I’m excited about this year. Which, if I’m to be honest, makes me a little uncomfortable; while I don’t think I’m a grinch I’m not generally an excited person, and I prefer to exist in the middle ground of being optimistic but proceeding with caution. But, it seems like God has other plans for me this year as I have this seeping excitement in my spirit that I’m trying to work out what it’s about, but there are a lot of things on the horizon this year that are worth getting excited for.
The Medical & Dental Trailer
Our base carpark in Townsville has been host to this amazing dental trailer this past little while as we’ve been working with the National Capital District Commission to develop a plan to get the trailer to Port Moresby and how it can be used to provide dental services, training opportunities, and health education to the primary and secondary schools across the National Capital District (NCD).
…but it’s not in the carpark any longer, and it will be in PNG soon!
This trailer contains three dental chairs and it’s own sterilisation area, making it a dental clinic on wheels. With PNG having one of the highest rates of oral cancer in the world and a very small number of dentists for the population of nearly 9 million people (WHO’s annual World Health Statistics report notes PNG as having 0.1 dentists per 10,000 people. When you do the maths, that’s not a lot!), a resource like this has the potential to have a large impact on the lives of people in the NCD.
Want to check out some more info about this trailer? https://ywamships.org/dental-medical-and-training-trailer/
The Jetty
‘The Jetty’ is not just going to be home to the dental trailer once it arrives in PNG, but the property is a construction site at the moment so it can be home to a lot more people!
Our campus in Port Moresby, known as The Jetty, opened early last year and is a satellite campus of YWAM Medical Ships, continuing to expand the ability to train, equip, and send out young people. Much like our other campus we run vocational training as well as faith-based development.
That’s the campus with our ship out at anchor in the background.
At the moment a second level is being added to the main building to expand the accommodation and training facilities to give us the space to house and train more people.
And then there was a floor and walls! Soon there will be bedrooms!
The Jetty’s January Discipleship Training School is currently underway, so while all this construction is going on they are bunking here with us on the ship. They’ll head on home when we sail for outreach, but in the meantime we have a bit more noise and laughter to our ship, and get to enjoy incorporating those guys into our ship family.
Also, The Jetty now has a jetty making it easier (and less wet) to get between the Jetty and the ship. I am very thankful for this and was very impressed when I came back off holidays and saw its existence.
Medical Ship
Last but certainly not least, our Medical and Training ship (aka, currently my house).
We are nearing the end of our resupply, restock, and making sure we have all the things in Port Moresby, and in a few short weeks will be sailing back out to serve in Western Province. We will be conducting clinic in the same three main locations we did last year, returning to many of the same communities.
While I’m just overall excited to be out again and working in clinic delivering healthcare, I really am excited to be revisiting communities. Familiarity and a somewhat better idea of what to expect is a small part of it, but I am looking forward to serving in communities that I’ve grown to care a lot about.
There’s a kid in one village it makes my whole week seeing run around clinic, as the first time we met I was helping treat them during a seizure caused by malaria.
There’s an older gentleman who I got to visit in his home in another place and he was awaiting test results. I’d love to follow up, see if he found answers and if he got any better…as well as have a look to see how his sons were going building the new family house that was under construction last time I was there.
And there’s local health workers I love working alongside, that village with all the twins, the husband and wife who were great for a chat and gave me a bunch of bananas after I gave them a covid test.
There are sometimes whole communities and other times individual faces that I think of when I think of certain villages, and I’m excited for another year of coming alongside the local health services to see if we can help improve some health outcomes together.
A village welcome on the muddy bank of the Bamu River; looking forward to being back here in a few weeks.
So, pictures of my daily commute bouncing along the ocean in our small boats, log bridges, and syringes full of immunisations will be coming around again soon enough, but for the moment what I have is a sunset over Port Moresby. It’s a pretty view from here.
PS: If you have any questions about what I’m up to or what I have been up to please reach out – I’d love to chat with you! If you would like to consider donating to help support me financially in the work I do here please check out this link for more details.