Mari Kay Evans-Smith is the recipient of the 2024 Everence National Journey Award. For more than 28 years, the pediatrician from Vancouver, Washington, has participated in 23 international medical trips to 11 different countries.
During a mission trip to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, 19-year-old Mari Kay Evans- Smith visited a tuberculosis hospital for children and discovered her life’s mission – to provide free medical care to underserved populations around the world.
“I felt a calling that this was something that I needed to do,” Mari Kay said of that moment in the early 1980s. As she looked around at the hospitalized children, she felt God’s presence and knew: “[Medical missions] were going to be part of my story,” she said.
Though she was only a teenager at the time, Mari Kay was right.
Today, more than 40 years later, she serves as a pediatrician at Pediatric Associates of the Northwest in Portland, Oregon, and has taken part in 23 international medical trips to 11 different countries.
In recognition of her commitment and calling, Mari Kay was honored with the 2024 Everence National Journey Award. The award, which is presented annually, recognizes individuals of faith who use their gifts to make a positive impact on others and the world.
Colin Saxton, D.Min., CGPA, Stewardship Theologian at Everence, said Mari Kay is exceedingly deserving of the award.
“Mari Kay has demonstrated both her compassion and care through her professional work as a physician, but also through her extensive volunteering and medical missions,” Colin said. “She embodies the values of generosity and stewardship in profound ways.”
Mari Kay feels compelled to use her expertise to provide medical care to those in vulnerable and historically under-supported communities.
“I really believe that every human being deserves high quality health care, and I have an opportunity and the skills to bring that to people in countries who don’t have access,” she said.
Her passion for this work led her to formalize her mission efforts by establishing a nonprofit called Friends International Medical Teams.
The organization, which establishes free clinics in partnership with Friends churches both in the United States and abroad, was “born out of the Quaker value of seeing ‘that of God’ in everyone and honoring every person’s right to quality medical care,” said Mari Kay.
WORK IN ACTION
In October 2024, Friends International Medical Teams embarked on a medical mission trip to the Dominican Republic, traveling throughout the country to set up free clinics in partnership with a local organization for two orphanages, a community of Haitian migrants and an economically challenged community.
It was Mari Kay’s first visit to the Dominican Republic. She has previously served communities in Kenya, Bolivia, India, Malawi, Mexico, Haiti, El Salvador, Peru, Turkey and Gambia.
Mari Kay examines a patient in Kenya, 2019.
Quakers typically participate in planning the mission trips for Friends International Medical Teams, with volunteers often hosted by local Friends churches, Mari Kay explained.
During their time in the Dominican Republic, Mari Kay and her team of approximately 25 volunteers worked with local medical professionals and translators to serve between 800 and 1,000 individuals, treating around 200 patients each day over the course of four days.
After years of planning and leading these medical mission trips, Mari Kay doesn’t get overwhelmed by the vast number of patients her team sees daily.
The teams set up a “station-based flow,” allowing patients to move from provider to provider and receive the medical attention they need for various health concerns. Services offered include dental care, eye exams, blood tests, physical exams, dietary advice, mental health assessments, prescription medication and more.
In her more than 28 years of experience on medical mission trips, Mari Kay has encountered patients dealing with a variety of injuries, diseases and personal struggles. She has treated a boy with a deeply infected wound from an agricultural work-related injury he sustained, an infant suffering from scabies, and a mother struggling to cope while raising a family on her own.
While she isn’t always able to cure her patients’ problems, Mari Kay notes, “I can reflectively listen, offer loving acceptance, occasionally give some medicines, and help empower them to seek wellness and healing.” This sentiment was shared in a reflection for her home congregation, Camas (Wash.) Friends Church.
MAKING AN IMPACT
At its core, love is what motivates Mari Kay in her mission work.
“If we’re called to love others, we have to see them as equals,” she emphasized.
This is what inspires Mari Kay to take her medical knowledge and skills abroad – and it’s what motivates her to offer scholarships for Friends International Medical Teams volunteers with their travel expenses.
Mari Kay with team leaders Mam Kumba Ndow Sise (left) and Foday Kabba (center), Gambia, 2022.
“If I’m holding the belief that every human being is equal and should have the same opportunities and access to health care, I think the people who join the team should each have an opportunity to serve and the financial aspect of it shouldn’t be a barrier,” Mari Kay said.
The volunteer groups typically include a diverse range of ages, from high school students to retirees. When her son and daughter were teenagers, they each joined Mari Kay on trips to Haiti. And her husband, Eric, joined her on the 2024 Dominican Republic trip.
For many who volunteer, the trips have been profoundly transformative. Nichole Rogovoy, a long-time patient of Mari Kay, often heard stories about the mission trips during her visits to Pediatric Associates of the Northwest. One day, at an appointment, Nichole, then 17, wistfully remarked that she’d love to volunteer on a trip one day.
Mari Kay replied, “Why don’t you join us?”
So Nichole joined Friends International Medical Teams on a trip to Haiti, where she served as a medical scribe. And like Mari Kay, Nichole’s experience in Haiti as a young adult motivated her to pursue a career in medicine, with the hope of providing quality health care to patients in the United States and abroad.
Today, Nichole is a second-year internal medicine resident at Dartmouth- Hitchcock Medical Center. Since her initial trip to Haiti, she has participated in two additional medical mission trips to Kenya – one after completing her bachelor’s degree, and another after graduating medical school. She plans to continue to serve on medical mission trips whenever she can.
“I don’t see a version of my career that doesn’t have mission trips or teaching in the nations I’ve been to as a key part of it,” Nichole said.
She credits her discovery of her career calling to Mari Kay’s mentorship, adding that she’s grateful for the lasting impact Mari Kay has had as both a mentor and a friend.
“Mari Kay has cultivated space for others to embrace and develop their stewardship and generosity through the impactful trips she organizes,” said Colin.
Even after more than two decades of mission work, Mari Kay remains deeply moved by the relationships formed and the care offered during the week-long trips.
“I am grateful for a lifetime of opportunities to learn from other cultures… to develop beautiful connections of friendship through service, and to experience challenges that have enriched my faith journey and understanding of our God who is Love,” Mari Kay wrote in a reflection of Friends International Medical Teams’ previous trip to Gambia.