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: Now you're asking hard questions Emily! I'd like to say that I prayed and asked God to come in and change my life and everything was wonderful and I was a perfect Christian, but it wasn't like that!

On that Sunday, I knew as people prayed with me, that I was different. I knew that God had forgiven me for all the terrible things that I had done. I knew I was forgiven and I walked out of the church knowing that there had been a change, but I didn't realise that then it was not up to me to make the changes in my life, because I was still dependent on drugs and I still had a lot of problems. So for the next six months I was a bit lost. I felt like maybe God had let me down and I was too bad for Him to fix.

But after about six months of really rock bottom, I mean I really hit the bottom at that time, I met some people who were able to get me into a Christian rehabilitation centre. When I made the commitment to stay in that centre for at least a year, I knew it was a commitment not just to the centre and the people who were running it; it was not just a commitment to my church or anybody else; it was a commitment before God. It was all or nothing at that point. Then things started to improve slowly but surely.

Emily: It must have been a foundational time for you and your faith.

Ghana

Sheila: It absolutely was! It was called Hill Farm, in Redditch. It was out in the countryside and run by some very committed Christians. The bed rock of every day was, "You are not going to make it without God and you really need to learn to get to know God in a better way."

I started to read the Bible and God brought somebody to the farm at that time, a wonderful woman, a single woman at the time, who came alongside me and showed me what it was like to live life as a Christian and as a Jesus follower. Because at the end of the day that is what we try to do; we try to do what Jesus told us to do and we try to live like He told us to live. That was so beneficial, that one on one showing me how it was to be.

Emily: When was it that you decided to become a nurse?

Sheila: I do everything backwards actually. Normally what I think you're supposed to do, is that you go to Bible School, then you go to nursing school and then you go out to be a missionary. But I didn't do it that way, as I don't do most things the right way round.

I went to Bible College; I went to Birmingham Bible Institute for three years, because I was so passionate about the fact that God had changed me and I was saved to serve. I knew that God had something for me to do. I had been a real drifter with nothing positive in my life and yet that turning point in my life was, there is a job for me to do and it's to tell other people about what God has done for me.

I knew I didn't know anything, it was like, "I don't know the Bible, I haven't read it, and I don't know anything." So I went to Bible School. I was the only student they had ever had that was on probation. I had a probation officer coming to see me at Bible School every week to make sure I was still there.

After three years in Bible School I went out to Ecuador as a missionary and I was there for nine years living amongst an indigenous group of people in the rain forest. I realised how useless I was. I had nothing to offer, practically speaking, to this tribal group. So after the nine years, it took a long time for the penny to drop, I realised I really would love to be able to serve them with something which is useful. So I came back to the UK and studied to become a nurse in 1989, in Birmingham.

Emily: Tell me more about that trip to Ecuador and when you first heard about the opportunity to go out there.

Sheila: When I started to go to church as a biker, to this little evangelical church in Shirley, West Midlands, there was a family in the church that was from Ecuador. The husband was from Ecuador and his wife was from Birmingham, and I got to know them. When I was studying in Bible College, they were in the UK and they would have me over every week for a meal and tell me about Ecuador, and the tribe that they were working with. They said, "We are asking God to send us somebody younger", because they felt that they were getting on in years and they needed some help.

Haiti

While I was at Bible College, I maintained that relationship with them and I began to look at areas where I could be useful after leaving Bible School. I tried a few things and pushed a few doors and nothing seemed to open. So finally I wrote to this family and said, "I know you're looking for somebody younger, but I'm just wondering if maybe, possibly one day, when I'm much older, and much more holy, and much more good, and I know a lot more, would you ever think about somebody like me joining you?" In those days it took three weeks for a letter to go from England to Ecuador and three weeks for the letter to come back, so it was a couple of months later I heard back from them that yes, absolutely, they had actually been hoping for this and seeing that this could be a possibility that I could get involved. So that was the point where I felt the calling, or the invitation, from them and the okay from God to go ahead and go to Ecuador.