March 3-4, 2016

 We have arrived in Port Moresby, PNG and gotten settled into the ship. We left Townsville around 10am for a flight to Carines, a town about an hour’s flight up the coast. Before leaving, however, I decided that I would unhook myself from social media for these 6 weeks. If you thought that was an easy decision for me, you would be mistaken, social media (Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat) are a big way I stay in touch with literally hundreds of friends as well as past, present and future students. I have some extremely close friendships that depend on these outlets to help me stay in touch with their lives. To deliberately cut that off has been difficult, to say the least. But I also felt it would be worth the time to be able to reflect on life and dig into the adventure in front of me. Only this journal will serve in the next few weeks as a link to the other side of the world! However, we will have access to email daily, so if you would like to communicate with me that way, please feel free to write. You can use my address, mdmacgowan@gmail.com or if you want to write Donna, mdmacgowan@yahoo.com

 

When we left Townsville and caught a flight to Cairns (pronounced “Cans”) and then onward to Port Moresby. We had a several people in our group from the Townsville base, including a couple of staff guys and couple of medical volunteers and us, so it was comforting, knowing there were people with us who understood the system and the way to get through the airports; it just made things quicker. When we (and all our luggage, Praise God) arrived, I knew getting off the plane and onto the tarmac at the airport would be my first experience with the heat, it was 34C (93F) when we landed at 4pm. We were met by a van from the ship and whisked away to the docks.

 

The PNG is docked at the port and we were the last of 50 new people arriving for this 2.5 week outreach! There are 100 on board altogether, about half and half between ywam staff and maritime crew on the one hand and volunteers on the other. We will be in port here for another full day before we head out, moving West and a little North to a river system where we will be working in villages. The crew is wonderful, welcoming and outgoing. Once again, my extroverted nature is enjoying opportunity to meet new people and find a rhythm.

 

So, first impressions of PNG. It’s hot and humid and I love that. I like the sweat, I gotta be honest. I’m sitting outside on deck right now (3/3), all alone topside in 80F temps, completely comfortable at 10pm. It will reach towards 100 tomorrow and every day of our time here. We’ll have to wait and see if I still enjoy this in a week!!

3/4

It is lush and tropical here, and though we are docked, I am looking across the way at office high rises and apartments on the hillside opposite of the ship on the starboard side (see how I’m picking up the ship lingo already??). Our cabin is very nice, though tight, as you might expect on a ship. The ywam crew and staff are very friendly and outgoing and it makes us all feel right at home! We got our assignments today and Donna and I are both working on Community Engagement this week (on separate teams) and will work in the villages for the next week!! 

 

So, we’ll spend tonight here and then tomorrow morning at 9am we will sail out for our first destination, a mere 24 hour ride!! Pray for us, I’m not sure how sea sick we’ll get, but we’ve already heard some stories!! We’ll take our meds and hope for the best, but even the ship’s captain’s wife gets terrible seasick!!

 

Blessings,

Mark

PS- it's hard to attach anything, but I'll try to add 1 or 2 pictures from time to time! It's very hard to describe the things I'm seeing without going into great detail! Here's a picture is of sunset last night (I expect I will never tire of amazing sunsets here)