Will answers the call

Life is a journey.
No matter where one’s trip begins, even a small village in western Ohio, it can lead anywhere.
Scott Will’s journey has seen him do many different things and visit a variety of places since he graduated from Fort Recovery High School in 1997.
He’s been a student in Pennsylvania and a camp counselor in Washington. He’s worked at Starbuck’s and as a junior high and high school track and cross country coach. And he’s practiced as a physician in places ranging from Johns Hopkins, one of the most prestigious hospitals in the world, in Maryland, to an American Indian reservation in South Dakota.
But it wasn’t until he found himself in the middle of a deadly Ebola outbreak that he discovered his life’s calling — to serve as a missionary in Africa.

Committing to God
God has always played an important role in Will’s life.
He was raised in a Catholic family in Fort Recovery, the fourth of Dave and Norma Will’s five children. He was active in the church in high school, and also volunteered as a teacher for Sunday School.
It was in college, though, that faith took a more prominent role in his life.
A cross country runner at Wright State University — he was a member of Fort Recovery’s 1996 state championship team — Will got involved with Athletes In Action, an international program that seeks to build spiritual movements through sports. He also joined a Bible study group.During his junior year he started meeting for an hour each week with Scott Shepherd, who became his mentor through Athletes in Action. Will says Shepherd helped him think through things, challenged him, listened to him, encouraged him, and pointed him “toward the truth of the Bible.”
Through that mentoring, Scott’s outlook on the world changed.
“I really discovered what it meant to have a personal relationship with Jesus, and to really give my life over to Jesus. That is when I committed my life to God,” said Will in a Nov. 13 phone interview from Sudan. “And that radically changed my life when that happened.
“Because of that, my life has totally taken a different direction than I ever would have imagined, but better than I ever could have planned.”

The path to Uganda
Will also spent time working at the Sammamish Bible Camp Association (SAMBICA) children’s camp in Washington during college — he picked up his nickname “Yogger”, a play on the word “jogger”, while he was there — and after he graduated from Wright State he returned as an assistant director. From there he worked some odd jobs, including at Starbuck’s, before he got a phone call.
“One of my friends called and said, ‘Hey, I’m moving to Georgia. What are you doing? Do you want to go to Georgia?’” said Will. “So I moved down to Georgia.”
He worked at a pediatric rehabilitation center in Georgia, and then returned to school at Arcadia University in Pennsylvania. As part of his graduate work — he was in a combined program in which he earned master’s degrees in Public Health and Medical Science and became a licensed physician’s assistant — he spent his last year doing clinicals. That process consisted of working at different hospitals for spans of four to eight weeks.
Will, who says he always had an interest in Africa although he’s not sure exactly why, asked if he could spend one of those sessions in Africa. His idea was approved, but he had to make all of the arrangements on his own.
So he researched hundreds of different organizations and found World Harvest Mission, a nondenominational, faith-based foreign mission agency. The organization agreed to have him go to Africa.
“I had the opportunity to visit Uganda for two months and I fell in love with it,” said Will. “It was great. … I fell in love with the country. I fell in love with the people.”

Ebola outbreak
Upon returning from his first trip to Uganda, Will began working in the emergency department at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
For most in the medical field, it would be a dream job. After all, U.S. News and World Report ranked the facility among the top 15 in all 16 specialties it surveyed, and No. 1 in five of them.
But Will felt a call.
There was a need for help in Uganda, and when asked by WHM to make another trip, he quickly agreed. He returned to central Africa in the fall of 2007, having no idea of the situation in which he would soon find himself.
Will was working at a local hospital in a rural area of Uganda near The Democratic Republic of the Congo when people living about a half-hour away began getting sick, some dying, without explanation. The Ugandan Ministry of Health even got involved, but declared the problem was not a hemorrhagic fever.
At the time there were only three doctors for 250,000 people living in the district. One of them, Jonah Kule, with whom Will worked regularly, was heading out on his motorcycle to investigate the disease. Will asked if he could go along.
Kule agreed to the help, but, “He said, ‘You need to understand that we, as health care workers, sometimes we have to risk our lives. We don’t know what this is … It could be something bad,’” Will remembered.
As it turned out, health officials wanted to have a meeting before sending Kule to investigate. That day’s trip was canceled.
“He ended up going the next day, and I had a meeting, so I didn’t go,” Will said. “But many of the patients he saw that day ended up dying from the disease. And doctor Jonah, he … died as well.”
A sample was later sent to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, and it was determined that the deadly disease was a previously unseen strain of Ebola — a severe hemorrhagic fever first recognized in the Congo (then Zaire) in 1976. The disease is characterized by fever, head and muscle aches, violent diarrhea and vomiting and internal and external bleeding. Within a few days, emergency workers from the CDC, Red Cross, World Health Organization and other groups were in Uganda in an effort to help control the epidemic.

Crazy and chaotic
All of the non-medical personnel on Will’s team, everyone except for himself and Drs. Scott and Jennifer Myhre, were evacuated from the country.
It was a trying time. Because the strain was new, no one knew how deadly it might be. And, with Ebola, it can take up to 21 days after infection to show symptoms, so it was possible that Will and his fellow health workers had already been compromised.
It didn’t stop them.
“It’s very sobering,” said Scott Myhre, saying that at one point after the outbreak he thought he was starting to get ill. “I thought that was it, the beginning of the end. It was very agonizing and frightening.
“Scott Will (was) really very courageous in that situation. … The Uganda hospital staff, everybody was just totally freaked out. They stayed home. But Scott just kept plugging away.
“He’s a great guy. We love him a lot.”
Will also agreed to treat either Scott or Jennifer Myhre if one of them became ill, in an effort to assure that one of the parents would stay alive for their children. Ebola is spread through direct contact and is not airborne. (None of them contracted the disease, and after 21 days in quarantine Jennifer Myhre left the Sudan to be with her children in Atlanta.)
Although he had committed to stay in Uganda for just two months, he chose to remain in the country and help with the outbreak.
He took over the pediatric ward of the hospital from Jennifer Myhre, and also helped Scott Myhre with surgeries.
He said the situation was more stressful for his family than himself, recalling a tearful phone call from his sister.
She asked what would happen if he got sick — the disease is spread through contact with the infected — and all he could say was that he hoped he didn’t.
“I literally did not know if I was going to live or die,” Will said.
“I didn’t know if I was infected, because some of the patients I had seen before we knew it was Ebola ended up dying. The doctor that I worked with almost every day … he died. It was just a really crazy, intense time.
“But I felt complete confidence that I was exactly where I was supposed to be at exactly the right time, live or die. I was in the hands of God, and I had complete comfort in that.”
Of the 149 confirmed cases of Ebloa-Bundibugyo, 37 people (25 percent) died, according to the CDC.
Another outbreak of a different strain of Ebola in the Congo killed more than 70 percent of those infected that same year.
Choosing Sudan
Will said his experience during the Ebola outbreak, the death of many patients and co-workers, made him re-evaluate his life again.
“Through that time, God really, really challenged me to think about long-term missions,” said Will. “What was stopping me from doing long-term mission work?”
One of the things on that list was his college loans he wanted to pay off. And, of course, there were the people he would miss — his family and friends — and the luxuries he enjoys — coffee shops and bookstores.
But he decided he didn’t need material things to be happy, and that long-term mission work in Africa was his calling.He said he again felt “challenged’ by God to look for not where he most wanted to go, but where he could do the most good.
Near the end of what became a six-month stay in central Africa, Will had the opportunity to visit Sudan.
“It became pretty evident that I could probably really be of some help here in Sudan,” Will said. “So I decided, ‘I’ll go to Sudan.’”

Ever present
Will credits a lot of people with helping him reach this stage of his life and mold him into the man he has become.
Among them are his parents, Shepherd, former FRHS cross country coach Carl Moeller, and Fort Recovery teachers Diane McClung and Robyn Armstrong.
When asked about Will, the first words out of McClung’s mouth were, “He is my hero.”
“Scott Will is an amazing young man,” added McClung, who teaches language arts and telecommunications classes at Fort Recovery high and middle schools. “He blesses everyone he meets.  … Every time I talk to him or read his blogs, I am amazed at his faith and dedication. He has a quiet strength. He changes lives.”
While in high school, Will started a group called “RAK” — Random Acts of Kindness — to perform small favors for people. His mother, Norma, said she was not surprised at her son’s career choice, saying that she always knew he would be involved in service to others.
It seems that his classmates had a good idea that he was capable of big things as well. Not only was he the prom king and salutatorian of his class, he was also voted best personality, friendliest, most spirited, most energetic and most likely to succeed.
“He was always very involved, and that didn’t quit when he went to college,” said Armstrong, who taught Will for three years in high school in chemistry and physics. “That’s kind of what we see now. That’s why he’s doing what he’s doing now.
“He puts himself in harm’s way on purpose. To me, that’s the definition of a hero. What he does, I could never do.”
Will’s family and friends can keep track of him by way of his blog, “Life is a Journey,” at www.yoggerinuganda.blogspot.com. He also hopes people will get involved.
And although he has to raise all of his own funds to support his time in Africa, his number one request has nothing to do with money. It has nothing to do with care packages or material goods, medicine or supplies.
Both of those things are nice and welcome, but, to start, he has something else in mind.
“The biggest thing is prayer,” Will said, adding that he thinks it is important for people to educate themselves by reading about what is going on in the world beyond the borders of their city, state and country. “By far, the biggest thing that has sustained and supported me is prayer. …  During the Ebola outbreak, there were literally people praying all around the world for us. I got e-mails every day from people I have never even met, from all over the world, who were praying for us. I honestly believed that is how I survived …”

Africa, here I come
Will returned to the United States in March of 2008, secure that he had found his calling.
He was making a five-year commitment to missionary work in Sudan, which is north of Uganda, south of Egypt and borders nine countries in all as well as the Red Sea to the east. And, continuing to be part of World Harvest Mission, he had to raise all of his own support.
Will spent the next year-and-a-half working full-time for a health care company as he raised money for his missionary efforts. That job took him to a Lakota Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, a Navajo Hospital in New Mexico and a community health center in Washington that caters to the uninsured.
After raising enough money, he headed to Mundri, West Equatoria — it is in southern Sudan, about 80 miles from the Congo border, 120 miles from Uganda and 200 miles from the equator — to begin his five-year commitment in September of 2009.
For the last year-and-a-half, Will has lived in an 8-foot-by-10-foot African hut with a grass roof. He has no running water, uses an outhouse and bathes outdoors. (He has a spigot for water about 200 meters away.) But he does have a concrete floor, which he calls a luxury, as well as a small, solar light.
“It’s my home,” said Will. “I like it.”
During the dry season, Will said, it becomes unbearably hot and the African huts feel like ovens. He said it is difficult to be inside from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., and that even when it cools slightly at night some people just throw their mattresses on the ground outside and sleep.
Daily chores, such as cooking, cleaning and fetching water, make life physically demanding for the Sudanese people. But life also has a slower pace than Americans are used to — people generally don’t wear watches — and visiting with friends, Will said, is a huge part of the culture.
“People here are so relational,” he added. “You stop to greet everybody. You stop to talk to your neighbors. People love to laugh.
“And despite what little material wealth they have, people somehow enjoy it despite that. … They love to dance. They love to sing. They love to laugh — especially at me, but that’s OK. …
“It’s just such a different culture. … You often will just spend hours sitting with people.
“And I love that. I love the relationships. I love talking to people. I love encouraging people. So for me to be able to do that in this context has really just been amazing and a wonderful gift for me.”

No typical day
Upon arriving in Sudan, Will spent eight to 10 hours every day, sitting and talking with people, notebook in hand, in an effort to learn the languages. The local tribal language is “Maru” and the language for all of southern Sudan is a dialect of Arabic.
“I feel like if I don’t speak their language, care is always compromised,” said Will, who works three days a week at a small local health center that has not received any new drugs since March of 2009. “Even when I worked in the United States I felt that was true. For me, coming here, I really, really wanted to learn the language.”
Will also teaches a class about community health at a small — 16 students — local theological college. And beyond that, he spends a lot of time with the Sudanese people.
He talks, visits, and encourages. He works a lot with the youth. And he helped start a local volleyball program that now has five nets and on some days more than 100 people playing, even though soccer remains far and away the most popular sport.
“My whole life is so intertwined here that everything I do is kind of work, and all my work is kind of my life,” Will said. “I love what I do, and I’m thankful to be able to do what I do. So I usually leave very early in the morning and I get home late at night, and it’s great.”

Continuing his work
Will spends a lot of his time in Sudan working with young men, and one detail stands out to him.
“Of all the friends that I have here, and I have a lot of friends now, because I spend a lot of time in the community … I don’t think I have a single friend who has a mother and a father that is living,” he said. “People here have been devastated by war. So most of their parents, most of their fathers especially, have died in war or of some kind of disease.”
Sudan has experienced two civil wars, the second of which lasted from 1989 through 2005, since gaining independence from Egypt and the United Kingdom in 1956.
Will said he feels “very safe” where he is, and there is a strong military presence. He hears soldiers outside doing their morning exercises every day at 5:30 a.m.
But he also always has an evacuation Plan A, B, C and D if he ever needs to get out of the country quickly.
A new constitution was adopted in 2005, with an agreement that the south would be granted limited autonomy for five years after which they would hold a referendum on independence.
With that referendum looming on Jan. 9, there is fear that the country could be plunged into civil war again. For his own safety, Will plans to leave Sudan for Uganda at the time of the referendum, but he hopes to return quickly.
If the political situation does not allow him to do so, he will remain in Uganda or go somewhere else in Africa.
“I’m optimistic that everything will go well,” he said. “This is my career choice. This is my life now.
“I have to commit for five years at a time, but for me it’s indefinite. … I hope to be here for many, many years.
“And I have no regrets. I’m very happy and grateful to be doing what I’m doing.”[[In-content Ad]]