Gemma Mercado ’04 remembers raising her eyebrows and looking at her husband, Michael Mercado ’04, at the end of 2011 and asking, “You want to enlist for four more years?” She suspected their family’s story was about to take another unexpected turn.

Gemma and Mike are classmates and longtime friends of mine, and they sat down with me to share their story. When they married at the end of their fourth year in medical school, Gemma and Mike never envisioned that Mike’s lifelong career would be in the United States Navy Medical Corps. They both assumed that after finishing their training in family medicine, Mike would serve four years and then they would move back to California, where both of their families lived. “I wanted my kids to have the same happy childhood I did, surrounded by family and cousins,” Gemma told me, shaking her head slightly as she remembered the conversation. “And now that there’s a light at the end of my military tunnel, Mike tells me that he wants to enlist for another four years. ‘Are you out of your mind?’” Gemma turned toward Mike and smiled. “That took a lot of prayer.”

Thus far in their family’s story, they’ve endured Mike’s two deployments to Afghanistan and brain surgery. For the Mercados, their hope has been shaped through struggle and their growing faith in God.

Their first major challenge occurred when Mike was deployed to Afghanistan in 2008. At that time Mike and Gemma were living and serving in Guam—Mike at Naval Base Guam and Gemma at the Guam Seventh-day Adventist clinic. Gemma was pregnant with their second child, Maya. Mike hadn’t expected to deploy but was called upon to fill in when a colleague developed a medical condition that prevented her from going. Their lives were going to change, and it was going to be much more significant than the arrival of a new baby.

They moved back to California from Guam. Mike began training for his 15-month deployment. He was able to spend 10 precious days with baby Maya after her birth before flying out.

Mike’s deployment changed Gemma’s faith in God. She told me, “I learned that nothing truly in this world is guaranteed. The only sure thing is who God is and what Christ has done for me, and He’s coming back to restore this world to its intended state of glory. So I had to accept that this is just suffering for but a moment, but joy is going to come in the morning. That morning may not come for another 15 months, or for another 20 years, but it’s going to come. It was a purifying time in my faith journey.”

In Afghanistan, the mission of Mike’s unit was to build relationships with the staff at the neighboring Afghan base. Mike remembers, “I was the only doctor on a base of about 300 to 400 people. I saw everyday stuff like colds, injuries, and things like that, but I also got to train with the Afghan people. I stepped into their world, and it was very different. They saw war every day, yet they invited me to sit down with them to have tea and to get to know me. I realized what a privilege and honor it was to play a small part in this country that had been under siege for generations.”

After Mike’s return from Afghanistan in 2009, the now four-member family moved back to Guam, where Mike served as the department head of family medicine at Naval Base Guam. At the end of their four-year military service, Mike told Gemma he wanted to re-enlist with the Navy, which prompted the raised eyebrows from Gemma. “Given the challenges of his deployment, we discussed Mike’s desire to re-enlist,” Gemma said.

“During my deployment,” Mike explained, “the Lord opened up opportunities for me. It opened my eyes to the fact that the military isn’t made up of ‘violence-loving, hungry to kill things and break things people. There’s a need for Christian military members to support one another and assist our colleagues, comrades, troops, and sailors. In Afghanistan, we didn’t have a chaplain, and people were looking for someone to give Bible studies on our base. I hadn’t done much of that before, but I decided to help fill that gap. It was enjoyable, and it grounded me. After returning to Guam, I realized God had been revealing gifts I didn’t know I had during that deployment. I don’t say this arrogantly, just that I was able to use what I learned during deployment—resilience, bringing together a team, prioritizing conflict resolution, adapting to different cultures and personalities—to lead the family medicine department. It felt natural, it was fun, and the Navy gave me a way to lead.”

Meanwhile, Gemma was seriously considering homeschooling their children. After much prayer, the Mercados decided that continued military service would allow Gemma to be a full-time mom and for Mike to develop his leadership skills. They signed up for four more years. Little did they realize how influential that first deployment would be for their later years.

After leaving Guam, the Mercados moved back to Southern California in 2013, where Mike took on additional leadership roles with the family medicine residency at Camp Pendleton. He was approved to stay an extra year in the residency program when he suddenly received a phone call with unexpected “hot fill” orders—he was now headed to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to join a Marine unit.

When he arrived, he learned his unit was deploying back to Afghanistan. It turned out that this unit had been assigned a specific mission to embed with the Afghan forces and serve as advisors. Remarkably, this was similar to Mike’s last mission, except now, he was advising an entire Afghan trauma hospital. His previous deployment, along with his leadership and teaching experience, made Mike uniquely suited for this role. “I got to work with some of their surgeons, build partnerships, and see what amazing things they could do with what little they had. And then they still have time to garden, and they still have time to laugh and joke and ask about each other’s families, and pray five times a day. That is really something I took away,” Mike said.

Even though the hospital was small, it took care of a lot of trauma patients. At the time, they cared for 1,100 trauma patients per year. Mike continued, “I have a picture of Dr. Karim Gharibyar, one of the surgeons I worked with, growing roses. He had a little rose garden right outside the hospital, and he was smiling and so proud of his rose garden. I remember just watching him and marveling at how he was able to find beauty literally among the trauma and dismembered bodies. He stayed so positive. And he still communicates with me on occasion.”

Coming home after this deployment, Gemma and Mike decided to make a career out of Mike’s military service. The family, now numbering five after the addition of Moriah, had just settled into their next post in Washington state in 2019 when Mike began to notice hearing loss in his right ear. His MRI showed a right acoustic schwannoma.

On Jan. 30, 2020, Mike underwent a 12-hour surgery performed by both ENT and neurosurgery to remove the tumor with neurophysiologic monitoring. During the last portion of the operation, the surgeons notified Gemma that they had lost signal from the right facial nerve and they weren’t sure they had gotten all the tumor out. There was a high likelihood that Mike would have a right facial nerve palsy and residual tumor. Gemma remembers summoning all of her faith and praying, “God, help me to trust You in this.”

As Mike recovered from surgery, COVID shut the world down. But his post-operative MRI came back clean. There was no residual tumor left.

Gemma said, “Praise God for the miracle that He did. Because in the surgery, from what they could tell, they didn’t get all the tumor. But the MRI didn’t show anything there.” Mike has continued to be tumor-free since. Looking back, Gemma remembers describing this experience to her cousin as her own third deployment. “The uncertainty of it all was the hardest part. I was learning how to let God tell me not to worry and to just be faithful and obey. It’s hard to obey when you don’t know what the end result is going to be.”

Now serving in Spain, the Mercados are filled with gratitude for the unexpected journey that has shaped their family and faith. She reflects back on her younger self in 2004, the optimistic and hopeful newlywed about to start residency and a new life. “The hope you have when you are young is not a fully mature hope, but it’s a hope that God will grow and sanctify. And as you go through these struggles, your hope gets exercised and becomes more mature and stronger. It aligns more with God’s character and His will. And that has been God’s gift to me.”

After Mike’s return from Afghanistan he became Captain Michael Mercado, Medical Corps, United States Navy, director and commanding officer of the United States Naval Hospital Rota in Spain. Gemma serves as a proud homeschooling mom and military spouse. Together with their three children, Max, Maya, and Moriah, they have lived in Guam; the U.S., in California, Washington, and North Carolina; Italy; and now Spain.

Along with their children, Gemma and Mike continue to trust in the promise that hope, tested and refined, will always carry them forward. Their story is one of resilience, love, and unwavering faith, a testament to the strength found in walking together with God through the unknown.  ν

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, or the U.S. Government.