In addition to training, organizing and swimming the ICW10 Swim for Zoe, Leanne is a Physical Education Teacher at Holly Tree Elementary School in Wilmington, a running coach and team member in the YDubTriClub and an active member of Port City Community Church. She and her husband Doug and their two sons Nick, 17, and Mitch, 16, live in Wilmington.
She has eighteen years experience as a runner and three years experience as a triathlete. She finished her first marathon - the Seattle Marathon -- in 1998. Last season, she ran in the Beach2Battleship Half Iron Distance triathlon, the White Lake Half Iron relay and the Palmetto 200 Relay. She's finished 13 sprint triathlons and co-organized the Inaugural Cardinal Strut 5K in 2010. Leanne has been a Girls on the Run coach since 2002.
LED BY PASSION
This swim has been in my mind and on my heart since the children in Zimbabwe touched my heart with their smiles in May of 2006 during a ZOE Ministry’s medical mission trip. ZOE’s mission is to provide medical attention to AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe and Zambia. On that trip we visited schools to hold doctors’ appointments for each child. It was my job to do what I do at home: I held P.E. classes! While the kids waited to be seen by Wilmington’s best ER doctors I led them in play: we played follow the leader, we raced, jumped rope, kicked the soccer ball and painted their faces. In fact, one doctor told me he had to stop looking at a patient to look over his shoulder at what I was doing – he had never heard these children laugh before!
I think I cried my body weight throughout my stay there. The trip allowed me an amazing perspective: through the doctors’ work with the children, I grasped what it takes to be a servant of God; through the children themselves I glimpsed God’s mercy and love. Each morning we’d load up like sardines in a van to serve hundreds of children at the next school and by the end of the day, we’d end up being served by them. When doctors were finished seeing the children, their school teachers would gather all of them around to sing to us. It was at this time that my tears would start every day – realizing that the love they returned was a direct reflection of God’s love for them.
If I had an opportunity to go back to Zimbabwe today, I believe most -- if not all -- of these children have passed on to be with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Zimbabwe is a Christian nation, and their relationship with Jesus is one I envy – perhaps because they are a small step from meeting Him on a daily basis. They allowed me to see Christ in a way that I believe I never could have. This is the reason I am swimming from Carolina Beach to Wrightsville Beach this year. I would like to give back to them in a small way – it will always be small compared to the huge impact meeting God’s own has made in my life.
