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The moment they reached Haitian soil, they knew there was much work to be done. The clay huts and homeless children who wandered the deserted dirt roads were living proof that they had come to the right place. Linda Marceau, a member of the group of missionaries from San Antonio, scanned the area, in the hope of figuring out a way to better this environment.

Linda looked to her group and tried to think of what her first move should be. It was 2011—just one year after the earthquake had devastated this whole environment. She didn’t know whether to start working with the children or start building homes. Even though this group of missionaries had come to Haiti to help build an orphanage, they were in complete shock after seeing the lifestyle once they finally reached their destination. The desolate land was very unfamiliar to them and for a moment, Linda did not know how she was going to be able to make a difference in the lives of these strangers. And although her momentary hesitation about the number and complexities of the needs could have led her to pack her bags and leave, it did the exact opposite.

Linda Marceau is a 54-year-old woman from Houston, Texas, who seems like your typical mom of three children and wife to the same man for 27 years. She is a blonde hair, blue-eyed woman who is able to talk to any kind of person. But once she is able to talk about her passion in life, she is far more unique than one might think. She has a rare ability to not only get to know someone extremely fast, but to know their struggles or their deepest and darkest secrets. People find comfort in her presence.

“I love having relationships with diverse people groups,” Linda explains. 

Linda made her way to the University of Texas at Austin when she was 18 years old to go to college and moved back home to Houston once she married her husband Randy. When his job took him to San Antonio, Linda and their three children were right there with him.

“San Antonio turned out to be a huge blessing for all of us. It ended up being a place that I could call home and I think the rest of my family could agree on that,” Linda explains.

Living in San Antonio was not easy at the beginning. Linda found herself looking for an occupation that would not only fit her lifestyle with three children, but also allow her to interact with people and build relationships.

Through these rocky tribulations that Linda was forced to go through, such as not being able to find a suitable job, she encountered an extraordinary group of people at her church who were exactly who she was looking for. They were the kind of people who had a strong relationship with the Lord and also had a strong desire to go to other parts of the world and help the poverty stricken towns. Because of Linda’s chatty personality and her ability to get to know someone in a small amount of time, she was thrown into a group of women who shared the same passion that Linda was trying to live out. There was an instant connection. They all wanted to serve. They all wanted to help people inside and outside of their community, and they all had a personal relationship with God that paralled that of Linda’s.

The women met up once a week to get to know each other and hear everyone’s testimony in order to get a distinct feel of how the Lord had been present throughout much of their lives. They talked about where they came from and how they all came to be at this certain church. They talked about their families and life in general. There was not much that they did not talk about, which is why the friendship grew so quickly.

“I quickly came to love each of these women,” Linda gushes. “They were just so welcoming and warm and we all shared a desire to want to help others across the world.”

Each of the women was involved in the Alamo Heights United Methodist Church, helping with simple tasks that needed to be completed before every Sunday service. Through preparing the food and helping the pastor set up the stage before services, the women developed a genuine relationship with the pastor.

While Linda started going to the church more and more as the days proceeded, she was also quickly forming relationships with every person who walked in the door. The crowd would flood in every Sunday morning and Linda would buzz through the explosion of faces, saying hello to each person because she knew almost every person in that gigantic room. A few hundred people attended the Sunday service, and the congregation was always upbeat and talkative until the very last second when the first sounds of guitar music signaled the start of the service. The gentleness and spunk behind Linda’s words of wisdom made her stand out and allowed her to gradually make her way into the lives of the majority of “regulars” in that church community.

“Linda has this rare ability to be able to talk to people,” her husband, Randy, explains. “People take her advice because she makes everyone feel like what they have to say is truly important.”

After helping with the Sunday church services and working alongside the pastor for about five years, Linda was ready to do something more. She was ready for something with an even more intimate, personal setting.

“I was wanting to do something where I knew I was actually helping better someone’s life,” Linda said.

After working her way up in her church, and after months of training consisting of digging into the Word of God and learning how to lead a service, Linda was given the title of Associate Pastor and the opportunity to mentor people day in and day out. An associate pastor typically helps the pastor with worship and certain projects, and is allowed to help the pastor with funerals and weddings. Linda was able to dig deep with people who came in to the church wanting to simply talk about life. It did not always have to be heavy topics; Linda was there as a mentor to talk to people about their struggles, but also about their achievements. She would meet with people one-on-one, similar to a counselor, with the focus of her conversations directed towards God.

“It is really something different every day,” Linda said. “I try to raise awareness for those living in poverty and crisis. And for me, that is beyond San Antonio.”

She quickly realized that the only way for her to accurately inform people about the crises in places across the world was to actually go there herself. She had a passion for Africa and Haiti and felt as though God had “called” her to these foreign places.

In 2004, Linda and a group of individuals in her church went on her first trip to Guiana, Africa to meet with different orphanages and speak to the people there. She was able to see the extreme levels of poverty by having firsthand experience with people who lived off of only a small piece of bread every day. She was able to look into the eyes of orphans who could not stop touching her hair and hugging her because they longed for the touch of a human being.

“It broke my heart for people that live like that and mostly for the kids. You have to be exposed to it to really understand,” Linda said about her first trip to Africa.

This same group of women that Linda had grown to love accompanied her to Africa simply to see what the situation was over there. The courage that comes with traveling all the way to Africa from San Antonio to “look and see” the situation is something to be admired.

“One of the people I worked with actually moved to Africa and funded an orphanage for 150 children,” Linda said. “It is pretty unbelievable.”

Because this orphanage grew exponentially, one person could not sustain it. Linda and her team decided to develop a sponsorship program for the kids, which would pair them with a sponsor from the church. The women of the church would not only become friends to these children, but they would supply them with food and water needed for a comfortable living situation.

“We developed a golf tournament when we got back to San Antonio and also a 5K run in order to raise money and awareness for these beautiful kids,” Linda explains.

Many people who end up doing mission work feel as though the job pretty much falls into their lap. It is rare that missionaries have to exert a high degree of energy to look for where they are “meant” to be and what they are “meant” to do. Linda agrees with this observation. She believes it came from meeting the right men and women, and coming to the right church.

Missionary and blogger Lauren Roop explains whys she is so enthralled with mission work.

“This is how He works. He gave me an undeniable love for these missionary kids before I even met them. I just wanted to go. I just wanted to serve those who needed care,” Lauren explains. “And so, I had to be obedient to the call. The Lord gave me the grace I needed to raise support...He gave me the strength I needed to leave my family...He gave me the courage I needed to live in a foreign country.”

Through the extensive dedication of Linda and her team of men and women from her church, the lives of more than 150 children in Africa were saved. This desire to forge unbreakable relationships with the African men, women and children only increased their passion for mission work as a whole. Through the team’s willingness to endure harsh living conditions and their patient, hands-on work, the lives of many Africans were changed.

When Linda and her team landed on an unknown Haitian land, they were ready to do the process all over again. Still shocked by the lack of civilization, Linda and her group decided to simply start listening to the people, just as they had done in Africa. Once again they traveled to orphanages and asked the children  about how their day was going.

Linda knew the trip would be a huge success, and she would accomplish what she went there to do: make someone’s day better. And while it may seem absurd to travel that far to do something so simple, that was what she and her team did. She wanted to brighten the children’s day by sitting with them and getting to know them. She wanted to bring them closer to God during her conversations. She wanted to inform them of God’s everlasting love for them. The doubting days were over and the mission was on.

“We went to eight different orphanages and ended up funding an orphanage for 15 children,” Linda said. “After one year, we were able to actually put a building on the ground”

The passion that Linda and her team radiated is the reason why each of their trips was a huge success. It is hard to find something wrong with someone who travels across the world, just to hang out on the ground and ask children how their day is going. Those who are willing to listen to the story can see the beauty in mission work, and even though many people do not take the time to know the ins and outs of this work, missionaries do not seek recognition and credit. Their only goal is to help people who were not given the same circumstances they were given, and once this goal is reached, they know that they did their job.