June Inspirational Woman: Justine Chamberlain

Justine is an ER nurse living and working in Bethel, Alaska – a small town off the road system accessible by plane or boat. From attending nursing school debt free, fostering a teenager, and helping run a summer camp for Native Alaskan youth, Justine is a person who’s every day life shows the power and kindness of God.

You can listen to the recorded interview or you can read the transcribed version below. My apologies for the bad quality audio, its a work in progress!

 

 

What is life like in Bethel, Alaska?

Life in Bethel is an adventure every day. Its a pretty small town of about 5-6,000 people. We’re off the road system in bush-Alaska. We are the hub town for about 52 villages surrounding our area so lots of people are coming and going. None of the villages are connected by roads so you have to get there by plane or by the river. Bethel is primarily Native Alaskan culture, which is wonderful. I love living in a place where I am the minority. We live by the river and a lot of people live by the subsistence lifestyle out here so  there’s lots of hunting and lots of fishing.

I get to ride my four-wheeler to work every day if I want or I can drive down the frozen river in the dead of winter on my snow machine or drive my huge monster truck jeep with huge mudding tires If I want.

Life here revolves around the seasons. Last week the river broke up and the whole town was waiting for the river to unfreeze because it means you can get from village back and forth to Bethel. It means you can go to the store on your boat, it means fishing is coming, it means hunting is coming, it means everything. So everyone is just waiting for the season to change. Its really, really fun living in a place where life revolves around the seasons. Its such a big deal, its such a community effort.

How did you end up as a nurse in Bethel, Alaska?

I was in Youth With a Mission for a while prior to nursing school. I was heavily involved in missions and I thought I was going to be living overseas after I left YWAM. But I felt the Lord tell me to go to nursing school first. So I went to nursing school and I really had no intentions of becoming a nurse, I had no desire to become a nurse whatsoever. But I felt like He told me to go and that it was going to be a tool for my tool box so I went ahead and did it. That alone was miracle after miracle. To get into nursing school seemed impossible and paying for nursing school without taking out any loans, because He said to, is really incredible provision. I had lots and lots of help from Him and lots of other people to get in.

When I was in nursing school I was praying a lot about what life would look like after (I was in a 2 year program) I finished my pre-reqs. I was trying to decide if I was going to be living overseas like I had planned on or where I was going to be going.

Prior to nursing school I was in YWAM and opportunities to go to Alaska had come up a few times. There was something that my heart had become tied to there but I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t know why and I didn’t know how. But it (Alaska) felt like something that was just kind of set on the back burner. One day I would get to see Alaska which sounded cool.

For nursing school, I went to a private Christian college. It was pretty small but it had a really sweet nursing program. Every one of their majors at the school focuses on doing a portion of the senior year abroad with the purpose of launching students into missions. So my nursing program offered six different locations, all over internationally, except for Bethel, Alaska. I knew as soon as I heard it was an option that that’s why the Lord had me in this program and thats where I was going. I didn’t exactly know why but I knew that was it.

So I came up here for the last month of nursing school to do a rotation in clinicals, primarily working at the hospital. A family that lives here hosted us so we got to do a lot outside of the hospital as well in Bethel, the community, and the surrounding villages. It was such a sweet opportunity to get to meet people and really dive into the culture and start to fall in love with it really, really quickly.

I had a funny impression that when I came to Alaska I was going to be living in a log cabin, in the mountains, with moose running through my back yard. That is absolutely nothing like it is here. It’s flat tundra, totally, totally flat, just empty, open space. There are lots of rivers, and lots of sink holes, lots of mud, A LOT of mud. There’s one mountain very far in the distance but thats about it. So I got here, hated it at first and then within a week I totally fell in love with it.

I knew I was coming back but I was almost afraid to ask the Lord that question. “Is this what you have for me after school?” The idea of being alone scared me, the idea of being out in the middle of nowhere scared me, the idea of being somewhere without mountains and trees, snowboarding, my friends, and my comforts scared me. But I knew [the answer], even though I wasn’t ready to ask the question.

So I spent the rest of my month in Bethel as a nursing student. I got to meet a lot of the kids around town as well. I started to notice these younger teenagers that were wondering around. I was here in the dead of winter, it was -30 degrees almost every day. I’d see these kids hanging out around town; hanging out at the hospital, hanging out at the grocery store, walking the streets, the same kids. They’d just be by themselves, walking. And I was like “man, what is so bad at school or home that they would rather be out wandering around or why are they hanging out at the hospital, what a boring place to hang out.”

I finally started talking to some of these kids and building relationships in the short time I was there. Even though I didn’t get to know all the stuff that was going on at home or what was happening, I could tell that these kids were the ones that had fallen through the cracks. They didn’t have some one fighting for them or watching out for them. They didn’t have someone telling them that there’s a reason they’re alive and there’s a purpose for their life. My heart just broke for these kids and I had to do something about it and I felt very strongly about that. Not that I had any of the answers or knew what to do about it, but I knew that the Lord was using that to tie my heart to this place.

So I went back to Seattle, graduated nursing school. I moved here pretty much as soon as I could. I initially had a job offer, about a million and one things came up, as the enemy tries to do in deterring us from the Lord’s plans. My job offer actually got pulled, the hospital went on a hiring freeze, my moving bonus got pulled, one of my good friends back home got really sick, all these things that tried to stop me from coming up here. But the Lord had given me a date that I was supposed to be in Bethel so I was going to be here by then. And of course, as He does, everything came through –  plane tickets, support, funding, and a job offer and all of it at the last minute.

I moved up here in January of 2015 and I’ve been here just over three years now. I has been a very wild ride since I’ve been up here.

You fostered a teenager at one point, tell us about that:

One of the girls that I met when I was here as a nursing student, she was 14 years old and she was one I would see everywhere. I’d see her at the hospital, the grocery store, walking around town. One day I was at this community place in town and she started teasing me and we were playing games around the community center and I started talking to her. The Lord just really used her and a few other kids [in my heart]. When I went back to Seattle and was praying about moving up here, she was the face I thought of when I was praying for Bethel. And when my heart was aching and praying for the kids here and interceding for the Lord’s heart here for those kids, she was the one that would come to mind.

So when I moved here I was really hoping I’d see her again. I didn’t get to know her that well, I didn’t get her last name or number or anything. I didn’t see her around town for a few months. Then probably about 6 months after moving here, she randomly showed up at the hospital one day to visit a family member. I JUMPED out of my chair from behind the desk and yelled her name and gave her a big hug. She looked at me like I was a lunatic and had no idea who I was. Which is pretty darn funny. I introduced myself and then we got over the awkwardness and she kind of remembered and then we started hanging out.

Basically from that day on for the next 6 months, she showed up at our house every day. After school she would walk over to our house, hang out with me and my room mates. During the summer she was over at our house pretty much non-stop. We got to start spending a lot of time with her, getting to hear her story and hear about home life and where she’s coming from. Also we were just getting to be a positive influence in her life, not to say that she didn’t have any by any means, but just kind of a fresh face.

So we got to know her and became really good friends and started calling her our little sister.  I think that’s the best way to describe our relationship. About a year and a half into living here, some things came up with her family. Her living situation wasn’t [suitable]. She wasn’t able to be at home for a little bit and we had the opportunity after talking with her parents, working with OCS (Office of Child Services), and the court system of getting to have her come stay with us.

It was actually a pretty short period of time that she was actually living with us. But it really opened up our relationship from friends and mentors to family. We were able to walk this road with her of her truly being our little sister. We got to be care takers in her life, I guess technically you would call it fostering, that would be the legal term of it. It was so many roles packed into one, its hard to explain; between getting to mentor her, getting to walk alongside some of the hardest times in her life, supporting her in different ways: spiritually, financially, emotionally, physically, all of it.

It was one of the most incredible, terrifying, and hardest experiences I have ever had or will to be a part of. We pretty much got to stand in as her parents, not by any means to replace her parents, but to be a temporary place for her. And by we, I mean me and two of my close friends who are my room mates.

So it was just a whole new world. It went from friends to all the sudden we’re the providers, were the disciplinaries, and the caretakers and the role models and all these things. So from getting her the clothes she needed, to get her in school, to get her to doctor’s visits, and eye appointments. I will never forget when I got my first report card sent to me addressed to the parent or guardian. It totally blew my mind to have a report card addressed to me and reading it.

I don’t quite know how to explain it because I don’t have kids. I’m sure any one with kids would understand the feeling or are even able to put words to it, but I have never hurt for somebody so much, I have never ached for somebody so much, I’ve never fought for somebody so hard, I have never loved somebody in that way that we got to when we were put in that position with her.

There were more days than I can count being on my knees just crying and so afraid that this wasn’t the best thing for her and that I wasn’t doing a good enough job of loving her. I so badly wanted the best thing for her and not knowing what it was terrified me. I was responsible to figure it out, I didn’t want to screw it up.

There were also times when she didn’t want our help and was slamming the door in our faces and screaming at us because she was angry. Even though we knew that what was happening and what we were doing was the best thing for her in those moments.

But it was so sweet in those moments, as terrifying as it was, the Lord kept reminding me that this is the Father’s heart. This is what it looks like to love someone TOTALLY unconditionally, totally selflessly. I know with human nature, I can never actually love some one 100% selflessly and unconditionally. But this insight to love somebody like a parent loves a child was one of the closest ways we get to love like the Father loves us. It was just this incredible experience.

As time went on, she aged out of the system by turning 18. We’re still very close with her, she still stays with us quite often and we still see her on a weekly basis sometimes daily basis. She is doing incredible. That season of a lot of structure and her being out of her normal and everything changed. It was about a year of her leaving home to be with us and with other people. Man that girl has grown a ton and changed a ton.

At first I wanted her to get a job, have an education, get her GED, go off to college, go to YWAM, and all the things that I think mean success, and good, and quality of life. But at the end of the day, after several months of hell, of actually realizing that none of that matters. If at the end of the day, if the ONLY thing she knows is that she is loved and worth being loved by the Father and by us, thats a win. Thats enough to change somebody’s life forever.

I have no doubt in my mind after that season, through the chaos, that she absolutely does know that now. It was such an incredible honor and still continues to be an honor to get to be a part of that process.

How are you involved in the community of Bethel, outside the hospital?

So I get to work as a nurse in the Emergency Department which is incredible. Aside from that I work with a couple different youth ministries around town. The church I go to has a couple different youth programs and their main youth group. One of their programs is called Coffee House and its basically an after school program once a week that myself and handful of leaders open up the building and its just a hang out spot. We have a coffee cart and we have games. Its just an open, safe place for kids to be able to hang out. There’s no formal or structured sermon, there’s no formal structured teaching or bible study or anything. Its just a safe, healthy place to hang out with positive role models.

Its really sweet because I had gone to Coffee House a couple of times when I first got to Bethel but I wasn’t too involved. One of my good friends was heading it up for awhile and it went from about 10 kids showing up to 30-40 kids that come every week. Its so sweet. And they’re wild, crazy, and so hectic every time. Half the time you’re yelling at kids to stop breaking stuff or stop jumping on stuff, stop cussing at each other or whatever. But its absolutely incredible because these kids show up every week with the expectation of having a safe place to go with positive role models and healthy people.

I very much believe that kids know and expect that there aren’t drugs there. There isn’t alcohol and not only is it a safe and healthy environment but its a positive environment. Its so sweet because these kids are so hungry for that because thats a rare thing to find out here. There’s very few hang out spots in Bethel, especially for youth or really anyone, so its one of the few opportunities they have to do that. So that’s Coffee House. We do that once a week and its been really fun to watch that ministry grow.

We also do Youth Group once a week and its as crazy as any Youth Group. And that’s been growing quite a bit over the last couple years too. Its been growing not only in the amount of kids coming but also the leaders working with the kids. So we have a pretty strong staff involved in that too which is really fun.

My absolute favorite thing I get to do in Bethel, which is probably the biggest pull for me to come here, is I get to work with a summer camp called Camp H.O.P.E. This will be the 7th summer running it, I believe, and it will be my 5th year at camp. Its about 15 miles down river between a couple different villages. We run it for two weeks in the summer. One week is high school and one week is middle school and late elementary school. But we spend all summer long prepping for it. Its a camp in the middle of the tundra, absolutely nothing around so we have to haul in everything to this place. Everything is built by hand from the ground up. We’ll sleep in old military tents on plywood on top of the tundra.

We spend weeks and week and weeks hauling in food, hauling in lumber, hauling in fuel, hauling in water, everything we need to run this. My first summer working at this camp there were maybe 25 kids at camp, this summer were expecting about 200 kids. So its just grown exponentially. I’m not saying that its all about the numbers but numbers mean kids getting to hear about Jesus and getting to experience hope and getting to experience love and positive role models and safety and all these different things that we can offer at camp. The fact that we have 200 kids coming to camp this year to taste and see the goodness of Jesus and hear about freedom is so freaking exciting.

Out here a lot of the villages are very focused on denomination and the specifics of those denominations. The couple that started the camp, Bob and Rachelle White, felt pretty strongly that they needed to make it a non-denominational to be able to reach kids from all the different villages.

The theme changes every year for camp but the underlying message every single year is ‘Jesus is absolutely crazy about you, there’s a plan and a purpose for your life, and there’s hope.’ The vast majority of the kids that come to camp have very little or no hope left by the time they’re mid – to late-teenagers. We’ve had dozens of kids say “I was gonna kill myself. I came to this camp and I understand there’s worth to living life now. I actually have hope for it.”

To see the freedom and breakthrough that comes in the kids during this week of people just pouring into them. They don’t have to protect themselves or worry about themselves. They get to let their guard down and get loved on like crazy, its one of the most incredible things. Some of these kids by the time they’re 14 or 15 have lost more immediate family members than I can ever imagine. I don’t think I even had any pass away by the time I was that age. I didn’t understand death anywhere close to the extent that these kids do. Between death, accidents, injuries, suicide, alcoholism, and depression; these kids that are coming from the villages don’t ever get a week during the year where they can let their guard down. A week where they can be loved on, be kids, have fun, be goofy, and learn and see.

To get to create an environment where they can do that and be a part of bringing the Holy Spirit and being a part of expressing the Father’s heart to them is one of the greatest honors. Its probably my favorite thing about being out here.

What does your day-to-day as an ER nurse look like?

I have the pleasure of getting to work in the Emergency Department which was my dream job going into nursing school and coming out of it. I’ve always loved emergency medicine. I love the fast paced environment, I love the chaos of it.

The biggest attraction to emergency medicine has always been the ability to be the calm in the storm. For one reason or another its something that I can confidently say the Lord has gifted me with. I love getting to carry that into the most chaotic, most traumatic, and most desperate times in other people’s lives.

Whether thats getting to do CPR on a 6 month old baby that’s dying and their mom’s screaming bloody murder in the background begging God to save her baby, or getting to pray with this incredible Yupik elder that just found out he had cancer, or getting to work with a 16 year old kid thats hospitalized because they tried to hang themselves, the calm in the storm expresses itself in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it expresses itself outright where I get to have conversations about Jesus and I get to sit down and pray with my patients. Sometimes its just using technical skill and doing what needs to be done to save people’s lives or to help people. Its all over the place.

Its my favorite part of the job and that’s the thing that keeps me going back to it. There will be days when its mundane and crazy where you’ll dealing with a bunch of puking kids, people with stubbed toes, and people coming in because they’re too drunk. Those are the days that wear you out and you get really tired and it all feels mundane. But then there’s the really rewarding days where you get to help people and its a really quick fix. There’s also the most incredibly traumatic days when patients die and there’s nothing you can do about it, even if you felt like you could for one reason or another. Those are absolutely the hardest days.

In the 3 years that I’ve been doing this, as my first job out of nursing school, I can’t tell you how many times I have thought about quitting just because of the amount of burn out that comes with the job from a high amount of mental and emotional trauma and draining. I come to these points where I’d come home and just cry and I’m thinking ‘this sucks so bad.’ They are so hard sometimes on some days but it is so worth it. At the end of the day, on any day, to get the honor or getting to be in dead-center of people’s hardest and darkest moments. Not only to get to be in it with them but to get to bring Jesus into it. Whether thats just Him being in me while I’m working or getting to outwardly speak about it and pray about it is [amazing].

There’s something about nursing that only nurses get to experience. Its really hard to explain. You really have this all-access pass into the most vulnerable time in people’s lives. Its one of the most honoring and humbling things about getting to be a nurse, especially in the emergency department. Its something I wouldn’t trade for anything.

How do you fill yourself up when you’re constantly around trauma?

When I moved to Bethel, I had previously gone through YWAM and nursing school and I felt pretty mature with my walk with the Lord. I felt pretty solid and stable moving up here. I felt confident and I knew where I stood with the Lord and at a place where I couldn’t be shaken. After about 6 months of being here between work, some of the harder parts of the spiritual atmosphere and the burn out that comes along with those things, and a handful of other situations, I was lower than I think I’ve ever been since walking with Jesus. It was to the point where I’m laying on my kitchen floor crying every day and my room mate has to pull me up and drag me outside just to get up and do something.

I knew Christ, I knew who I was and I knew that He’s good and I couldn’t handle it. I did not know how to be sustained. I did not know how to experience a depression. Even though I had fought with depression growing up it was a type that I hadn’t seen or felt since I had been walking with the Lord. Basically I came to the spot of “okay Jesus I need to know how to be sustained here because this isn’t gonna work otherwise.” And I can’t say a specific thing like “yeah I go do this when I need to let of some steam.” There’s a handful of things of course [to do] to stay filled up, to be able to let off stress. But ultimately its coming back to Him.

In the last 3 1/2 years one of the biggest things I’ve learned and its come to my attention over and over is how incredibly weak I am. And how sweet of a thing that is. And how okay of a thing that is. I’ve come to the end of myself so many times because of what I see and because of what I do and what’s around me. I realized no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I read my Word, no matter how hard I want to fix it or get better or to ‘spend time in the Presence and it’ll all be better.’ There’s absolutely nothing I can do to sustain myself. I came to this place of complete and utter desperation and crying out for things that I read in the bible, things I hear in church on Sunday, things that I hear and sing about in worship songs, just begging the Father to do them in me because I can’t do this on my own.

I had to come to this place of TOTAL surrender to my weakness and to my brokenness. I am sure that it  will continue to be an ongoing and growing experience. I hope it does because I never want to think that I can sustain myself and be okay.

But that was a pretty rude awakening I had when I got here. There are still highs and lows of course. There are still days when I’m better at that and others that I feel more distant from God than I do on other days. But that is what I come back to every single time. And every single time He fixes it. His grace is sufficient like he promises. I think tangibly I’ve experienced that in a way here more than I have before. It is probably because I realized how much weaker I am than before. Thats one of the sweetest things I’ve learned since I’ve been here.

I guess on a lighter note, as far as stress management goes, I really like shooting stuff. I really like driving my four wheeler. I really like jumping in the river when its freezing cold, and running out into the middle of the tundra. I do anything I can like that, that’s crazy and a good stress release and healthy.

I also have an incredible community here. In such an isolated area, its actually pretty rare. Even people that I work with at the hospital who have been here for a decade are like “how do you come here and have so many friends? How do you have such a community?”

I have this family here of believers, I call it my Bethel family. A lot of us go to the same church, some of us go to other churches. A lot of us are involved in similar ministries that overlap and also different ministries. We have Sunday night dinners. We all get together, we have different jobs, different work [schedules], all these different places and shoes that we’re in but we all come together Sunday nights. We pray together, eat together, we talk and hang out, and worship. It’s one of the sweetest support systems and communities that I’ve ever gotten to be a part of. It is a HUGE source of sustenance for me here.

Do any of your ministries have any current needs?

Yeah we have a few actually. Camp H.O.P.E. the summer camp that I work for, we are fully non-profit. There are always needs. For kids that are coming we charge about $40 a kid, it actually costs about $150-$200 per kid as far as food and fuel to get them there. We charge these kids $40 but no one is turned away if they can’t pay. If I had to estimate I would say about 1/3 to 1/2 of the kids pay and about 2/3 to 1/2 don’t pay anything at all or pay what they can.

So we are always fundraising for scholarships for kids to come to camp and as long as we have kids to come to camp, that will always be a need. There’s the financial support and then there’s extra sleeping bags, extra shoes because a lot of kids don’t come to camp with more than one pair of shoes and by the first day they are soaked and ruined because we’re on the tundra. Food, dry goods, fuel are all needs. We just got a sound system donated which was a huge answer to prayer. But those others are our biggest needs for the camp.

**To donate or contact someone about donating please visit Camp H.O.P.E’s website

For Coffee House we are taking a break for the summer and then fundraising quite a bit. One of our main attractions at Coffee House is that we serve free coffee and Italian sodas. Our coffee machine was a commercial espresso machine that I would say is probably about 25 years old and its falling apart at the hinges. We are going to be trying to raise money for a new espresso machine so we’ll see how well that goes.

**To donate towards Coffee House you can find Justine on Facebook and send her a message to find out the best way to do that.

Who are women that inspire you?

One of the camp directors, her name is Rachelle White, we (me and my room mates) call her Mama Shell. She’s our Bethel mom. She actually went through the same nursing program that I went through and her and her husband were the ones that hosted us when we came out for clinicals. She’s also from Washington and they moved out here right after nursing school about 14 years ago now and they’ve been out here doing it since.

They built this camp from the ground up. She’s a nurse at the hospital and serving in the community every where possible. They left EVERYTHING behind in Washington and brought their two little kids up here. They started from scratch with pretty much no money because she came up here, saw the community, saw the needs and knew that no matter what the cost, this was where the Lord was asking her and her husband Bob to pour themselves into. She’s the first one that comes to mind because its the most pertinent. I would say I am very much following along in her footsteps.

And then, a mutual friend of ours, Bethany Murphy. She’s a super hero in my mind. She just does it all and makes it look like its the easiest thing in the world. She is one of the strongest, most incredible women I know, raising a baseball team pretty much. She’s just this incredible woman in ministry, an incredible mentor, incredible friend, incredible mom, and incredible wife. Aside from my parents, she’s probably taught me more about marriage than any other woman has just simply through example and letting me be a part of their family. I very much so look up to her in that way, especially everything that they’ve been through and the way that she’s navigated it and brought the Lord into it.

 

Thank you for reading and we’ll see you next month for July’s Inspirational Woman!

 

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