Purpose Asia

I came in the door and dumped my stuff on a chair. It had been a tough few days and I felt exhausted. Then I noticed the note on the table from my roommate that invited me to grab the smoothie she’d made for me from the fridge and to join her on the back porch for some time in a hammock to enjoy the evening scenery. I smiled and grabbed the smoothie she’d made for me. It smelled of sweet fresh strawberries, banana and pineapple. What a perfect end to the day. My roommate knew just how to cheer me up even when she herself had been very sick for the last week. I thanked God for such a thoughtful roommate and headed out to the back deck. I breathed in deep as the screen door swung shut behind me. The evening air was fresh and the view was amazing.      I turned to my roommate with a look of gratitude. “Thank you,” I said, “I really needed this.” It was true. I’d had a really tough few days and, in the generous and encouraging way that typifies her, my friend had

Me in the Kodiak plane with the patient (photo by Mandy Pehrson)      Far above the ground we kept our little hospital. Expert eyes flitting from our patient to his I.V. ensuring that he remained stable. Periodically we checked vital signs and compared them to previous ones. We'd been working all afternoon to evacuate our patient from our rural clinic in the highlands of Papua New Guinea to a hospital in Australia. Now, we were in the air on the 4-hour flight from the highlands out over the Coral Sea to Australia. Our patient remained stable as we prayed for good flying weather and safe travel.      The dense black of the night pressed in around us in our tiny, rumbling Kodiak plane.  Time crawled forward as we watched and waited for our arrival. Another hour and a half of night lay before us before we would reach the safe haven of Cairns, Australia (pronounced "cans"). Who knew a flight could feel so long. However, God had been gracious and our patient was resting c

At the end of this week I will have been back in Papua New Guinea (PNG) for a month. It’s hard to believe. I can hardly believe it myself. In the last month I said goodbye once again to friends and family in the USA, packed my bags, flew around the world, resettled in my apartment and restarted my job at the clinic here in the Eastern Highlands Province of PNG. What a whirlwind. It’s been such a joy to reunite with my Papua New Guinean and missionary friends and to start jumping back into my life here. However, it’s also had its challenges. Transitions always do have challenges. Because the center where I live has a population of primarily missionaries it means there’s a lot of flux and change as people leave to go to villages, or go research new language areas, or go home for fuloughs, or return from furloughs, or come for the first time, etc, etc… It’s a place of a lot of transition. There’s been changes in how things are done at the clinic and who does what. There have been changes