Purpose Asia

     We open the back doors of the Land Rover-turned-ambulance and pull out our supplies. A goodly number of mothers and kids are beginning to gather under the trees and in the grass around the ambulance. Out come the scales, the umbrellas and tables and the basic medical kit and medication and vaccine boxes. Now, we’re ready. Community Health Clinic is now open.  First I help the ambulance driver check in and weigh the various children and infants that will be seen by our team today. Each wriggling baby that bounces in the hanging sling scale or little wide eyed kiddo that stands on the scale in bare brown toes is so precious to me. It’s at these clinics that I remember why I’m here. It’s the people of Papua New Guinea that have captured my heart. I love them so deeply and want so much to be a blessing to them as they are to me.     Soon all the kids are weighed and I go around the back of the ambulance to get ready for the next wave...

Checking In Patients at the Clinic I slide the key into the lock of the back door of the clinic and my day begins. I walk down the hallway past the x-ray machine, the treatment room and the lab, the pharmacy and front desk into the break room where morning devotions start at 8:00 . We sing and pray and I’m surrounded by the faces of missionaries and Papua New Guineans alike, all of us unified in our love for Christ and desire to serve Him with the work of this clinic in the lives of those in or around the center. 8:30 arrives and we all scatter to our various tasks. Today I will work in the lab in the morning and as an appointment nurse in the afternoon.     I switch on the light and run my hand over the cool black countertops in the lab as I turn on machines and prepare the lab for the day. I slip on my lab coat and busy myself with refreshing the bleach, running quality control on various machines and getting everything set up for my morning. The firs...

My Papua New Guinea "Family" The warm breeze blew in from off the ocean and ruffled my hair as I was watching the light fade over the ocean. A little girl with tight, curly hair sat in my lap and breathed deeply and peacefully. She’d fallen asleep there as she sat close to stay warm as the evening grew cool. This was my Papua New Guinean “home.” The place where I’d first lived in a village and where I’d been “adopted” into a Papua New Guinean family for the first time. I was visiting my host family in the coastal village where I had lived and trained last year. This was the first time I’d been able to come back. It felt like home. This is my family's "kitchen" and house behind It was also the first time I’d been able to go back since my host father had died in January.  I sat with my host family and heard about the events of the last year. I listened to all that had occurred with “Papa” and how the family had been doing since then. Eventually, conver...