LDS volunteers give comfort on relief ship

Pleasant Grove's Sheryl Flanary is home now, but she still thinks of "Mich," the undersized Haitian boy abandoned at age 10 and plagued with brittle, crooked legs after prolonged bouts with rickets.

Having learned some English after being taken in by a missionary in Haiti, Mich enjoyed celebrity status on the USNS Comfort, the full-service U.S. Navy hospital ship that carried Flanary and 650 other medical personnel on "Continuing Promise 2009" — a four-month, seven-nation humanitarian mission still winding its way through the Caribbean and Central America and into South America.

Everyone enjoyed chatting with Mich, but Flanary, a registered nurse, relished a few special moments of her own with a boy not much bigger than your average 5-year-old.

First there was an on-deck dance the night before Mich's surgery to straighten his legs, then the "cool miracle" of finding just the right part squirreled away in a remote cabinet to secure the straightening, There also was her assignment as Mich's recovery nurse, and finally the chance a couple days later to hold him on her lap and offer to sing or read a story.

"He said, 'Will you just cuddle me?' " Flanary said. "Oh, I just lost it then."

That was payment enough for Flanary — that and the beaming grins, the tears of joy and the sobs of post-procedure gratitude — for spending all of April and half of May in Haiti and the Dominican Republic as one of the 40 volunteers provided to the Comfort on a rotating basis by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Helping to both supply and staff the ship, the LDS Church initially furnished nearly 250 pallets of humanitarian relief, ranging from medicines and vitamins to hygiene, first-aid and newborn supplies.

Then, only a couple of weeks before the early April departure, the Navy asked if the LDS Church could supply a rotation of a third of the civilian volunteers — a task LDS volunteer medical coordinator Susan Puls said was much easier than expected.

Individuals such as Flanary and registered nurse Diane Muir of Draper scrambled to clear calendars and coordinate with family, employers and co-workers to be available to serve.

"They talk about the humanitarian bug and how it bites you," said Muir, whose May-long tour included Antigua, Panama and Colombia. "You want to go back; you see how much of an impact you have on people — not just when you intervene medically or surgically, but you know you've touched their lives even by just talking to them."