Here are some highlights from this past week! It starts rough, but I promise it gets better!! Also – answer to our prayer asking to stay on the boat: we got to stay for the whole week of clinics!!

Friday, Jan 20

I got the flu. Super awesome day.

 
Saturday, Jan 21

Update: I can now eat crackers.

 
Sunday, Jan 22

Feeling good enough to go to church! We headed in the back of a truck to the Four Square church, where we were greeted by so many smiling faces and hand shakes. Jen, our leader gave an incredibly moving testimony on how God restores the parts of us we think we’ll never let go, followed by Ethan and Mikal giving a message about being a man & woman of God by honoring each other. This is a major need in the families of PNG, a country with over 2/3 of the homes containing domestic abuse. We celebrated this new day with lots of worship and finished with impromptu prayer – with one man asking how to be saved & follow Jesus!

 
Monday, Jan 23

Rough day. Today was my day to stay on board for hospitality, which is cleaning the ship all day. Already not fun, but then the generator shuts off and we have no air conditioning (the only perk of housekeeping) in our metal box sauna. My eyebrows stop working at 9am and all day sweat just pours into my eyes – hahaha lovin life. Not just a physical battle today, but my spirit dropped low as I struggled with aspects of purpose & self-worth. But the cool thing about God is He can reveal things to us even when His joy is the farthest thing from our minds. Today I realized something funny – I value the quality of hospitality so highly and always strive to be welcoming and a good host, so throughout my time in Kona, I’m placed on “hospitality” (cleaning for 2 hours every day) and then now I’m stuck in hospitality again. I want this character trait but realized I didn’t actually want to put in the work to get it. James 1:4 came to mind, “So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything.” Man am I going to stop complaining about doing the dishes when I get home 🙂 I learned an important lesson today about the opportunity to serve others in seemingly purposeless ways and about the strengthening of gifts God gives us. 
Tuesday, Jan 24

Another day making babies cry! Loved giving so many more immunizations and meeting some of the rare, loving parents! Very exciting – today I tested a baby for malaria and knew what to prescribe/give! Obviously I ran it by the actual medical professional, but I treated my first malaria patient on my own! After the clinic, Ashley pulled out her guitar and we gathered around for tooons of songs and laughs on the grass. Our repertoire of pigen songs has definitely grown a lot! Then of course we had a dance party with the cha cha slide, limbo, simon says, & a conga line! This basically translates to Marie & I making a fool of ourselves for the whole village 🙂 We’ve really started to fall in love with these girls and have formed a little troop – we call ourselves “Sepik Meri” (Sepik Women)!
Wednesday, Jan 25

Best day ever! Decided to try something new by helping at the optometry station – giving the eye chart test and reading glasses. Since we don’t have an actual eye doctor/surgeon with us this week, we have been giving a lot of prayer. Since God created our eyes and is obviously powerful enough to heal them, it makes sense, but it’s still been such a struggle to pray for the blind with the questions of “is this God’s timing?” or “will this even work?” After a full morning of prayers and glasses, I was a little discouraged and went onboard for a break. The 1st mate (a now close friend) told me a story and gave me awesome encouragement to keep trying. So sure enough, I pray for the first patient, Sila, who is almost blind in one eye and can’t see 1 meter in front of her (I have the eye test results recorded). After praying, she opened her eyes and was smiling so big, so I repeated the eye test. She sat amazed and full of excitement as I held up fingers for her to see 1 meter, 2m, and then 5 meters back! She left exclaiming “God is good!”! And this type of thing happened 3 or 4 more times!! Wow God is SO good! Later, one of my patients, Deborah, decided that she is now my “PNG Mama” and brought me a homemade basket full of bananas and a promise to bring the rest of my “family” to the clinic tomorrow to meet! Everyone is so kind, generous, and welcoming – my heart is so happy! Later that evening, it was our turn to give a mini church service on the dock, where the entire village gathers to hear us speak, and after some worship and a skit, I gave the message on how Jesus changes everything: our value, mindset, families, call to serve others, & our joy. It was so scary – totally relying on God to give me the words to say – but praise the Lord, I had complete peace and confidence speaking! I even got to pray with a teenage girl to accept Jesus and then my whole Sepik Meri crew prayed to follow Jesus, too!

Thursday, Jan 26

Last day in Angoram started at the optometry station again, where we gave out another 200ish eye glasses 🙂 The eye chart test is notorious for being the most frustrating job at the clinic (most don’t understand or try to guess when they can’t see) and I can see why! But by the end of the day, there was a group of kids/teens standing & watching, usually just laughing at my pronunciation of pigen or at the ones who couldn’t see (terrible thing), but then I got them to try being the “doctor” & they loved it!! I got to just stand back and watch as they eagerly volunteered to give the eye test, giving instructions & congratulating the patients after – so much more uplifting than laughing! Then, Marie & I made a ton of friendship bracelets (after the crazy amounts of woven bags and jewelry we’ve been given, it just makes sense to give something back) with donuts and brought them to our group of girls. They brought us to their huts, introduced us to their families – who loved telling us stories & taking our pictures haha – and asked us to bring our Bibles! So our 20 girls + families listened to us try to read (alternating english & pigen) Bible stories of Jesus while painting their nails. Definitely an unforgettable evening!!

Friday, Jan 27

Saaad morning, as we said goodbye to all our friends in the rain, which included more gifts, pictures, and some tears. We hopped into vans to embark on our 5 hour sketchy, nonstop bumping, off-roading ride to Wewak. I just sat in awe of how much I love my team, engaging in such meaningful conversations and hilarious laughs. The amount of fun and faith I have experienced with them has bonded us so close, every moment is memorable with them!
I can’t wait to see what this next chapter in the city of Wewak entails, even though I love everyone on the ship so much & it was so hard to leave Angoram, I can have hope knowing God has awesome plans for us here too!