Myrna McLaughlin
Executive Director
Myrna was born in Martin, Texas in 1941. She has four children and seven grandchildren. From an early age on, she knew she wanted to be a nurse and do missionary work.
After her family was grown, she took a trip to Lima and Chimbote, Peru and was so overcome by the way people had to live that she decided to devote herself full-time to helping others. Upon returning to the States, she took a position with Cross-Over Ministry in Richmond, VA.
The Cross-Over Health Center is a Christian outreach serving poor and indigent as well as homeless with medical, dental, and eye care. During her tenure they began an outreach to places where homeless and poor congregated for lunch. Physicians were brought to these places to enable the homeless and poor to receive medical attention. She also began a community health outreach program called Lay Health Promoters based on the concept from third world countries of “Village health workers”. This program educates people to improve health in their communities through education and volunteer work. She has served on numerous boards relating to health care, education, and homeless and indigent issues.
In August of 1997, she accompanied Third Presbyterian Church of Richmond, VA on a medical missions trip to the Dominical Republic. During that trip and a month sabbatical in Tucson, AZ, she realized that the Lord was calling her into another great adventure. She sold her house, distributed her possessions and went to live with her oldest daughter and family in Huntington Beach, CA. For the next several years she continued leading short-term mission trips through an organization called Adventures in Missions.
In 2000 the Lord established Least of These Ministries. The name comes from the scripture that has always had so much meaning to her throughout her life, and one that she has tried to follow; Matthew Chapter 25 verse 40.
In 2002 she took a trip to Zimbabwe and it was a life changing experience. There she saw people dying needlessly and much too early from preventable diseases and lack of basic medicine and access to health care. She has since then devoted her time to easing the burdens these people carry as best she can. In 2007 she visited Uganda at the urging of a friend, and has since included them in her outreach.
Jesse Zvikonyaukwa
Coordinator, Mashonaland West
