DHS graduate affirms nursing career doing missionary work in Mexico

What Sarah Smith learned on mission trips to Mexico will stay with her through life.

“They helped, especially with my wanting to become a nurse, and it helps see what I’m doing,” said the Destrehan High School graduate. “It reinforced my sense of what I wanted to do, and it helped me realize that it truly was what I wanted to do – and they need somebody.”

She is going to Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond to study to be a nurse. Smith will start school in fall.

Smith went to Piedras Negras, Mexico, in the summer of 2012 and 2013 with friends in a group called Fountain of Youth at St. Charles Borromeo School in Destrehan, where she also went to school.

“We took a plane my first year and a van to get over the border, and we stayed at one of the boy’s orphanages,” she said of her 2012 trip. They stayed at Casa de Nazareth.

“We all had different chores around the orphanage and played with the boys and then we rode to this area to help build a medical clinic,” she said. They went there every day in the morning, picking up where two previous groups that worked there before them.

“We would go to other orphanages, including an all-girl orphanage and play with the girls,” Smith said. “We went to a special needs orphanage and helped there, too. It was really neat.”

They also visited Casa Bethesda, a special needs orphanage, and a boys and girls orphanage called Casa de Misericordia, all in the community of Piedras Negras.

By 2013, access on the trip was restricted because of safety concerns.

Again, they stayed at the boy’s orphanage, but they stayed there where they mostly painted and cleaned for an entire week.

“It was a really great experience,” she said. “It definitely made me a better person. I fell in love with the kids at the orphanages and the different families we met. We grew bonds and still have that today.”

Smith said she understood it was a good cause, particularly when she knew only a couple of nuns ran the orphanage. She pointed out they were doing chores to help them, but the trips also helped Smith and her friends by letting them meet new people.

“I basically learned overall how to become a better person, but also to realize how good I live my life compared to the orphans which have no family and could really use love and care,” she said.“It gave me a little overview with how nursing can be like by working with children and doing jobs for others that are in need just how a nurse would do their job. It also makes me look like a role model by going on mission trips like Mexico so that youth could look up at me and realize how great volunteering is and the good that comes out of it.”