This article first appeared in the January/February 2009 issue of Northwest Notes.
Every so often, someone comes along who has touched so many lives for Christ, it’s as if they have lived two lifetimes.
Pat Hamilton is one of those people.
Known almost universally as “Miss Pat,” she is a tough-as-nails, veteran missionary to Haiti whose legacy is overshadowed only by her modesty (Pat might not have given me permission to write this if I had asked her).
There is hardly a program or project at Northwest Haiti Christian Mission that does not owe something to Miss Pat’s two decades of service there.
At the end of last year, she went home to retire in Ramsey, Illinois.
To say she will be missed would be an understatement.
Miss Pat, 78, raised six children and a clan of 11 grandchildren and four great grandchildren. She worked at a nursing home in the United States for years, honing skills as caregiver that would serve her well later in life.
She came to Haiti in 1983 shortly after her husband died, at a time in her life when most people would have been thinking about retirement.
Miss Pat began her ministry at a clinic in Marchand Dessalines, a city southeast of Gonaives. She worked there as a lay nurse for five years (the word “miss” is Creole for “nurse,” and the moniker stuck). Missionaries decided to close the clinic after a large hospital moved into the area, and Miss Pat went back home with plans to work with American Indians.
But at a missionary convention in 1989, she met Larry Owen, then executive director of NWHCM. That October, she headed to Saint-Louis du Nord as a full-time, residential missionary.
During her years with the mission, Miss Pat launched what eventually grew into today’s nutrition program, clinic and gran moun home, among other programs.
In 2004, Miss Pat moved farther west and founded the mission’s campus at the Baie des Moustiques, which now has a church, school, clinic, and feeding program of its own.
I interviewed Miss Pat last summer. She talked of all her adventures, and how God had watched over her for so many years.
“When I think about going back to the States, I hope I don’t just turn into a mushroom,” she said.
If history is any indication, that seems pretty unlikely.
– Andy Olsen, NWN editor
Tags: News_General, News_Medical
