When Marie-Lyne St Fleur was a child, she always liked to help injured kids—basically just waiting with them until the bleeding stopped. “When I started teaching, I didn’t know how to help injured and sick kids. Sometimes I would cry because they had problems and I didn’t know how to help them.
“I said, ‘one day I will have the knowledge to help them.’”
After one year of teaching, Marie-Lyne began nursing school in 2009. Tragically, after four months, her school collapsed in the earthquake. She began at a new school in 2012. For the last three years, she has gone straight from teaching her kindergarteners in the morning to attend nursing school in the afternoons. She will graduate in December of this year.
Becoming Full-Time Nurse
Because of sponsorships, this year JiHM is able to hire a teacher to take her place in kindergarten, so she can now work full-time as nurse for the students of Grace Emmanuel School.
As the nurse, she wants to bring health education to the kids, take care of the students when they are sick or injured, and visit the homes of sick kids to give advice to their parents. She explains that many of the younger students have recurring skin infections that would be easy to stop if their parents knew how to treat the illness at home.
Marie-Lyne is most excited that kids can come to her now with problems and she will finally be able to help them. She feels specifically called to the students from Source Matelas. “Their parents don’t have education and most of the students have no one to pay for them to see a doctor or even to get to a clinic.”
Her Parents’ Good Influence
Marie-Lyne grew up in Port-Au-Prince with her mom and dad, brothers and sisters (her older sister Maudeline is the school’s secretary). Her parents, devout Christians, taught her how to love, understand, and take care of others with what she had. They sacrificed so she was able to go to school and learn to read and write.
Marie-Lyne’s dad, who passed away in 2010, was her role model. She says he loved people and everyone in the village would go to him for advice. “I always want to be like my dad, but I fall short,” she says.
He instilled in Marie-Lyne a desire to continue her education. He would say, “Everybody doesn’t arrive at success in the same way. Some people go to the USA and find wealth, some find it in the lottery, some in the earth, and some in education. If you don’t have food, study.”
Most important, her dad taught her who Jesus was, that “He came to save us, He was humble, and loved everybody.” She became a Christian at 15 years old.
Grace Emmanuel School is blessed to have Marie-Lyne on staff, and we are excited for the huge impact she will have on the students in the coming years. Please pray for her often!
Kristi Bucher has served as Communications Manager for Jesus in Haiti Ministries since 2014. She currently lives in Minnesota with her husband, Nathan, and two kids. Kristi and Nathan lived in Haiti from 2012–2014.