We are off to a remarkable start in Papua New Guinea having served now in Madang, the nearest launching point to many isolated islands, and on Karkar Island. We are currently on Bagabag Island, a location where no known medical or dental teams have been in decades according to Dr Vincent Atua from the Madang hospital.
For those of us in Kona and Orange County communicating, sending containers of supplies, training and recruiting volunteers to crew the ship, we can’t wait to receive each report from onboard. The stories of people being helped so far have been quite remarkable.
As you look at these results remember behind each number is a person with a pretty cool story. So many are simply surprised by the kindness shown as they receive help at no charge. Certainly none of them expected it when they woke that morning!
Type
|
Services
|
Dental | 978 |
Primary Health Care | 2,618 |
Optical | 1,530 |
Total | 5,126 |
And this is just the first five weeks!
One story made me cringe as I learned of a man who had ten teeth pulled in one sitting. Many were just stumps left behind after he broke them off to stop the unbearable abscessed pain. I think we can all imagine the relief he must have felt.
How can you help? We need to refill our fuel tanks in a couple of weeks time. Would you consider donating what it costs you to fill up your car at the gas station? For the Pacific Link it will cost $25,000 and take us through several more months of deployment. That fuel means we can serve at least another 10,000 people with God’s love. It will keep our generators humming to enable life on board for everyone serving, and it enables us to move to locations waiting for us.
For all of those who follow us, who pray and who give, you can celebrate God’s goodness toward the people of Papua New Guinea (PNG). We are grateful we have a ship ready to go with amazing hard working crew ready to push off, next time to a remote anchorage on Long Island, northern PNG.
Interested in knowing more? Contact us. We’d love to chat!
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