Finding the Right School

To Sabbath School teachers: This story is for Sabbath, November 18.

By Andrew McChesney

T

en-year-old Nusrat couldn’t understand why a woman with diabetes came regularly to the house to get a wound dressed.

“Do you like the woman and that is why you are always helping her and dressing her wound?” she asked Grandmother.

“This is my responsibility as a nurse,” Grandmother replied. “This is what I do.”

Nusrat liked Grandmother’s work. She wanted to be like Grandmother and also help people. She began to dream of becoming a nurse in her homeland of Ghana.

Grandmother recommended several nursing schools after Nusrat graduated from high school. But Nusrat didn’t have the money to enroll. Mother was already helping Nusrat’s older sister study to become a teacher, and she couldn’t also help Nusrat to become a nurse.

Three years passed. It seemed that Nusrat’s dream was a distant reality.

One day, Nusrat told a visiting uncle about her desire to become a nurse. Uncle Nurideen already was a nurse.

Uncle Nurideen saw a solution. He had earned his nursing degree at Valley View University, which belongs to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and he said Adventist education was affordable.

Nusrat was intrigued, but she also was worried. She, her uncle, and the rest of their family belonged to another world religion. As a child, she had studied in a Christian school and had felt very uncomfortable.

“I always felt like a stranger because I couldn’t sing the songs and I couldn’t understand how they were praying,” she said.

Uncle Nurideen replied that Adventist schools were not like other Christian schools.

“I felt completely free to worship as I wished at Valley View University,” he said. “There was no discrimination.”

He acknowledged that he had felt a little out of place the first time that he entered an Adventist church. “But they told me to remember that I was in the presence of God, not in a church,” he said. “That helped a lot. They made me understand that the approach to worship was different, but I was in the presence of God.”

Uncle Nurideen said he went to every church program at the university, but no one hindered him from praying according to his personal beliefs.

Nusrat was encouraged by her uncle’s account. “It would be nice to go to a school where you are allowed to worship as you wish and feel welcome,” she said. “That would be the best place to be.”

Valley View University was far away, and Nusrat looked for an Adventist school closer to her home. She found the Seventh-day Adventist Nursing and Midwifery Training College.

Today, Nusrat is finishing her first year.

“We learn hymns together in Sabbath School, and we go to church together,” she says. “I have come to enjoy worshiping on the Sabbath.”

Not so long ago, she told Uncle Nurideen that his impression of Adventist education was correct.

“What you told me is true,” she said. “There is no discrimination.”

Uncle Nurideen was happy to hear
the report.

“I knew that you would be comfortable there,” he said.

Your Thirteenth Sabbath Offering will help the Seventh-day Adventist Nursing and Midwifery Training College expand with the construction of new classrooms and dormitories. The college opened with 22 students in 2015 and now has 770 students. Demand is high, and the school lacks the capacity to admit additional students. This is a real mission school, where only 30 percent of the students are Adventists. A number of students join the church every year. Thank you for considering a generous Thirteenth Sabbath Offering on December 30.