After graduating from Samaritan Hospital School of Nursing, Ashland, Ohio, Gerry Martin enters Brethren Volunteer Service training, then is flown to Quito where she lives learns Spanish by immersion with an Ecuadorian family and lives the next two years in the coastal jungle where she learns the Ecuadorian Indian culture in the tiny village of Las Delicias. She practices nursing at twenty-one years old by herself; sews machete cuts, digs out bullets, and delivers twenty-eight babies without help.