We’re PNG bound again – March 2023 update

Hello from somewhere in the sky above far north Queensland! We’re on our way to Papua New Guinea (PNG) today, and by the time I hit publish on this post we’ll be back at our campus in Port Moresby. It’s good to be on our way back and a good time for an update on what has been happening and what’s coming up next for us.

After our honeymoon in January, we headed back to Townsville for just under two months. David re-engaged in the Venue and Housing Team, and I was back in front of my desk in the PNG Engagement office.

David’s work varied a lot from day to day, but it centred around helping maintain the facility we have in Townsville, particularly the accommodation side for all the fulltime volunteers and students. David spent quite a few days fixing up some of the staff living quarters, gap filling and giving them a new splash of life with a few coats of paint. We were the recipients of the first room David worked on last year, and it’s always amazing what a few coats of paint can do.

My main project while in the office was to put together some new teaching material on lifestyle diseases for us to use in our upcoming outreaches. It was a good challenge; I find that the process of trying to explain complex health topics simply gives me a pretty good indicator of how much I do or don’t actually know about a topic. 

On a non-work note, we also moved into an apartment! This was not something we’d anticipated doing this time in Australia but, after quite a few discussions and finding out my favourite apartment on base was currently vacant, it was really sweet to put our name to a place and start to build a home together. 

Thank you to everyone who continues to financially support us and makes getting our own place possible! 

We’re looking to PNG for around three and a bit months this time. We’ll be based out of our Port Moresby campus, ‘The Jetty’ (the above image is a shot of the Jetty last year and she’s changed a little bit since), and are scheduled to be part of a few different outreaches that will happen/be sent from there.

We’re continuing our engagement in Western Province and we’ll be part of teams flying in again to help with Maternal Child Health patrols. These patrols are a few weeks in length, and we’ll stay in villages or at health centres as we move from place to place each day for the clinic. 

David and I have been involved in a number of these over the past few years and it’s something we both enjoying being involved with.

Last year we were the recipient of two new small boats! These boats were fundraised for by YWAM Norway and we’ll be putting these boats to work in Central Province. For these patrols, we’ll again be doing Maternal Child Health, but also have a heavy focus on health promotion and youth engagement.

On our first outreach, we will be heading to a number of villages that I got to take my Primary Health Care team to last year, and I’m looking forward to engaging in these locations again with these upcoming patrols.

Last year we ran the first pilot of our dental trailer program, and in just a few weeks it’ll be rolling out our campus gates again. There is so much need and such potential for the impact we can have in schools around the nations capital with this program, and I’m excited for it to be at it’s first school of 2023.

If you’re interested, here’s a link to a short video that was made during the pilot program which helps show and tell the story of how we’re using the trailer.

If things go according to schedule, we’re in for what I’m sure will be a full but interesting few months. Thank you all so much for your continuing partnership and support that allows us to be out here doing what we do

PS: If you have questions about what we’re doing please reach out – we’d love to chat! If you would like to consider donating to help support us financially in the work we do here please check out this link for more details.