Human Interest Ebola Survivor Is 'Ready to Move Forward' and Plans Return to Africa as Medical Missionary "It's been five years of emotional healing and spiritual healing and growth," said Dr. Kent Brantly By Caitlin Keating Published on July 31, 2019 02:42 PM Share Tweet Pin Email Dr. Kent Brantly, an American medical missionary who contracted Ebola while treating patients in Liberia in 2014, is ready to return to the place where he almost lost his life. Dr. Brantly, now 38, told The Christian Chronicle that it’s “been five years of emotional healing and spiritual healing and growth. I think we’ve grown and been equipped in ways during this five years that we were not before we went to Liberia.” During the interview — which took place near his home at the Southside Church of Christ in Fort Worth, Indiana — Dr. Brantly said that he and his family have “spent time praying and fasting and talking together about it … and God has really opened the doors every step of the way.” With his wife Amber, a registered nurse, and their two children, 8 and 10, Dr. Brantly will move back to Liberia this fall, he told the outlet. “I am excited for them,” said Dottie Schulz, a missionary care volunteer with Mission Resource Network. Schulz met with Dr. Brantly last summer and heard from him that he was “ready” for the move. “They are finally doing what, in their hearts, they have wanted to do for a long time,” she told The Christian Chronicle. ‘Serious Challenge’: World Health Officials Rushing to Stop Another Ebola After 18 Deaths AP It was in 2014 when Dr. Brantly and Nancy Writebol, also an American aid worker, came down with the virus that claimed 11,325 lives between 2014 and 2016, according to the World Health Organization. Brantly and Writebol were flown out of the west African nation and then treated for the deadly disease in an isolation unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. “Today is a miraculous day,” Brantly said at the news conference when he was released in August 2014. “I am thrilled to be alive, to be well and to be reunited with my family. As a medical missionary, I never imagined myself in this position.” He also thanked all the medical staff who cared for him and people around the world who prayed for his recovery, adding, “Please do not stop praying for the people of Liberia and West Africa, and for a quick end to this Ebola epidemic.” Dr. Brantly was also on the cover of Time as the magazine named “The Ebola Fighters” as its 2014 Person of the Year.