Pastor Walton speaks with Dr. Jamie Fitch today. They discuss her career in the Navy, travels around the world, and maintaining Christian growth throughout.
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Transcript
Chris Harper: Welcome to Harvest Time. My name is Chris Harper, and our host on this program is Pastor Gary Walton, the lead pastor of Harvest Baptist Church. Every week, we spend these twenty five minutes together telling you the stories of our church by interviewing our members and other friends of the ministry. We have two services at Harvest Baptist Church every week, the first one at 08:45AM, the second at 10:45AM on Sunday. We have Japanese and Korean translation during the 10:45AM service, and we also livestream that service at hbcguam.org.
Hbcguam.org. This week, the fourth message in our 7 Habits of Highly Effective Churches series, this week with pastor Ken Keith from Revelation 2:18-29 love and holiness. Let’s begin today’s Harvest Time by welcoming pastor Gary Walton. Hi, Pastor.
Gary Walton: Hey, hafa adai, Chris. Continuing our series this Sunday, and we’ve been having a fantastic time, just going through these very important messages to the churches of Revelation in Revelation two and three. I guess I said we’ve been having a fantastic time. It has been, really enlightening, encouraging as we’ve been looking through the Scriptures, but these are difficult, sections. They really are causing us to think and evaluate our lives and try to just lay our lives and really our church ministry open before the Lord.
So challenging in many ways, but it’s been fantastic and thankful for each one that’s been a part of studying together and learning together here. And, yeah, Chris just mentioned that Pastor Ken will be preaching this Sunday on this fourth letter to the church of Thyatira. A sobering text, but I think it’s gonna be encouraging too about God’s expectations and really the opportunities that He brings along with that for us to live lives and be part of churches that are pleasing to Him. And so we’d invite you to come and learn together along with us. I know that you’ll be encouraged by the fellowship of God’s people.
I think you’ll be encouraged by worship that’s just, genuine and, trying to authentically, praise God. And so come on and join us. If you don’t have a church home here on Guam, we want to invite you to come and experience the worship service here at Harvest. Well, each week, as we have a chance to be together here on Harvest time, we’re interviewing friends and members of Harvest Baptist Church and it’s always great for us to hear a little bit of the story, backstory, spiritual story of those that are connected. And we know it’s encouragement to our church, but also encouragement to others that are listening.
And we want to welcome today Jamie Fitch. Been at Harvest here for a little bit, I’ll explain that in a minute. But Jamie, glad that you’re here. Thanks for joining us.
Jamie Fitch: Thank you, Pastor.
Gary Walton: Jamie is active military in the Navy in the medical field over at Navy Hospital, and came to Guam when? Tell us a little bit about just the immediate.
Jamie Fitch: I got to Guam late June, so I’ve been here about six months. Got involved visiting Harvest just a few weeks later, and joined the church, now involved in some music ministry and loving it on Guam.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah. We’re so glad that God brought you here and came with some gifts. And the Burden for God’s Church, which you can see right from the beginning. Tell us about the Navy career.
How long have you been in the military? What’s going on with that?
Jamie Fitch: So I’ve been active duty seventeen and a half years. So I joined the Navy for medical school because they paid for it.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Jamie Fitch: So it was a health profession scholarship program. I got medical school paid for and went active duty for surgical training and and follow on about seventeen and a half years ago before coming here. I’ve been all over the world, really.
Gary Walton: What kind of places can you where have
Jamie Fitch: So you I did my my surgical training in Portsmouth, Virginia, spent a few months down in Pensacola, Florida, and then from there up to Jacksonville, North Carolina at Camp Lejeune, back to Portsmouth for some more surgical training, stayed there and was ship surgeon on an aircraft carrier for a year. Then I went to Houston, Texas for a trauma surgery fellowship and was there for two years, back to Portsmouth, Virginia,
and then to Abu Dhabi in The United Arab Emirates for about just over a year and a half during COVID,
back to Camp Lejeune and from there to Guam.
Gary Walton: Wow. That’s lot of moving. It is a lot of moving. And I’m anxious to ask you about all of that. Maybe not every piece of it, but really I’m sure there’s a lot of pieces that are together with that.
I want to tell you first, thank you for serving. And we’re really glad that you’re here in Guam, not just for the service in our military, but just the medical help, of course, serving veterans and their families, but really, the Navy hospital, I’m there often because of, you know, a church family and really thankful for the level of care that takes place there. So thank you for being part of that as well. I know it’s a ministry to our island.
Jamie Fitch: Thank you.
Gary Walton: Back us up, Jamie. Where did you grow up? Tell us about your family, and then maybe I’ll ask you about your spiritual story.
Jamie Fitch: Sure. So I grew up in a little town in Northwest Tennessee called Dyersburg right on the Mississippi River north of Memphis, and was there from when I was born until I graduated from high school. Grew up in a a Christian home. I was in church, if not within days of being born, then certainly within a couple of weeks, and we were there every time the doors were open. So very blessed to grow up that way.
I have one younger brother.
Gary Walton: Great. No, that’s good.
You were just talking about your parents kind of Not that area. They’re back where they grew up. Right?
Jamie Fitch: They are. They’re in Paducah, Kentucky now, which is where they grew up, which is just a couple hours north of Dyersburg. So they had grown up there. They were born eight days apart in the same hospital but didn’t meet till community college and then moved to Tennessee because that’s where daddy got a job. He was, teaching at the time, and has had worked in public education for essentially his whole life until now being retired, up from teaching shop to assistant principal in administration and technology coordinator, computer systems, adding to the school systems, those kind of things.
Gary Walton: High school level all the way through?
Jamie Fitch: He was middle school level.
Gary Walton: Middle school.
Jamie Fitch: Middle school level and then system level.
Gary Walton: Mhmm.
Jamie Fitch: He, when I was in middle school, my daddy was my assistant principal.
Gary Walton: Okay.
Jamie Fitch: That’s How did that awkward at all.
Gary Walton: Yeah, your friends are not quite sure what they want to tell you, right? Right. No, that’s great. Great background growing up. Spiritually, you said you grew up in a Christian home.
Tell me about your your personal spiritual story.
Jamie Fitch: So my story is, I mean, I was hearing about Jesus before I was old enough to know what I was hearing. And so I can’t I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know in my head that that the right answer is, you know, God is good. God is love. Jesus is my savior. I was saved in the fourth grade on, of all things, National Day of Prayer.
So you hear people talk about this moment in time when they realized all the things were were wrong and they were sinners and and their life made this, you know, one eighty turnaround. I I can’t that’s not really my story. Mhmm. But it’s also not that you can just I’m not a Christian because my parents are. Right.
I’m a Christian because there was a day I can remember sitting in my desk in school during the moment of silence that at that time you could still recognize for National Day prayer. This just overwhelming, it’s time to ask Jesus in my heart. And I in the fourth grade, I can’t tell you I fully understood what that meant, but I knew it’s what I needed to do. Mhmm. And I remember it clear as a bell.
And and my mom remembers me telling her about it when she picked me up that day. It’s about a year before I got the nerve to walk the aisle at church and get baptized because that’s what you had to do, and that’s kind of intimidating. Yeah. But baptized a year later and and, just continued to grow.
Gary Walton: Yeah. It’s really interesting to me. Tell me about, like, the influence around that time for a testimony that says, really was fourth grade, but on my own, you know, as far as there wasn’t like a message or a lesson, you were just praying, know, moment of prayer at your school. What were the influences around your life that really helped you to understand and maybe pressed you towards that kind of a commitment?
Jamie Fitch: I think it was it was my parents and their commitment to making sure that my brother and I didn’t know any other way. Mhmm. And, again, it’s not that I’m a Christian because they are, but I’m a Christian because they are. Mhmm. Because that was just life, and it was normal, and it never occurred to me there was anything else.
Now growing up and being all over the world, I have interacted with folks of many different belief systems and some who had none. A year and a half in Abu Dhabi was fascinating
Chris Harper: Yeah.
Jamie Fitch: And had some really cool conversations with with people who are who are Islamic and have never known any other way Right. And are good, genuine people, who think they are following God the way they have always been taught just like I did. And so it’s fascinating to have those interactions and see the difference. But I think for me, it’s an illustration of how important it is to be in church and have that community, and it’s that’s just that was just part of life, growing up that we didn’t go to church because we had to. We just did.
Mhmm. Mhmm. It was just never occurred to me you don’t do that. Now in, medical school, residency, I will say, and I will own, I fell away not from my faith, but got super busy, super exhausted, and was not regularly attending church. And I don’t there’s no sense that, you know, God left me because we know he doesn’t do that, or that I stopped believing, but it wasn’t a priority.
And that cost me several years of of growth that I didn’t necessarily recognize until I got back in church, and realized, you know, I’ve learned the hard way how important that is and how much just happier in general I am, which is why now when I go to a new place coming to Guam, I was visiting churches by the next Sunday because I need that. And I’ve also learned how easy it is to let the habit die.
Gary Walton: Right. Right. Tell me about your faith, like, through high school, into college. How how did that affect your life?
Jamie Fitch: You know, through high school, of course, I was still at home. I’m still in the church with the same youth group I had always grown up with. We all believed the same things, which made it relatively easy. When I went to and it and it was in the Bible Belt where everybody either believes or professes to because it’s normal. Mhmm.
And so you’re not necessarily the standout, which, again, makes it makes it easier. College, very similar, just because I went to college in Tennessee, had a family friend that was just a couple of years older than me that when I got there said, hey. We’re going to church together. I had a very active college ministry and college Sunday school class and bible study groups and and a close, friend group. And so it just like, the normal continued.
Never joined a sorority or drank or anything else in college like kids do just because it never occurred to me, and the people I was hanging out with didn’t either. So I think a lot of those sort of stumbling blocks that that people run into leaving home just weren’t there, or at least I didn’t recognize them. Mhmm. You know, had had a I remember one college class was a philosophy kind of class, philosophy and history of religion something, I forget, and going around the room and and it was probably the first week of class and the professor had asked everyone to to introduce themselves and what their sort of spiritual journey was. And you you go around the room and very as diverse as Tennessee gets, which is not super diverse, let’s be honest.
But a number of of college students my age who, you know, are I’m on my way. You can’t see my air quotes, but I’m on my way out of the Baptist Baptist church because they’ve grown up, and it’s so conservative. And now I know better. And I and and it came around to me, and I was like, so I might be the only one in the room who’s in the Baptist church and not planning to go anywhere. And he was floored that I would dare to say that.
And it just didn’t occur to me not to.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Why do you think that is? What was different about your story than I mean, was there genuineness to your parents’ faith? Was there what do you
Jamie Fitch: I think that’s absolutely genuineness to my parents’ faith. And the integrity that
Gary Walton: Right.
Jamie Fitch: That they were the same at church as they were at home, as they were out in town, and so was I. And so it it wasn’t religion wasn’t something we put on on Sunday. I don’t know that I thought of it as religion. It was just this is how we live our lives. Yeah.
Gary Walton: I don’t mean to say that, you know, other, you know, high school, college students that that kind of walk away from their faith. I I don’t mean to say that it must be because of an inconsistency on their parents’ part, but I do think that, there is a significant part of what you just said. When the people close to you, when their faith is genuinely exhibited in public as well as in private, you know, there’s a there’s a reality to it that you know. You don’t have to question growing up.
Jamie Fitch: Yeah. Well, I had also I worked at I don’t know if you’re familiar with Ridgecrest Baptist Conference Center in in North Carolina, but but I worked on summer staff the first two summers. So I left home a week after graduating but went immediately to a immersed Christian community of folks my age from there to college where I already had friends back there for a summer. Like, it was just that consistency.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Jamie Fitch: And I certainly had my time of falling away, I suppose, in medical school when just busyness got the better of me, and I knew better. But it takes no time for that habit to change.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah. No. That’s great. Well, you realize how significant community is, you know, when you’ve, either tried or not tried to do it on your own, how desperately we need that.
It sounds like that’s impacted you as you’ve made these moves. Lots of moves, right? I mean, you talked about that. Wanna ask you about some of the adventures of it in just a minute, but as we’re tracking this. So lots of moves.
What have you found out about, God’s church through multiple locations, different churches, you know, it’s what you experience here on Guam, which is I gotta get someplace, I gotta get plugged in right away, which I’m so thankful for. It’s I just see that as the success for those that that really thrive militarily in new churches. They really do find out how to get plugged in quickly. But but still that experience you’ve, you know, over and over again. What have you learned about God’s church?
Jamie Fitch: That I have family regardless of where I go in the world. That’s great. I mean, I’m single. I don’t have a husband and kids traveling with me. It’s just me, some of these places I’ve gone.
Now the Navy is small, and the medical corps is even smaller. So most places I go, there’s people there that I’ve known and served with before. Sure. But it can get lonely really fast.
Gary Walton: Right.
Jamie Fitch: And if you go looking for it, there is family in God’s church wherever you are. Even in in Abu Dhabi, which is, you know, a very mixed culture, certainly a a Muslim country, but also relatively tolerant. There are open churches, you know, but I got to Abu Dhabi in at the February 2020, met an Air Force colleague I had met once before because we had been in a surgery meeting together, and we talked on the phone. And just God’s blessing that he was he was there with his wife and children, and they’re very they’re believers, and asked me as he picked me up from the airport, now do are you a believer? Do you wanna go to church?
And I went to church with them on Friday because that’s the the day of church in in that country. It was the last Friday that churches were open before everything shut down for COVID. Mhmm. And started then after that going church went online on television, much like it did in in The States, and so started going over to their house. We had our own little church.
We’d watch church on television with with him and his family, and they just adopted me into their bubble and their family. And so even in a Muslim country halfway around the world, within a week of landing during a pandemic, I had family, and they’re still family. And it’s just it’s just amazing. We were working in in the ICU there. We were there to do trauma system development.
But when your credentials say critical care and there’s a pandemic going on, folks don’t care that the first word was surgical
Gary Walton: Right.
Jamie Fitch: Critical care. And so we were working in an ICU with a very high mortality rate, and very quickly figured out who around us. There’s so much imported labor where the other believers were and started meeting every morning to pray. Mhmm. Because that’s how we needed to kick off what were very long and very hard days.
And I don’t know how I’d gotten through it without that.
Gary Walton: Yeah. It maybe leads me to this, and maybe that’s the answer. But I was, 17, is that what you said? Seventeen and a half years in the military, of course, medical school before that. What’s the key to, you know, just maintaining your walk with God, the strength of your spiritual life through multiple transitions.
You know, I know you’ve talked about community. What what else?
Jamie Fitch: It’s that that belief is real, that that I’m not me without it. And so it’s it’s bible study. It’s prayer. And it’s just that every day, it’s just part of the fabric of life, not something you do on a schedule or you do because you’re obligated to do it. It’s a relationship with with Jesus and with his church, so that you’re not doing it alone.
Doing life alone is hard.
Gary Walton: Right. Let me switch gears a little bit. Same same scene, military. I didn’t prep you for this at all. What’s your coolest story, that you can share with us on
Jamie Fitch: I think my coolest story is still a year and a half in Abu Dhabi. Yeah. In a time when you couldn’t travel, when the world was falling apart. Right. And just the fascinating intersection of cultures, and amazing things to see.
And I had this whole list of places I wanted to travel to in that area of the world while I was local, and you couldn’t the border was closed. And so just building friendships and community, and we traveled all over that country and really saw The UAE. But I think the key I think most people I know in the military will talk about it. It’s hard to move around. Like, you you get that you look forward to retirement, but then you miss the people.
Right? I have just over two years of sea time. And, you know, you sleep well on a ship because it rocks you to sleep. It’s kinda like a cradle. The stars are amazing at night on a darkened ship out in the middle of the ocean.
But what you remember and miss are the people you did it with. And when when things are hard and everybody comes together, there’s just nothing quite like that. Mhmm.
Gary Walton: So you’re probably not claustrophobic, but, what felt more confining? UAE feeling like I can’t I can’t get out of here, two over two years on a ship, or living on Guam and Little Island.
Jamie Fitch: First off, those two years were not consecutive.
Gary Walton: Right. Okay.
Jamie Fitch: It’s spread out over a few several months at a time. Guam’s not that confining to me.
Gary Walton: I feel the same. Every once in while, I talk with somebody that feels differently.
Jamie Fitch: Yeah. And I’m leaving tomorrow.
Gary Walton: Sure.
Jamie Fitch: Flying off island, and I’m looking forward to it.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Jamie Fitch: But I remember getting here and checking in. They’re doing area orientation, and and one of the speakers said, you know, think back to where you just came from and really be honest with yourself. How often did you really drive more than 40 miles away from your house?
Gary Walton: Right. Right.
Jamie Fitch: It’s not that small.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Jamie Fitch: And I love to get outside. I’ve been diving, snorkeling out in the water.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Jamie Fitch: It’s just it’s just not that small. Ships can be confining, but I’ve as a surgeon, I’ve only ever been on the biggest ones. So even that’s not bad.
Gary Walton: Yep.
Jamie Fitch: I did spend seven months in Iraq in 2024 when things are relatively calm, but spent some time in bunkers. Mhmm. That’s pretty confining.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
Jamie Fitch: A little concrete box with who knows what flying over your head. That’s pretty confining.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah. No. I can feel that. No.
And I wanna communicate too. Guam does not feel confining to me at all. I’m amazed by this place. There are some I don’t always understand it. You know, of course, they do talk about island fever and some people feel that, but I’ve just never felt that.
And, yeah, I’m thankful for that. What’s been as look back over, whether the military years or even before that, but what what’s been the biggest test for you? Any testimonies of God’s faithfulness through difficult, challenging personal times or career wise?
Jamie Fitch: Well, there’s several. I mean, we’ve already talked about moving so frequently and just having to to step up. I’m an introvert at heart, with with more social anxiety than you would think. And so stepping out and walking into a new place and getting to know people is hard for me at the beginning. And then it gets easy pretty quickly.
I think one of the toughest times for me was that ten weeks of COVID in the ICU. Yeah. Within in that unit, you know, most of our patients were local workers, imported labor. They’re probably older than their paperwork says. They have no medical history because they’ve never been to a doctor.
Mhmm. And so we had a really high mortality rate. And the vast majority of those patients were Muslim. And so for me, you know, I’m a trauma surgeon, a surgical intensivist. I have stood at the bedside and helped many people transition out of this life.
Mhmm. And I’ve always found a lot of job satisfaction in in helping patients make that transition. I’ve had opportunities to pray at the bedside Mhmm. With families and patients. And in in The States, I’ve always hung a little bit on and I don’t always know what this person believes or or where they are with God, but they’re in The United States.
They’ve had the opportunity to know. In a predominantly Muslim country, that’s not the case. Right. And it made it a lot harder to compartmentalize that this is a disease we don’t understand. I know my patients, many of them have probably never even heard the truth, and so this is not necessarily a joyous transition.
And like I said, a disease we don’t understand that was killing people, and there’s no way I I can’t say I’m not gonna keep going to work. And so at some point, realizing there’s a good chance I’m gonna catch this and die in one of these beds and having to work through that, but God provides. Right? I already talked about my my colleague who has the same belief system, and we had those conversations of what does that look like if one of us ends up in this bed, but also why we’re not afraid of it. Right.
So, like, you know it. It weighs heavy, but I’m not afraid of it because I know what my future is. If if if I die in this bed or the ship goes down or the bunker gets blown up or what, like, I wake up in heaven and I won. Mhmm. It’s hard for a lot of other people.
Right. And so I think that just complete peace when when folks ask me, like, aren’t you afraid of what comes I don’t know what comes next. But I know there’s a plan, and I know if he told me what that plan was, I’d probably try to fix it and make a mess. And so I think just working through some of that of I don’t have control of what’s going on around me, and all of my medical training doesn’t necessarily matter. I mean, it matters, but I I can’t change the outcome.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah. God’s in control. There’s a sobering reality about being near death and near those who’ve passing away. And, you know, the Bible actually calls us to the sense that this is good for us to consider the end.
That’s not a bad thing because the reality is that this life is short for all of us, no matter whether we, have thirty, fifty, seventy, ninety years. It’s gonna be short and, we wanna invest the time that we have, whatever it would be, in the things that matter. And, our time goes fast, Jamie, but I’m thankful for that testimony from you. I really sense that, your desire to, take the things that God’s given you, the the gifts that he’s equipped you with, and use it in a way, of course, that will help people, but, ultimately, you know, serve serve God. He is the ultimate commander, and I’m I’m thankful for that testimony.
I love it. I’m really pleased to be able to inter interview you here and just kinda talk about your story. I love the connections that you made at Harvest and praying that over this time that you have here that God will just really grow those for you, your in your impact, your influence on others. And, yeah, we’re thankful to be able to share this season with you.
Jamie Fitch: It is such a blessing. Thank you.
Chris Harper: And thank you for listening to Harvest Time. Of course, we always take this moment at the end of the program to personally invite you again to Harvest Baptist Church. Two services, Sunday, 08:45AM, 10:45AM. Japanese and Korean translation during the 10:45AM service, and that service is also broadcast live here on 88.1 FM at khmg.org. We hope to see you this Sunday.
Thanks again for listening to Harvest Time.