An Interview with Charity Ngaruiya, Chaplain at LA General Hospital
Transcribed and edited for length by Courtney Ellis.
Charity Ngaruiya is connected to the Presbyteries of San Gabriel, San Fernando, Pacific, and Los Ranchos through her work as a chaplain. Currently serving at LA General Hospital, Charity began her work there on January 16th, 2024. Charity holds a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies from Biola, as well as a Masters of Theology from Fuller. Originally from Kenya, her Masters of Divinity degree is from International Leadership University in North, Kenya.
In the spiritual care office when I first started working at LA General Hospital last year.
Courtney: Charity, tell us about your journey into chaplaincy.
Charity: I came to the United States in 2012 to attend Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. During my program at Fuller, we had several chaplain educators come and share with us about chaplaincy. When I finished my Th.M. in 2015, I was still wondering what to do next.
I was drawn to becoming a chaplain because I wanted to serve people. I love the church, I love preaching, I love doing everything in the church, but I wanted to do marketplace ministry. I went to one of the field educators at Fuller to talk to her about chaplaincy and she gave me the contact of a lady at Fuller, an alumni, who was at St. Joseph[‘s Hospital] in Burbank and told me to talk to her. And that’s how I first ended up in chaplaincy.
[The other chaplains and I] would meet as a group at Providence, St. Joseph in Burbank, but we were out in other Providence hospitals, and so I was located at Tarzana. We started the program in September of 2015 and it ended in 2016. My goal when I came to the US was to do a PhD. But I was waiting to still start the program and I didn’t know when I would start. So I applied for full-time roles and then ended up applying for the night shift position covering Tarzana and St. Joseph. And that’s how I ended up full-time, covering the two hospitals on my own.
This gave me a lot of experience because at night, you’re basically alone, so I had the opportunity to do ministry in all departments, from the emergency room to the critical care units. I also had the opportunity to attend to a lot of crisis situations whether there were shootings, patients coming in with gun shot [wounds], mothers who delivered and sometimes they don’t make it, or it’s a child who dies… I did all sorts of things.
Sitting at the palliative care office waiting to attend the daily rounds on Wednesday.
Courtney: What were some of the challenges you faced during that time?
Covid was very, very difficult. First and foremost, I saw a lot of death. We would see people come in, there was like a way that they would go through, a cycle. They come in, they are awake, talking and everything, a few days later they are in ICU, a few days later they are intubated and unresponsive, and a few days later they are gone. And we would see, sometimes, not just one family member, we would see multiple family members.
It was a very difficult time for me, especially because I was alone and it was hard for me to divide my time between supporting the families of the patients and also supporting the staff who were very, very affected by everything that was going on. I still remember one night I had been called to St. Joseph and when I got there, there was a nurse walking towards the garage where I’d parked my car, and she was crying and I stopped because I knew her and I knew she works in the ICU, which is the most difficult place, and she just expressed her frustration that they were doing everything they could trying to save the patients, even knowing that the patient will die, and she was so tired of seeing the cycle.
Courtney: Would you share with us about your recent transition to LA General Hospital?
So I [worked at St. Joseph’s and Tarzana] for seven years, from 2017-2023. I can say that I was very burnt out and very tired because it’s a lot of work and the night shift is challenging in its own way. The ministry was good. I had built a very good community of the staff at both hospitals, I was able to support them as much as I could and I built good relationships. I liked the night shift because we all supported each other and we worked well because there’s no one else to depend on when something happens at night. Both teams, I knew I could support them and they could support me, whatever was going on. I still miss my teams I worked with during the night.
And so, moving to LA General… Well, LA General is very different from Providence, which was a private hospital. [LA General is] a public, government county hospital. This was a bit challenging for me. Not really the chaplaincy part, there may be a few things that are different but it’s basically the same. But the culture of both organizations is very different. I’m still getting to know the staff here at LA General. But the ministry has been going well. I also appreciate that I’m able to do things I couldn’t do at night. One of those things is, I couldn’t attend any meetings [at night]. I’m drawn to palliative care and bioethics, and those things don’t happen in the night. When a patient moved to comfort care or end of life I would participate, but it wasn’t like the meetings that would happen during the day.
Leading a reflection for high school volunteers at St Camillus Center for Pastoral Care
Courtney: What have you enjoyed the most about this new hospital environment?
Charity: One of the things I’ve really enjoyed is working with the Palliative Care team. The doctors and nurses, they have a social worker, they have an NP, and because I can wrestle with some of the issues or the questions I have. I will give you an example: one of the difficult visits I had last year was a woman in her mid-40s who came in, she collapsed at the market, and when she was brought in she was non-responsive. She coded multiple times in the ED before they took her to the cath lab (that’s the area where they check what’s going on with her heart and try to fix it).
This woman, her sister later told us, she hadn’t been able to get the medical care that she needs because she doesn’t have insurance…The next day she was still alive, and she had been transferred to UCLA to be assessed to see if she could get a heart transplant. And I remember having that conversation with one of the doctors on the palliative care team about the process of how she would get a heart, how will they select who gets it, who doesn’t get it, the care that is involved. There is a lot of aftercare to ensure that the body doesn’t reject the heart. So I had a very good conversation, I learned that in California there are only about four hospitals that do organ donation transplants, and they each do some specific things. It’s not all of them that do all of them. So it’s things like that, I feel like during the day I have more opportunities to wrestle in bioethics issues and palliative care issues with the doctors and the teams. I can ask questions about what is going on and I get to participate in the family meetings. So there’s a lot that I can be exposed to, which builds on what I already had experience with.
One of the other things that I like about LA General is that it’s a training hospital, so they’re training doctors, they’re training nurses. So they have a lot of training opportunities. For instance, we did have at St. Joe’s a palliative care team, but it wasn’t as comprehensive as the one we have here at LA General. Here they have three doctors—it’s a whole comprehensive team.
I also sit on the Bioethics committee, a smaller group. I’m grateful that I’m able to do that.
I also like that it’s better for my overall health! I can sleep at night and not feel tired all the time.
Leading a prayer during the AIN annual event (Angel Interfaith Network) a ministry the serves our underprivileged population at the hospital with blankets, clothes, hygiene kits and food cards etc
Courtney: How can the folks of the Los Ranchos help support you in your current ministry?
Charity: One of the ways you could be in prayer for me is just my day-to-day encounters with patients and families and also the staff, for me to have the discernment to know what it is to serve them in the best way possible. Also, for my relationships because I have had to start all of them by moving to a new hospital, starting again. And in some ways, I miss the people that I worked with at Providence for a very long time.
Pray for my relationships with the Presbyteries because I’m also trying to do that, whether it’s visiting them, being able also to be there for the different leaders and the different people. Like now, with the fires, I know San Gabriel and Pacific [Presbyteries] have had different pastors and people who are impacted, so for me to know how I might be of support to the Presbyteries and the congregations as well as the pastors.
And pray for my family back in Kenya. They are okay, but you know when you’re living far, sometimes it’s very difficult. Just pray for my family—my dad and my siblings and nephews and nieces. And also pray for me to be able to continue to do God’s will and continue to discern what it is that he wants me to be and what he wants me to do so that I can follow His will.
Courtney: Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you’d like our readers to know?
Charity: I’m available to preach if anybody wants to invite me because that’s one of the ways I get to know people. So if anyone wants to invite me, I’m available to preach!
(Charity’s contact email is listed in her most recent newsletter. Just click on the button below.)
Courtney Ellis, Associate Pastor at Presbyterian Church of the Master in Mission Viejo, is an author and storyteller. Courtney reports on the presbytery’s mission partnerships.
Courtney’s latest book is Looking Up: A Birders Guide to Hope Through Grief, published by InterVarsity Press.