When Juli Boit landed in Kenya for a short-term humanitarian mission 17 years ago, she has no idea this place would capture her heart and change everything about her life.
Boit, a 25-year-old nurse practitioner at the time, decided to make the move from Los Angeles to a small village in Kenya to be a part of an HIV program.
She was so drawn to the stories and people that she met that she eventually partnered with the Kenyan community to create a locally sourced solution to the problems she was observing, including a lack of adequate hospice care and rehabilitation for adults and children suffering from HIV.
That locally sourced solution is Living Room International, a community-led non-profit health and care centre providing hospice and palliative care services to adults and children in Western Kenya
Upon founding Living Room International, her life was again upended when a three-pound premature newborn is brought to the center. Juli and her husband, Titus, took him in and adopted him with the determination to help him survive, only to later learn that the baby and his two siblings have life-threatening sickle cell disease.
The pair travelled 10,000 miles from their home in Kenya back to the United States in search of life-saving medical care and are happy to report that the kids are doing well.
Juli is now sharing her amazing story in her book, Beyond the Skies.
Today on Connections, Juli shares what it's like for parents of children going through medical treatment and the challenges of adoption while delivering an incredible tale of courage and love.