Margaret Smith Coles

SMITH, COLES, LARSON

Posted By: Colleen Smith (email)
Date: 3/21/2007 at 13:15:09

From an article by Muriel Larson, "Widow Chooses Exciting Life": After her mate of many years dies, most women remain settled among their friends and loved ones. But former park commissioner Margaret Coles decided to make her life count by serving others less fortunate with her special skills and experience as a medical technician. She was invited by the Christian Medical Society on a 2-week medical mission tour to Honduras where they urgently needed a technologist who could set up laboratories without the help of a computer. "Few technologists today can do that, but because I had been in that field for so long, I could." Margaret ran tests and helped the doctors diagnose ailments. seeking help.

The medical team found an abandoned clinic with lab equipment in one village. On her return to the States, Margaret obtained the parts, tools and manuals necessary to repair the equipment in that laboratory. Then she and 3 others returned to Honduras in December. "During the 3 months I was there," she says, "I repaired the laboratory, and trained 3 national girls to use the equipment. A Moravian missionary doctor who had served there several years before is now back using that lab with the help of those 3 girls." Margaret made trips with CMS teams to the Dominican Republic and Honduras during the next several years. Then she sailed with a group called Project Partners with Christ on a Christian medical ship bound for Guatemala. She set up a laboratory on the "Sea Angel" and trained 2 nurses in its use. During a tour of the villages around a large inland lake in Guatemala, Margaret assayed what needed to be done to restore or set up laboratories for clinics in various places. In between making such short-term mission trips to Central America.

reference:   excerpt from "Widow Chooses Exciting Life"