Olivia Pickering is looking forward to leaving uni, having spent the last year serving as the faculty leader for the EU Medicine and Dentistry faculty (euMed&Dent). “It’s been an enjoyable time, with no great responsibilities, except to learn. I’m ready to move on from the world of being a student and towards working as a doctor in a couple of years,” she commented on her departure from the campus to spend the next two years at the clinical school at Royal North Shore Hospital.

The opportunity to serve as a faculty leader was not something Olivia had expected, but she embraced it with a servant’s heart. “I’ve enjoyed looking out for people, and working with Gene [the male faculty leader] and with David [the EU staffworker].” Olivia’s generosity with her time has been a great example of whole-heartedly serving her classmates, both Christians and non-believers. It has been difficult juggling all her co-curricular volunteering with the time required to study medicine. Olivia’s had to learn to live with doing less study than she would have preferred. But this was all an expression of having a servant heart.

When Olivia studied media and communication at UTS her interest in the inequalities between nations grew. Exploring the possibility of serving in vocational Christian ministry, Olivia then spent two years doing a ministry apprenticeship with her church prior to starting medicine. So when she started medicine it was with a good deal of excitement and the hope that she would gain useful skills to serve others, locally and globally. She hopes medical training to meet the physical needs of others would also provide her ways to address the more profound spiritual sickness we all have that is sin. Pray for a flood of servant-hearted people like Olivia who would use their medical training to help grow God’s church.