A six week adventure through the beautiful nation of Papua New Guinea... where to begin? I could probably write a book on everything that happened during my time in PNG but I will just do my best to share my heart on it all.
One of the main reasons I wanted to go to PNG was to allow God to give me his heart of this nation. YWAM Townsville is very involved with PNG and are planning to be helping them and continuing to go back 6 months at a time for the next 8-10 years and since I'm living here for a while I wanted to be apart of that!
From the moment that we arrived till the moment I left I felt at home and welcomed. I have never been to a place like this, where people have nothing yet they give you everything - it took my breath away. As I started to learn more about the Gulf Province of PNG I found out that with in the last 20 years everything has gone down hill and it has been almost "forgotten" but the rest of the country (not to mention the world). Most people have to travel days to see any kind of doctor because they are only in major cities, not in the hundreds of villages. There are not teachers or schools because they stopped being paid or the teachers would have to travel to Port Moresby which means that their pay check is gone before they even get to it. This also means that this coming generation is not only faced with the struggles of living in poverty but is left with out any kind of education. There is some light in the this the ones who have stuck it out (doctors teachers) have given everything they have and have given their lives to serve their nation. The common story from village to village was that one main village would have the school, and all the kids from surrounding villages would travel to this school for education (usually only up till grade 4 or 5). Now I'm not talking about a few kids but hundreds, one that I remember was 1 teacher and 300 students! Not even joking (I wish I was) he would split them up in to different class and just take turns in each room and then leave them to continue working while he made his rounds. Now I don't know about you but when I was in school the moment my teacher turned his head my mind was off in my own world! When we asked him why he did this he said If I don't then who will? He was carrying the weight of their future on his shoulder by himself... oh and not to mention he doesn't even get paid for any of his work. And that is just one story of so many people living unjustly and being treated like they don't matter, it kills me. A thought that crossed my mind often was Why am I the one helping and not the one being helped? I don't understand but what I do know is that God has given me something and I am going to give all I have to as many people as possible.
While we where there we would often sail to different locations around the Golf. An amazing aspect to the Gulf is that they have an incredible river system, most of them are miles wide which gave us the chance to sail far into the province. Every new location that we went to locals would paddle out in their dug out trees (that they made into canoes) and "check us out" I guess you could say, it would often look like this picture here on the left. I just cant say enough good things about these people, they are BEAUTIFUL! As soon as we set anchor we would be off to work. We had 3 different medical teams on the two outreaches I was apart of and 4 on the last outreach which were Dental, Primary Health Care (PHC), Optometry, Opthamology. The Dental team worked on board and patients would paddle to us or we would pick them up on our dingy, then PHC and optometry were land based and would set up pretty much anywhere they could, like schools, church, or old clinics. Let me tell you, these guys had long days in the most intense heat I have ever been in with hundreds of people needing to be seen.
One story that I will share is when the reality of the need really hit me and God really poured his heart out on me. We had just arrived in a new Village called Kartie and we were planning to spend the week there, I got the chance to go with the PHC team on one of the first days we got there to set up and start work. The village had known that we were coming so they had lots of people ready to be seen and other villages had come to see us, so needless to say it was full-on! Anyways we get there 9am and start right away, I was on the prayer team and also the "bubble doctor" aka distract the kids and try to make them happy. The first patient we got in the morning was a family that had paddled a full 24-28 hour journey from a village we left a few days earlier to come and see the doctor, because their 4 year old little girl had gotten very sick. To me the little girl looked lifeless, he father was holding her and she laid motionless in his arms. They knew very little english so it was a bit of a rough start but we finally found out that she had phenomena and malaria, the crazy part was that she had only started to get sick 5 days earlier and already she look this bad. The doctors were able to start an IV drip (on pretty much an old wooden poll) and it wasn't the easiest thing to be around with the little girl screaming from the pain, the father not knowing what to do, and us not fully being able to communicate any reaffirming assurance.
After that ordeal was over and everything was working as it should the family had to stay there all day (with the IV drip) this actually meant that the father had to sit on a bed without a matiress, in a room so out with no brease, holding his little girl. I did all i could, bring water, fan them, but there wasn't much to be done besides waiting. They sat there all day but it brings me great joy to tell you that by the middle of the afternoon the little girl started to look more alive! She would sit up on her own, eat a full piece of bread (well "sago" which is their kind of bread) and she even started laughing and smiling, it was beautiful. I wasn't able to go the next day but the told me that as soon as they got there in the morning the little girl ran up to them with such joy! Her life was saved, and I don't want to think about what would have happened if we were not there.
This ship is doing so much more then I ever expected, and God is opening doors that we could have never dreamed about. Free fuel (for a ship..30 thousand liters) and huge companies wanting to partner with us (not us bugging them) because they see the difference and impact we are making, those types of things don't just 'happen'. God is on the move and it is only the beginning of the race. There are so many stories and moments that I could share but I hope that out of this glimpse you are able to get a feel of some of the big things going on over here, and I am here because of your love and support, so you are just as much of all of this as I am. Thank you and here is a short little video around the ship I have talked so much about, hope you enjoy!
