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.

In times of disaster, people's hearts are very tender and people are very vulnerable and they are very open. They are so desperate and they are so grateful to have escaped with their lives. It is amazing how you can come alongside people and gently point them to God.

Emily: For a lot of people in moments like that, one of the big questions that always comes up is, "Where is God?" What do you think God's heart is in those moments of such desperation?

Sheila: I don't have the paper written on suffering, but I do believe that God is there, right in the midst of suffering and loss. He shows up and brings comfort. I don't know the whys and wherefores through it, but I do know that He's there and He walks through those situations with the people. He's already there, ready to give comfort to people in those times of desperation. It's a tough one.

Emily: Is there anybody that you've met that has majorly impacted your life?

Sheila: Many people over the years. In Haiti and the story is in the book actually, we were working in this operating theatre and there was a little old lady. She was 86 years old. In Haiti they speak Creole, but because it is half of the Dominican Republic, there were a lot of Spanish speakers there. All my team speak Spanish, so we were able to communicate fairly well. But this lady just showed up. She was there before us every morning and she was working to sterilise all the things that we needed for the day's surgery. She would be there 5 o'clock in the morning and she would leave after we would leave. She would pray with us and she would sing with us and she would hug us as we wept over our patients, and those that we couldn't save. After about three days she sidled up to us, and by that time some supplies were coming in, and she said, "Would it be possible to have a blanket?" We were like, "Sure, you need a blanket?" We asked a few questions, and that woman had been sleeping in a car, ever since the earthquake happened without a blanket, without anything and yet she had showed up every day to her job, to serve and help the people who were less fortunate than she was. It was a real testimony. I mean that woman is a super star. She was gorgeous.

Emily: When you visit different places I suppose it must put new hopes and dreams into you, so what are some of your hopes and dreams?

Sheila: Wow! That's a big one! Do you know one of my big hopes and dreams? They're just practical things. There is so much to be done; there are so many places where we could be; there are so many things we could be doing, and we are desperately short of people. It's that whole thing of asking God to send people to work in the harvest fields.

My passion is really to encourage people that you don't need to be a rock star and you don't need to be a super saint. You can be a broken, lost, drug addict and God can take hold of you and use you to meet the need of somebody on the other side of the world. So my dream is of masses of people mobilised to do something and make a difference. That's what I'm all about these days.

I'm getting older now, running around the world getting old. I mean I love to do what I do and I love to be with the people. I'm passionate about it and am so happy tomorrow that I can sit down and take blood pressures on hundreds of African people and I love doing that, but I realise we could do so much more if we just had more people. I'm challenging people, come on get on board, come help us.

Emily: You're speaking to me today from Ghana. Tell me about the work that you're doing at the moment.

Sheila: Ghana's a wonderful country. The organisation I work with has an office here. We work with local people all throughout Africa, putting in local FM radio stations. We use local people who live in the community and we use FM stations and help train them. We give them equipment and set them up, so that they can run a radio station. There are loads of these little radio stations all over Africa and there are about six or eight of those here in Ghana.

The other piece of it, is not just speaking and telling people about God, but doing something about it and showing His love in practical ways. So we've helped a local partner here build a clinic and we help them with their mobile clinic, going out into the rural areas. We go into the little tiny villages, the typical African villages with the grass roofs on the huts and mud walls. We go out there taking health care to the people; taking doctors and nurses and medicines, in areas where there aren't any doctors and nurses.

Emily: What is the name of your organisation and if anybody wants to find out more, how could they do so?

Sheila: Our organisation used to be called 'HCJB', which was the call signal of the big radio station that we operated in Ecuador. We've changed the name and are now called 'Reach Beyond', because we are really focussing on those areas of the world where people have never heard about Jesus; those unreached areas of the world. We have a website www.reachbeyond.org