Love in Action: Simply Teresa

A mother of 4, a nurse, a missionary, and the medical director for Children’s Cup in Africa. Compassionate, generous, loving, fun, intelligent, strong, humble, courageous. So many ways to attempt to describe a woman who seems to be all things to everyone she meets.

Teresa Rehmeyer lived a comfortable, and what most would call successful, life in Louisiana with her husband and 4 children. Contentment would seem obvious but not for Teresa and her family.
They knew there was more and in 2005 they made the change of a lifetime. Teresa and her husband moved their family to Swaziland in the south eastern part of Africa to serve orphaned and vulnerable children.

Teresa now runs a clinic, providing medical care to the 4000 children currently involved in Children’s Cup Care Points throughout Swaziland and Mozambique. Teresa cares for children with everything from fevers to cuts and wounds to complications of HIV/AIDS to severe physical and sexual abuse. She does home visits in the poverty stricken areas where the children live. She visits the children when they are hospitalized to follow their care, providing them with a familiar face, support, and love in the dirty and frightening institutions.

Abuse, violence, disease, neglect, and death are rampant here. Teresa values and loves the children when their own families, their own communities, and their own society do not. The children look to her to relieve their pain and suffering. The children look to her for healing and for hope. She is their light in a dark world and she always provides.