go to his house for tea and then to church and that was a real turning point, because I went into that little church and it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. We were a pretty smelly, unwashed group of bikers and the people in the church were so welcoming. It was almost like they knew us and they liked us and welcomed us. So that was really important.

Then it was after that, over a period of a long time, I felt like almost a magnet, and the pull to go back to that group of happy, loving, kind people. They didn't just talk about God, but showed His love in practical ways. Then one Sunday morning I realised I have to do something. The invitation was made to invite God into my life, which I did and that was a very crucial point for me.

Emily: What happened after that?