Well, it’s a new year, and that’s a time for new starts, new vision, and a fresh perspective. I realized that with everything that I went through last year, I had forgotten how to walk with the Lord when things are really good. I got so used to relying desperately on Him, and crying out for everything, that I forgot how to spend time in his presence when I had no desperate need.
That said, this time in Kona is a blessing. It has given me an opportunity to pause, and to just be grateful for God’s faithfulness; to look back on everything he has brought me through, to pray into what he wants next for me, and to bask in the grace and blessing of being able to walk through life with him, even though there are a lot of unknowns and uncertainties.
I’ve been working at the YWAM Ships base here in Kona for the last month or so, and it has been exciting, refreshing, and also kind of scary, but it’s the kind of scary I like, where you are hopping in on someone else’s vision, and you have no idea how it’s going to turn out, but you just have to trust God and his promises.
It has been a really amazing time so far as connecting with the base, sharing the vision of the ship with the people who live here but aren’t really connected with the ship ministry, and learning more about the base and all the ministries that go on here. Even just spending time with the base director and learning more about his vision for the ship gave me insight into what is going on at a level higher than what I normally operate at.
In the office I have mainly been working on documentation that we need to get in order before the ship is able to deploy for outreaches: policies, educational materials, and an application to get the YWAM Liberty registered as a private medical facility in PNG. Our 2021operations rely heavily on Covid restrictions and the ability to get short-term volunteers into the country, so we are praying and planning to start our outreaches in June.
Right now we are building and preparing a new shipping container that is going to be sent to the ship, and it’s going to be an oral Bible translation container! This is really exciting, because the area that we are going to be doing ministry in over the next two years has hundreds of languages with no Bible translated into them. We are focusing on 54 of them as well as training locals on how to translate the Bible and how to be able to put it on micro SD cards which we can then give to people in the villages and they can have the Bible in their own language!
My hope is to travel to PNG at the beginning of May to prepare things, so outreaches can begin!
Ashley Meyers
YWAM Liberty Medical Coordinator
To read more of Ashley’s journey, check out her blog here!
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