Ruth Simpson Bio

So how does a girl who grew up on a farm, the eldest daughter of a dairy farmer and a school teacher, get from Northern Ireland to northern Iraq?

Ruth Simpson grew up in Ballymena, Northern Ireland. She loved playing football (aka soccer) and field hockey as well as riding horses (though she inexplicably never combined the last two into a love for polo). As a child who loved sports so much, it wasn’t a surprise that she decided to study Physical Therapy (B.Sc.) at the University of Ulster, Jordanstown.

During her time at university, Ruth enjoyed developing practical skills that would enable her to improve significantly people’s daily quality of physical life. But she also honed her compassion as well. Throughout her studies, Ruth helped children participating in the Special Olympics and oriented international students at the university to life in the UK by giving them city tours and helping them with some of their first forays into local shopping. She also volunteered in a range of different roles at a local hospital.

“I love being around sick people,” Ruth likes to say. It’s not that she takes pleasure in others’ troubles, but rather she savors the opportunity to serve others when their situations are the most difficult and they hold little hope for a better future. When people face such dire situations, Ruth is eager to offer a hope transfusion.

That’s what made working for BSSL such a natural fit for Ruth: She loves helping kids with special physical needs, she loves cross-cultural interaction and she loves investing in long-term solutions to desperate, urgent problems.

She gets to do all of these things as BSSL’s coordinator of patient services. She has the chance to provide some basic post-op rehab for these children, which they otherwise would not receive, while also developing long-term relationships with their families.

Ruth is honest in saying that hot summers, cold winters and sporadic electricity don’t make Iraq her globally preferred place to live. But she has come to love the people here and is surprised by the overriding joy God brings her as she works to catalyze human-scale transformation in the lives of Iraqi kids and their families.