Susan Bruns’ life has led her into lots of places and situations.

The Army took Susan away from her native Maryland to Texas, Germany, Kentucky and Hawaii. A calling to go into missionary work led her and her husband to numerous mission trips to Haiti and to Clear Creek Baptist Bible College in Pineville, where they studied missions and evangelism.

And a desire to become a nurse led her to the offices of Bell-Whitley Community Action Agency (BWCAA) in Pineville, where the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) services helped her make the latest leg of her life’s journey.

“I really just think that Bell-Whitley made it possible, second to the Lord, in getting me through the nursing program,” said Susan, 34, who recently moved to Haiti to use her nursing skills to help the poor there.

At BWCAA, WIA Career Advisor Pam Wilson was able to help Susan access WIA financial services and provided personal support and encouragement that helped Susan meet the challenge of becoming a nurse while working part time, studying to be a missionary, and being a wife and mother of four.

BWCAA delivers WIA programs in Bell County under contract with Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP). The BWCAA office in Pineville is also a JobSight one-stop workforce center, where people can get access to a dozen government workforce programs in one location. The JobSight network is a collaborative partnership of workforce and training agencies administered by EKCEP in 23 eastern Kentucky counties.

Susan met her husband while they were serving in the Army at Fort Hood, Texas. Since they married in 1994, the couple has been stationed in various places around the world. While stationed in Hawaii, a mission conference at a church that they attended drastically changed the direction of their lives.

“After the mission conference we felt secure that was what the Lord was calling us to do. We went before the church and surrendered to full-time ministry,” she said.

Since the conference, Susan and her husband participated in a variety of mission activities, notably traveling to Haiti three times to help and minister to the starving and the poor. Susan worked in a burn clinic during her trips there.

Susan said being in such a poor country is “an eye-opener.”

“The need there is tremendous. But also the power of God working there is tremendous. You can see that everywhere you go if you’re open to that,” she said.

The family moved from Hopkinsville to Pineville in 2005 to allow Susan’s husband to work on a bachelor’s degree in missions and evangelism at Clear Creek Baptist Bible College. After a semester, Susan decided she too wanted to pursue higher education—an associate degree in missions and evangelism from Clear Creek and a nursing degree from Southeast Community and Technical College.

At a pre-application conference for nursing students she learned about the WIA programs and decided to go to the Pineville office of BWCAA and sign up. She was glad she had, because she found out that WIA could help her buy things like uniforms and equipment, pay for gas and meals, and provide other assistance with college expenses.

WIA funding and the encouragement she got from Wilson were big factors in helping her deal with the heavy load she took on when nursing school began in the fall of 2006.

“There were times when I was taking 22 to 23 credit hours a semester and being a wife and mother of four and it was very stressful,” Susan said.

The financial assistance WIA provided allowed her to cut back on the hours she had been working part time to help support her family,

Despite getting limited sleep, Susan said she found studying nursing “very exciting” and loved learning about medicine and interacting with patients during her clinical placements at local hospitals.

Graduating in May 2008 was both a relief and the start of a fresh new chapter. Susan passed her nursing board exam and found a job at Middlesboro Nursing and Rehabilitation, a Middlesboro nursing home.

“I love patient care. I love getting to know the patients,” she said.

Susan said she’s very thankful for all the support she received, from WIA and others, to get her to this point.

“Things just really fell together nicely. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to go really,” she said.

Susan and her husband recently raised the money they needed to become full-time missionaries in Haiti.

Susan said she thinks the nursing skills she has learned will be invaluable in helping poor people there. She would especially like to help the people there practice better preventative medicine and sanitation.

Sanitation is so poor there that many people have worms. Infections are a major problem because it is difficult to properly clean everyday wounds, she said.

Haiti is a place with a lot of problems. Grinding poverty, lack of food, and civil unrest are things the people there must survive every day. When asked why she wanted to go such a place, Susan’s answer was simple.

“That’s where the Lord has called me to go,” she said.

For more information on Workforce Investment Act services available in Bell County, contact Pam Wilson at 606-337-3044.