Me and My Faith: Kate Introna - nurse

Kate Introna

Kate Introna is a nurse from London who works at with children orphaned by HIV/AIDS at Sarnelli House in Nongkai, northwest Thailand. The centre offers a caring home, medical and personal support to children orphaned by HIV, many of them born HIV positive themselves.

Kate writes: I grew up as one of a seven children in a Catholic family. My parents were from Irish and Italian backgrounds so that was a double dose of Catholicism. We went to Mass as kids every Sunday and practised all the traditions of the church which as I was growing up, was something I just took for granted and was a part of our family life. My parent's faith was so much a part of who they were as kind and loving people and I think it made them closer, and they taught us that their love as a married couple reflected God's love for the church and for all of us. I saw in their love the strength, humility, the generosity and the joy which always been my lodestar on this journey. I know that through them I became closer to who I am supposed to be.

When I was 18 year old I left home to study nursing, and as I got older I found that I needed to discover for myself what I believed in, and not just to pay lip service, or follow blindly in my childhood faith. Like all of us I went on my own journey and sometimes I was confused and other times comforted, but I think all the time I knew deep down that I wasn't alone and that I was here for a bigger purpose than just being happy and catering to my own needs. After much reading and thinking and travelling and also working with dying people in my work as a palliative care nurse for 15 years I did own my faith, and I am proud to say it is the faith of my father and mother and their fathers and mothers and I love the fact that I stand on the shoulders of the saints and the community of the faithful and that I am part of something larger than myself and that has infinitely more meaning than I could ever bring to my own life.

When I had finished my first year at Sarnelli House in 2003, I really experienced love in a most profound way. I am a single woman and have not been married and don't have children of my own, and so maybe I discovered what many parents discover every day when they have children. There were 25 orphans from two years old to 10 years old at the orphanage all with HIV/AIDS and none of them had started on any treatment for their disease and they were all expected to die. I was the first health professional to provide care for them in the orphanage.

In that year, and really with the grace of God, we managed to start them on their AntiRetroViral medicine which literally saved their lives. In those days the local staff were untrained and there was the stigma and fear of HIV/AIDS, so they didn't provide any physical affection to the children, they didn't seem to get emotionally attached to them probably in part to protect themselves against death and grief. But I fell in love with all 25 of them, little toddlers would respond to a hug or a smile with a desperation that broke my heart. They were craving to be loved, to be held and to respond to love with love. But I really couldn't understand intellectually how I could love 25 kids to bursting point, and how I could know each of their little personalities and recognise each of their coughs and know when they were in pain or sad or joyous. And yet I still had room, so much room to love the other children that turned up on the doorstep afraid, lonely and rejected. I guess I thought that love was finite and that it could only encompass a certain amount, like the human heart can only beat out a certain rhythm and if that speeds up too much the heart will go into overdrive and die.

But now I really understood that love has no limits, that love is unconditional - it was a revelation to me, and it meant that if God is love then the love we have for each other is from God and that God loves us all infinitely and unconditionally. I learnt this through the children and I discovered the absolute naturalness of love, that it is in our nature to love and to be loved. When I reflect back on that year I see the face of God in those children, I see Jesus rejected and alone, I see him though their eyes and all I can do is pour out my love on them as he did for us on the cross, and follow his call -" ... whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Matthew 25.40. And the children taught me to become like a child again, and they taught me humility and they bought me closer to the infinite than I would have ever believed possible.

Despite the love the children gave and received it was a hard year - the impossible language the different culture, missing my family and friends and if I knew now how hard it was going to be back then, I think my courage would have failed me. But not knowing and just trusting that this was the path that I needed to take and that I was being guided to take, changed my life. It taught me to trust in God's plan for me. So I try to carry on with love wherever I am and I try to pray and spend quiet time with God and lucky for me when I am feeling despondent or don't feel God in my life, I get on my bicycle and peddle over to the orphanage and then there will be 10 kids running up to greet me, a teenager will come and give me a big hug and then walk away, or a five year old will wrap his arms around my legs and look up at me and smile, and God is back never did leave, and love is everything.

Sarnelli House

Relationships with local schools and hospitals have been painstakingly built over the years so that the children at Sarnelli House can live as full and normal a life as possible. In 2011 money raised during the Big Give was used to buy land so that Sarnelli can grow all the rice it needs to feed its 160 children.

Now they need more sponsors to ensure that the children continue to get the medication they need and to pay for school uniforms, books and materials.

If you would like to sponsor a child, or for more information see: www.thaichildrenstrust.org.uk/what-we-do/children-with-hivaids/sarnelli-house,-nong-khai.aspx