About Jonna-Lynn
Jonna-Lynn was born in Pottstown, Pennsylvania and raised outside of Reading. When she was 22 years old, a recent BSN graduate from Lebanon Valley College and having finished her diploma in nursing two years earlier at the Methodist Hospital in Philadelphia, Jonna-Lynn left the United States to serve in Mozambique as a missionary nurse for the United Methodist Church. Five years later, she came home with first hand experience of many health crises that western health care providers read about in text books. She also learned about life in countries fighting for their freedom.
While she was working as a pediatric nurse practitioner in The Johns Hopkins Hospital, in Baltimore, MD and going to graduate school part time, she met her husband John Mandelbaum. He encouraged her in both her educational endeavors and her international work. Soon after their marriage, they moved to Green Bay, Wisconsin and later to Atlanta, Georgia where Jonna-Lynn completed a PhD in education. They returned to Baltimore and used it as the base for Jonna-Lynn’s international work for the next eleven years including two years in Prague, CR and 18 months in Manila, The Phillippines.
In 2000, the couple retired and moved to Taos, New Mexico where they live with their two miniature dachshunds, Pivo (Czech for beer) and Caj (meaning tea in Czech). There are many stories in this life journey and Jonna-Lynn has only just begun to write them.
