Wow the end of another week and of our first outreach! It has gone so quickly! It started with a really great weekend. We had some debriefing, did some exercise in the sweltering heat, swam in waterfalls, visited a village that was right on the seashore and known for its woodworking, went to a beautiful church service in a smaller community and had a wonderful farewell sing sing and dance from the people of Finschhafen.
Our ship had been in one location for the first week and we moved down the coast on Monday morning. It was a very different week this week. The weather was wet and the seas were rough until yesterday. They say PNG is the land of the unexpected. Each day the plans changed several times due to weather and circumstances. We sent 2 patrols out in a helicopter to remote villages in the hills over the week and one of them was unable to return and ended up flying back to Lae for a few days until the weather settled. We had some warm welcomes into the villages at the start of the week even though they didn’t know we were coming as our locations also had changed. One highlight from Ben was the day he went to a village that was dramatically different from everywhere else we had been -it had electricity, flushing toilets, tin/timber/fibro houses and even garbage bins! Most houses are usually made of bamboo, thatched roof and weaved walls (which do work surprisingly well!) And there is definitely no electricity or flushing toilets! Unfortunately garbage is usually littered all around and no bins to speak of. The village that Ben went to had a real focus on Christianity and even had a seminary school with 90 students that they were currently in training, and 19 of them due to finish this year to go pastor in other villages.
It was then a bit of a dramatic change as we both had a couple of days of villages that were not so friendly or appreciative or well kept. But we ended on a good note today with both our villages quite friendly. A couple of other highlights from the week were Ben stepping up to lead his team when his leader was sick for a day and Angela seeing some really interesting cases in physio and sitting and praying for many of the patients and their families. It was also lovely to sit up on the top deck of the ship tonight singing worship songs while gazing up at the sky.
Tomorrow we will sail back to Lae and on Sunday a lot of the volunteers leave. We will then be cleaning and restocking for the next outreach and new volunteers will arrive on Friday. It will be sad to see many of the friends we have made leave already.