Living out the Good Samaritan in Liberia

He could be farming comfortably in Clinton County. She could still be a top agricultural official in Indiana state government. Instead Travis and Gina Sheets are risking their lives in the devastated nation of Liberia.

With the Ebola crisis leveling off, the Sheetses, after having to remain stateside for a few extra months last fall, headed back in November to the same country where Dr. Kent Brantley almost lost his life treating Liberians with the Ebola virus.

In a rural part of the country, Travis and Gina work with Hope in the Harvest Mission International to train villagers in farm techniques through an extension program at the Liberia International Christian College. Yet with Ebola in the background, they face other challenges.

Ozino, a 19-year-old refugee from Guinea, recently showed up asking for help. He had been kicked out of a room he rented for fear he had Ebola. Travis took his temperature. It was normal—no Ebola. But he was very sick, emaciated, red-eyed. He had a hernia and malaria, a deadly combination. “Death was next for Ozino if we didn’t intervene,” Travis wrote in an email to supporters back in Indiana.

Initially they had Ozino sleep in the greenhouse for warmth at night. The next day, Travis got him to a hospital 3 miles away, where they learned that Ozino’s blood type matched Travis’.

“Most people here sell their blood,” Travis noted.

He gave some of his blood to Ozino at no charge so a doctor could operate a few days later. Ozino came through the operation well but has a ways to go toward recovery.

“The conditions at the hospital are nothing like we know in the States,” Travis said. “The smells, sights, and sounds are heart-wrenching.”

Electric power comes from a generator. And there’s no source of clean drinking water.

The Sheetses ask for prayer for discernment. “Gina and I find ourselves being parents to many,” Travis noted. Informal adoption is common in Liberia. Many children have lost parents to Ebola or in the civil war that tore the country apart from 1989 to 2005.

Yet their care for Ozino affects others just by example. “Ozino’s struggle has been a life-changing experience for all of us,” Gina wrote. “Three of the guys came up to us and shared how real the story of the Good Samaritan had become to them.”

The long-term goal for Travis and Gina is to lend their farming expertise to the Liberians, with the hope that the nation can move from importing food to exporting it with more productive farm skills and techniques. They have a 5-acre demonstration farm at Liberia International Christian College, and they hope to renew construction on an agricultural center for the school.

Support back in Indiana comes through church friends as well as an Indianapolis-based think tank, the Sagamore Institute.

Gina gave up her prominent position as agricultural director for the state. Travis gave up a county council seat. Both are long-distance runners, even running more than 50 miles in some races. This race in Liberia is their hardest.