2015 Cedarville alumna Rachel Hartley was a preoperative nurse in a Lynchburg, Virginia, hospital at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. By mid-April, she was working as a night shift ICU nurse at Brooklyn Langone Hospital, serving exclusively COVID patients. 

Rachel and her husband, Taylor, have organized their lives so they can respond quickly to opportunities the Lord provides for them to serve. Like good sailors, they are prepared to tack as the winds change. As her work hours in Lynchburg reduced, calls for ICU nurses in NYC increased, and she and Taylor knew how the Lord was leading. 

They sailed their boat, Turning Points, 30 hours from the Chesapeake Bay to Brooklyn. Once on site, Rachel was overwhelmed by the impact of COVID on the Big Apple. It felled young and old alike, and the tractor-trailers converted into makeshift morgues were a sobering reminder each day of the power of this healthcare tsunami. 

“It just gives me thankfulness to the Lord for my personal health,” she said, “for the ability to be here and to help out, and to use the skills and the training the Lord had equipped me with. It was like, ‘Wow, they need help.’ We hadn’t seen anything like this.”