In His Service medical ministry, Theresa Schroeder, going strong after 38 years
By Marcel Pacatte
When Theresa Schroeder’s granddaughter was young, she did what many grandparents do: She babysat.
But Theresa Schroeder isn’t like many other grandparents, because when her little granddaughter got tired of sorting medical supplies by color and size, grandma still had work to do, and so little Lily settled into a cot and slept.
We don’t know what visions danced in her head as she slumbered but we do know that she now works in the medical field.
A lot of people work in the medical field. But not too many of those had Theresa Schroeder as a grandmother, and so not too many spent their evenings at the corner of Pine Street and Lafayette Avenue in Jacksonville, the brick-and-mortar nerve center of In His Service, a ministry Theresa Schroeder founded 38 years ago this past April 4.
The ministry is centered on bringing medical equipment and care to areas of the globe that are wanting for both, and Schroeder has been at the center of that nerve center for that entire time.
And while her little granddaughter got tired and had need of that cot, Schroeder is indefatigable, and has been for 38 years.
Some might suggest that Schroeder is married to her work with In His Service, but it is about durability, maturity, beauty and shared experiences. And happiness.
Schroeder and her experiences — and experience — are the keys to In His Service.
Before anything else, there is her intensity. It is unmistakable. Instantly. Her mien is serious; her gestures and intonation, deliberate. Her eyes are dark and filled with passion.
As she tells you her stories about In His Service, she has a way of bringing you into those eyes so you are able to see what she has seen.
You come quickly to understand the place from which that passion springs, her heart.
Without a heart, there is no mission. Without passion, there is no mission. Without the Lord, there is no mission.
Ask her how all of this got started and it all makes sense and seems natural: She is a nurse. Her husband’s work brought him overseas for extended periods. On one of those, she joined him. And she saw things a nurse sees and was troubled by them.
It’s hard to grasp the extremes of poverty in some countries unless you have witnessed it — and know what to look for, particularly malnourishment and a lack of preventive medical care. Her nurse’s eyes saw that poverty of health care.
It could have ended there, with her seeing and being troubled by what she saw, but there was a push, a push without which In His Service might never have gotten off the ground, without which it definitely never would have been formalized, and without which it never would have endured through these past 38 years.
The push came from Edward Schroeder, Theresa Schroeder’s husband.
From that first time she returned and shared with him what she had seen, he knew. And he told her she never would be able to rest without doing something to help.
And for that we go to an orphanage in Korea.
She went initially to see if her experience as a nurse could be of use there. She encountered the predictable chaos one would expect at a place filled with children.
But there, in a crib, right in the main room, around which all the chaos burbled, was a young boy lying inside. His body was arched in static seizures and he was making pained noises, unable to speak or even fully moan. She demonstrates all of this as she relates the story to truly convey what she witnessed.
Her eyes tell the next part because she is too kind to say it: She was appalled.
She inquired about the boy, measuredly, so as not to offend her hosts and be shown the door. She told the director of the orphanage, “That boy is going to die.”
The director replied, matter-of-factly, “Yes.”
No doctor. No medicine. No hospital. No treatment. No attempt to address what clearly was a dire medical situation.
What could she do, as a visitor to the orphanage, in a foreign country, just a person who happened to witness something, something she could have responded to by drawing on her expertise if given the opportunity.
She returned the next day and there was a pile of stones just outside the back door to the orphanage. The boy had died. And they had buried him.
Her eyes, again, tell the next part: That was not going to happen to another little boy, another child, if it was within her power to prevent it.
Those eyes of hers darken as she relates the memory, a pain over that child’s death fresh in the retelling. That passion for the mission.
She had ideas. And began to figure out how to intervene.
As a nurse, she understood that if adequate medical supplies could be put in the hands of those who had been trained to use them, that for instance, cuts could be treated before they became infected, and infections could be treated before they became septic and before becoming a death sentence.
But where to get those medical supplies and medicines? And how to direct them to where they would do the most good? And how to train people to properly use them?
She went to work. Developed a plan. Made appeals. Surplus medical supplies made their way to her and she started making the connections that would get those supplies into the hands that could distribute them where they were most desperately needed. Thought of training for the people in the developing countries on the receiving end of the supplies.
The search for those surplus supplies led her to the realization that a lot of perfectly good supplies are discarded because of rules and sensibilities here in this country.
Schroeder began asking for the things that hospitals and clinics had to toss that still had life in them. And she was the first to organize and mobilize such a mission in the Jacksonville area in the form of a 4,000-square-foot medical supply warehouse.
One other example: At In His Service headquarters, she showed a medical pack filled with supplies, everything needed to treat an individual patient that goes into the exam room with the caregiver. A hospital or clinic may open the pack to use one item in it. Maybe two. The other items won’t be used on every patient but they can’t be repackaged or sent on to another patient because the seal is broken and the rest of the items no longer are considered sterile. No one quibbles with that designation. To us, those unused items in those unsealed packs now are garbage. Trash.
But to someone in another country who has no access to anything, literally, a pair of medical scissors that were in that pack that have never been used will do much more good than they will ending up in a landfill. They’re gold. Lifesaving.
And while most of Schroeder’s scavenging is catching things before they hit the trash can, the facilities know her, know her crew and know In Her Service, so they set things aside and give her a heads-up. She has a network now. A system.
The people at the facilities who have to do the tossing get to know Schroeder after 38 years of contacting them — and so now she gets calls instead of always being the one making them.
Can you use this? Will you come get this?
The answer almost always is yes.
Long after that first yes and well into the In His Service ministry, Edward Schroeder, the catalyst that drove Theresa Schroeder to this mission, died.
Remember, he had been the one to tell her that she had to do this, that she could do this. And 25 years ago, at the end of his life, after more than a dozen years of watching her do this work and travel to disparate parts of the globe, he had another message for her.
Don’t ever stop going on these mission trips. Know that it’s the right thing to do.
When she relates this, you feel as if you are in the room with them, almost invading a private conversation, because her eyes grow dark again, as they tend to do when she talks about the most important aspects of her work with In His Service.
There is a lot in the Bible about serving. A good one is from the fourth chapter of the first book of Peter, “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”
This verse, and others, are helpful in trying to understand where Theresa Schroeder’s drive comes from, but at root it comes from Christ and a general belief that faith in Him ordains the use of one’s gifts on an individual’s path to follow Him, to follow His example, in the best and most appropriate way possible for each person.
She enlists doctors to join on mission trips, and relates their stories of being
affected by witnessing the need. The universal response as the doctors treat these patients is for them to tell Schroeder, “This is why I went into medicine. To treat the patient.”
Many times the need is so basic, and so easily addressed. The first of two main differences between the United States and developing countries is that, there, nothing stands between diagnosis and treatment; no approvals, no “does your insurance cover this” or even agree to the treatment.
The second is that the infrastructure to meet the need doesn’t exist in many places because the people there are doing all that they can simply to get food and keep shelter; medical treatment is a luxury. So the doctors witness the need.
Schroeder, too, has seen the rusty scissors, the empty drawers and medicine cabinets. And so when she prepares to travel to a developing country on a mission trip she packs with that in mind, planning to carry and leave behind as much as possible.
Theresa Schroeder says that when she gives presentations, invariably someone’s hand will go up and they will ask what In His Service does for people here.
Her face, again, tells the story: People who haven’t been to these developing countries cannot conceive of the differences between the poor here and the poor there.
But she also can point to 23 domestic mission outreaches, so In His Service is, in fact, active here.
She is generous in mentioning those who help, praising them for their willingness to give. Places and people: Passavant Area Hospital (now Jacksonville Memorial Hospital); the Jacksonville Developmental Center and Michael Hurt, who professionalized a lot of the mission’s financials; places In His Service has visited or sent supplies, such as Haiti, Korea, Burundi, Nicaragua; and things they carry and send there — the scissors, tape and bandages, microscopes, surgical gloves and so on.
When Schroeder talked about In His Service’s growth over the years, she said Michael Hurt was responsible for taking the organization to the next level. His financial expertise transformed the charity to its 501(c)(3) status, something that Schroeder cited as being invaluable to sustaining In His Service.
“He definitely opened doors and opportunities. He pushed us, with his vision, on to bigger things,” she said of Hurt.
In 2025, In His Service assisted with 43 international mission trips. All of this is done with no paid staff — all volunteer. All supplies are donated, and all are sent on to developing countries at no charge to them.
Since April 4, 1988, more than 100 countries have received medical supplies either hand-delivered on mission trips or shipped in 20-foot or 40-foot sea containers.
To donate supplies, money or to have questions answered, Schroeder invites people to call 217-883-0077.
The next mission for In His Service is to the African country Ghana, Oct. 22-Nov. 6 this year.
