It’s odd not having keys. This was one of the thoughts I had this week as I did the pocket tap check before I left my room one morning.
Since late high school I’ve always had some form of key to be carrying; various house keys, car keys, red keys for drug cupboards in nursing, and even PO Box keys for a season. So not having keys is one of the differences in my life now. That pocket tap for their familiar jingly noise now is a reach to check that I am carrying a little round fob that magically gets me through doorways.
I’ve been graced with a relatively smooth transition from YWAM student to YWAM staffer life, especially given the season and challenges the world is facing at the moment. There are still a few doorways that I occasionally miscalculate and need another shot at, just like my real life up here. There is one particular door I run smack into with surprising frequency (the handle turns the other way, which I forget 8/10 times), but all in all I feel content. I feel blessed, and am very happy to be part of this community, for this season.
It’s been over a month since starting as staff, since my DTS wrapped up, and I’ve been trying to write something since then, always coming up against the same challenge. I find beginnings tricky, and this one in particular because it is one with many entry points. So, as an introduction, a ‘how on earth did I end up here’, and noting the risk of boring you, I thought I’d give you the short version on the path to that little fob.
2019 | In September/October 2019, I spent two weeks volunteering on the MV YWAM PNG ship in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The ship is a medical ship that runs medical clinics in hard to reach places along the PNG coastline. Clinics include primary health care, optometry, dental, community engagement, a lab where TB testing can be done, and ophthalmology.
I spent my time in ophthalmology, where cataract and pterygium surgery was done. I just loved it. I don’t think I will ever grow tired of watching the joyous reaction when someone, who has been bilaterally blind for 10 years, has their eye patch removed after cataract surgery. Or seeing the pile of walking sticks on our deck grow each day because patients no longer need them now they can see. I don’t think that gets old and getting to be even a small part of this medical miracle is just incredibly cool.
Sometimes, I think I have a skill in overthinking and making things overly complex, but this opportunity to work on an outreach medical team was an easy dream for me to chase after. This was what I wanted to be doing. What I wanted to be involved in. I loved it, and I loved the peace I felt while doing so. I felt content. I felt like me.
Once back home my prayer was “God, take me back to PNG”, and two weeks later I found myself following Him to YWAM Townsville, where I would undertake a five-month school, a Discipleship Training School (DTS). The course is half lectures (13 weeks of biblical teaching and training), half outreach (where you go out and do), and while lectures are a time hard to explain in a few words, January saw me heading back to PNG, this time as part of an outreach team.
2020 | My outreach consisted of a few weeks on the ship, where I got to do my nursey thing again, and my team spent the remaining weeks working on a property and building relationships in villages around the country’s capital, Port Moresby.
While on the ship I worked in the Primary Health Care team where each day we went ashore and set up a mobile health care clinic in a village. In the clinic we ran childhood vaccinations, antenatal care, general medical consultation with our doctors and nurses, as well as doing a range of health teachings around common diseases or problems.
I worked predominantly in the vaccination arm of the clinic which meant a lot of crying babies, and time deciphering clinic books to work out what immunisations had been given and which may be needed. Over the week, and between a few head-scratching acronyms or examples of what someone may loosely call ‘handwriting’, I got to see what I think is my favourite component of the ship ministry in action; the partnership between the PNG government, local health authorities and what the ship does.
In some places we were giving a lot of vaccinations, in others very few as they had good access to vaccinations, and in others every kid that came through was getting one type of immunisation as the local patrol hadn’t had stock. I love that the ship comes in on the invitation and partnership with the PNG government, and comes to do with, not for.
While you can’t capture what this looks like in photos, someone did take a bunch of photos – which I have included below. There’s one of me doing education sessions with flipcharts while in the villages and there’s even a good shot of the back of my head running through an immunisation chart with a bunch of mammas.
Overall, being back on the ship was such a confirmation that yes, this is what I wanted to be doing and a part of, and land outreach was a little different. A phrase that kept coming up though was ‘the passion, and the people’, and that’s something I felt I came home with; one part of outreach confirmed a passion for what I wanted to be doing, and the other the passion for why, or for who.
We arrived back home in March, and I doubt I’d be alone in saying that March seemed like a particularly long month. For me it was wrapping up DTS, saying goodbye to friends (sometimes at short notice due to flight changes due to COVID 19) and ‘moving’ here to Townsville to join staff. Which was less moving, and more just not leaving.
Between the crazy, and just before the state borders closed I also got to sneak home for a few days, to catch up with the family and meet the adorable new addition to our family, my niece, Evelyn.
So now I am a full time volunteer up here with YWAM Townsville. I live in a dorm room, I have a desk, and go to work each day generally looking forward to being there.
Currently, I work in a subset of the Ship’s Office, on the medical training team, and get to work on some internal training for those who serve on the ship, as well as training we deliver and hope to deliver on the ground in PNG with local health services. It’s big, it’s exciting, and on a daily level it involves a lot of spreadsheets and keeping up with which google doc is where.
And right at this moment, there is no other place I would rather be.
PS: If you have any questions for me about what I’m up to or what I have been up to please reach out – I’d love to chat with you!