Press Release

Onawa College Students Return from Mississippi Mission Trip

While most of the Briar Cliff students were coming back from the holiday break to a wintery wonderland, the senior nursing students were on their way to warm weather and mission work.

The senior nursing class arrived home Sunday afternoon from Biloxi, Miss. where they completed disaster relief for Hurricane Katrina’s damage. The group worked in a free clinic where patients received treatment and tests, as they needed, according to one of the student attendees, Jenna Johnston.

“We took their vital signs, asked them about their health history and what their chief complaint was,” she said. “Those people were so grateful for the services we provided and you could tell by the look on their faces how relieved they were when we told them we had their medication.”

Another part of the students’ jobs was to organize donated unused medicines into bottles to be given to patients who needed them, for free.

“Many of these people had been without their medication for days and even weeks,” said Johnston. “So without this resource, many of them would be very, very sick.”

The other part of the trip included working for Habitat for Humanity. Katie Sandmann, another student who went on the trip, said they were brought to one house to work on with a contract leader who assigned them jobs.

“One day we primed and painted an entire house,” she said. “Then the next day we set up walls and interior trimming.”

The houses that the students worked on were stood up on stilts in order to prevent further damage that could occur if another hurricane struck, said Sandmann.

Johnston didn’t realize what kind of damage had been done until she saw it herself.

“What I didn’t realize is that Mississippi was greatly affected for many reasons,” she said. “It is the poorest state in the nation and has the second lowest education level.”

Johnston also pointed out that the hurricane was 600 miles wide with a 30 mile-wide eye that hit the Miss./Louisiana border. She said that 235 Mississippians were killed by a 30-foot wave alone. “68, 729 homes were destroyed and that doesn’t even include how many had major damage,” she said.

“[The trip] opened our eyes and was a good learning experience,” said Johnston. “There is much more to nursing than passing pills and this trip made us realize how important education is.”

“It allowed me to see from a different aspect of how nursing is approached in another area of the country,” said Sandmann. “It also showed me how great of an impact a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina can have on an area.”

A total of 14 students and teachers attended the trip: Johnston, Sandmann, Katie Meyerhoff, Alison Young, Jacinta Ruhland, Amber Williams, Renae Kremer, Tiffany Ebberson, Catherine Feye, Mandy Koch, Amanda Limoges, Destiny Miller, Ryan Arnold and Darcy Tate were the students along with instructors Mary Kay Nissen, Vicki Britson and Diane Smith.