First Villages, Bamu River

March 6-8,

Greetings from deep into uncharted waters of the Bamu River! We left Port Moresby on a calm day and started our 24-hour sail. The water when we started was like glass and the winds were calm. We had been warned that when we reached open water it was likely to get rough and be prepared! Many of the crew took the sail day as a day to just sleep, they get so little of it during the work week!! Many of the volunteers also stayed in bed all day, but my desire was to be enjoying every moment on the water. Incredibly, we had the smoothest sail in anyone’s memory!!! I spent the day sitting on deck, watching the ocean and taking time to think deeply about the past year or so and writing in a journal! It was a great day!

Later, when the sunset came, another incredible blood red sky, I was topside on the ship and several dozen people came up and lay on the deck to watch stars on the clear night!! It was stunning and I got to see something I’ve always wanted. I’ve always loved the song “Southern Cross” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and that night, on a boat in the Southern Islands, I saw the Southern Cross!! I couldn’t stop smiling.

The following day we entered the Bamu River. It is an uncharted river system with dozens of little villages along it that almost never get medical attention. We will be stopping into a dozen villages over the next 2 weeks. We’re all pretty excited to get started!!

That evening (Sunday) they had an optional chapel service topside. I offered to lead some worship and was given the opportunity. Almost everyone on board came and I had the help of a keyboard and djenbie player too!!

3/7

Today was the first day of ministry in the village of Sogere (So’-gary). Breakfast is at 6:30am and we had to be ready by 8am to leave for the village. Our ship is anchored across the river from Sogere, about quarter of a mile away (It’s a big river) and there is a large sand bar right in the middle of the river! So when we left the ship we had to drive around it to reach the village!! In addition, it was raining hard this morning, and although it was rather annoying, it hasn’t rained here in a while (there’s been drought), so it was a blessing to the village.

We got on shore and were greeted by dozens of villagers (Sogere has between 500-700 people!). Our Community Engagement team (CE) immediately began to gather the available children in the village and decided to use the schoolhouse to have some time with them. There were about 80+ kids with us and we shared about hygiene, nutrition, vision as well as doing a Bible Skit and games. The kids are just beautiful and these were really able to follow directions and have fun too!! Other parts of the CE team worked with men on generators or helping them make better use of water catchment devices.

Other parts of our medical teams set up in other communal buildings and did optometry and primary health care, giving immunizations, checking for disease, cuts and other issues. They were the busiest ones all day! In the afternoon the CE team played more games and also took on getting worm medicine to the entire village! We gave all the kids a dose and the parents that were there and in the clinics. Then a team walked around to some of the dwellings, getting people who were at home and afterwards I walked around the rest of the dwellings and the outskirts looking for anyone still in need. It’s better if everyone takes the meds, so it doesn’t reoccur in the village.

We left for the ship in the mid-afternoon, it takes a lot of carrying to get all the resources we brought back to the ship using the zodiac boats we are using to transport us. But eventually we all made it back. Every team had a debrief session and then we were off for the evening, but I suspect we will all be in bed on the early side!

3/8

On the very first day at the first village, I got a couple of splinters in my foot from walking barefoot in the mud up the banks to the village. You might well ask why I was walking in calf deep mud, but at low tide when we arrived, we all had to walk about 25 yards in this mud to make it to the village, and if I’d worn my water shoes, they would have been sucked off. I had one of the ship doctors pull the splinters out, but I’ve needed to keep it clean and dry since, apparently, if you don’t it can get badly infected very quickly in this very humid environment!! It’s annoying, but necessary.

Today, we are going to another village about a 20-minute boat ride from the ship. Donna is on a different team and their boat ride is about an hour’s ride from the ship. The ship will stay anchored for several days where we are and we will take the Zodiacs to different villages each day. Unfortunately, we needed to take 4 trips to this village because of the number of medical and CE personnel that needed to go, so I am part of the last trip, so it’s a couple of extra hours of waiting!!

They do a good job on the ship of working to make it a bit of a family atmosphere. We have breakfast at 6:30am and a meeting every day at 8am. We try to leave the ship by 8:45am. We should be there around lunchtime. It’s a little frustrating, but there’s not much to do about it!

While the teams are in the village, the rest of the ship crew works on cooking, cleaning and organizational meetings. Whereas yesterday it rained, today is sunny and hot! Yesterday was almost cool by tropical standards, I think it must have been about 75 in the morning!! In the evening many people wore long pants, it’s so uncommon to be that cool at this time of year!! Personally, I love temps! I do not love the flies, mozzies (mosquitos), and other flying bugs that make it their special task to try and eat me alive!! Last night we had a swarm of flying ants come aboard. Apparently, they are drawn by light and the ship is bright at night! There were tens of thousands of them all over the ship and coming inside wherever there was an opening!! It was a little freaky, but we tried to make the best of it!!

I finally made it to the village at around 11:30a. It’s another village about the size of the one we were at yesterday, they make a rough estimate of how many people are in the village by figuring about 10 people per household!! This village was about 400 people, but many are away at any given time, either working in their gardens in the jungle or fishing or at a bigger “hub” village further up the river. I’d guess we had about 150 people around today.

I wanted to share about their dwellings. I guess we’ll see this same dwelling everywhere we go, there seems to be a standard size (I’ll add a picture). It looks very idyllic from a distance. It is on posts, set about 4 feet off the ground, as much to pick up a cross breeze as to prevent flooding. There is a ladder leading to a “porch” area, which is covered with a special roofing weave of palm leaves wrapped around a long bamboo slate, held together by hand stitching and these are layered to make it waterproof. Under the porch might be a fire, some low benches for sitting, a cooking area or storage.

The dwelling itself is about 16’x14’, made entirely of bamboo slates lashed together. The frame and floor are sturdy sticks about and inch in diameter and on top of the floor joists are more bamboo slates, these can be covered with woven mats or not. There is a door opening and a window on each side. Sometimes there was door and sometimes not. One unique feature about these homes is there is absolutely nothing inside them!! Not a table, shelf, chair or bed!! They are totally empty, not even storage! I’m not sure why, but I guess with up to 10 people sleeping in there, they can’t afford to lose the space!!

We will work with Community Engagement for the rest of this week and then move to a different department to get another angle on the ministry! We have been having a great time here with the volunteers and crew, it’s a great feel on the ship, though not everyone here is a Christian, the crew keeps a great balance to welcome everyone and help everyone feel at ease!

Blessings,

Mark

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) 

  

Leaving for PNG Tomorrow!

In a few minutes Donna and I will go teach a staff class on the 3 lists of giftings in the Bible, from Eph. 4 and 1 Cor. 12. It should be a good, interactive learning time, but we do understand that the staff have worked all day and now, in essence have a night class to attend. So hopefully we will keep it ministry focused and not worry so much about all the great content we have!!

 In the evening we went to the home of Tabitha and Daniel Colwell and their 3 boys. I led Tabitha’s DTS some 17 years ago and she and her husband have been on staff here for several years. They are rare, in that they live off campus, and had us over for a nice meal and showed us around their home. Daniel’s sister, Naomi, also joined us. Her husband is Fijian and they’ve only been married a few weeks. Just a week ago, a cyclone totally destroyed her husband’s village and so he’s had to go home, since he’s the oldest son. So she joined us for dinner.

On our way back to the base after dinner, Tabitha took us to the top of Castle Hill, a local overlook that’s just magnificent! First, you can drive all the way to the top and many people walk or run the couple of miles it took to summit the hill and then from the top you can see the ocean on one side and the whole of Townsville spread out for you on the other. Simply spectacular view!

Today has been our last day here in Townsville for a while, tomorrow we’ll fly to PNG. But this morning we went to an 8am staff meeting and then Tabitha took us with her boys to a place called Riverway. This is a free venue for people to enjoy. There are several enormous pools for people to enjoy as well as places to have a cookout, grassy fields and all next to a river! There are many shade trees to keep the sun off and we spent a couple of very enjoyable hours in the pools!

When I leave tomorrow, my ability to stay connected by social media will mostly be cut off. So I will suspend my accounts and rely on this blog to keep you abreast of our adventures! In the first outreach (we are on outreach 2 and 3) the ship ministered to over 3,000 people in 16 days!! Optometry, dentistry, General medicine and Community Engagement were all part of the outreach! We don’t have any idea how we will be employed, but we are excited to find out!

If you’d like to pray for us, pray for safe flights, clarity for the future, energy to work in the extreme heat, health. Thank you very much in advance!

Settling in at the Townsville base

We arrived in Townsville on Tuesday (remember the US is a 17 hour difference, so generally we are a day ahead of those of you in the US). We were shown to a brand new apartment that had just been finished, we are the first guests to stay there and it’s just lovely!! We have a nice living room area and a fully stocked kitchen, as well as a small bedroom and nice bath! We are beyond blessed!!

We just dropped our luggage in the room and were immediately shown to a meeting room where the base leadership was in a meeting. We were added to the circle, introduced and met everyone around the room. Ken and Robyn (the base leaders) spent a bit of time explaining about who we were and how excited they were to have us and then we were released to go settle in.

We’ll spend about 10 days here altogether, learning about how this ministry runs and meeting the key leaders here. That evening we were invited to the Mulligan’s flat, which is located right on the property

 and spent a couple of relaxing hours just listening again to all the Lord is doing here. It’s a most fantastic thing, hard to comprehend, but it’s certainly the favor of the Lord in action. I’ve seen the favor of the Lord before in my own life and at ywam Denver, but not at this scale.

The following morning, first thing, we were invited back to Ken’s office to meet with him and some of his key leaders. Mostly Ken just talked about his hopes for the ship ministries and for the meetings he’d been having with high government officials about ministry in PNG. But he did give us a key insight to why it was so important that we were here. Ken is convinced that senior leaders of ministries need to come and invest personal time in the ministry to accomplish what he felt God was saying. He said he felt like our coming was the tip of the spear for other senior leaders to come. I hope so, I’m not sure if we’ll come back for a couple of years or not yet, but I hope that other leaders will come and join the work here!!

After the meeting with Ken, we spent the balance of the morning getting a introduction to the ministry by some of their leaders, who also helped set us up to teach in the DTS and to staff at different times that week, as well as to sit in on other classes. We were keen to be involved, and in fact, our high involvement and engaging the community led to pretty much no jet lag at all!! I would fall into bed each night around 9pm and sleep until around 5am!! It’s a miracle and I’ll take it.

Over the next couple of days we taught several sessions to the DTS. We also engaged in meals, community night and other activities. I have a gift for learning names and for some reason, I seemed to have a supernatural ability in these few days for remembering names and faces! I worked to learn as many staff names as I could and then the students. I don’t have every name down, but enough for us to feel more part of the community.

Everyone has asked the same question of us, “Why are you here?” We arrived with the red carpet rolled out and were given special privileges. It was a little overwhelming actually! But people kept asking, “why?” In some ways we can answer that, we know a little more from listening to Ken talk about it, but we ourselves can only respond, we’ve come based on a Word of the Lord and very little more! Our base was gracious to release us, but we are still watching, learning, waiting and hoping the Lord gives us more clarity!! In the mean time, we are having a blast!!

Mark

February 20-21, 2016

Go time!! In a few hours we’ll head for the airport for our first flight! I’m excited and nervous, I’ve also been fighting a cold so I feel subdued, but ready or not, it’s time! Although I’m sad to leave this community again, one that has been home-base for us for almost 25 years, even when we worked in Evergreen for another ministry in the early 1990’s, we had a special connection to ywam Denver. But it’s time to take another adventure and do what our hearts long to do.

I’m so glad we set up our first flight for late afternoon, there was so much to do to finish packing and cleaning the house and picking up a few more things, we just got out at our 1:30 leaving time! We are allowed 50lbs in a bag for domestic flights and 70lbs for international travel! When we checked in our bags were 48 and 49lbs!! So, now it’s the travel game for a while! We forgot to check in for our Southwest flight, and because on this airline seat selection is based on when you check in, we are virtually the last people on the plane!! This means we’ll both have middle seats and passengers will be praying we don’t sit with them!! It’s the only thing I don’t like about flying on SW!! I once went to sit in a middle seat and a lady, sitting on the aisle told me I couldn’t sit there!! I was so taken back, I kept moving, but I won’t let that happen again!

When we got to the airport, I was able to upgrade us for a reasonable price, so we got to sit together with a little more legroom. We got to LAX in good time and checked in for our flight. If you know me, I am someone who has a hard time concentrating when I am a standby for a flight, so since we had about 5 hours to wait before our flight I used 2 of our passes to United’s lounge, the Red Carpet Club. That got us into a nice place with free food, drink, comfortable chairs and free wifi. I settled in while Donna went out to meet a friend for a little while. The friend, Christy, had been in our youth group in the 1980’s, and is now in her 40’s and married!! Donna said she looked exactly the same as she did when she was teenager!

We went to our flight about an hour before it was to take off. These passes allow us to have a seat on a flight, if there are any left after all the paying customers have been seated. We were number 7 and 8 on a list of 15 and there were 12 seats left, so we were pretty sure we’d get on, but in a strange twist of fate, we were bumped (as was everyone else on the list) because apparently the plane had reached a weight limit!! So, we were stranded in LA for 24 hours.

It wasn’t all bad, because I’m still battling a cold, and another night’s rest in a bed was good for me! We found a hotel with a shuttle that ran at midnight and got a good night’s sleep and had a restful day. We thought about running around LA for the day, but decided against it. On tonight’s flight, there are 72 seats right now and 26 standbys, we are number 13 and 14, so I think we'll make it, there are even whole rows open in Economy Plus. The only sadness for us is that we had hoped to spend some time with Ken and Robyn Mulligan, the leaders of ywam in Townsville, before they left on another trip and now that might not be possible. But the adventure still waits and we have time to adjust to the time change for a few days before we start.

Ywam in Townsville has been very kind and accommodating in their communications with us and we are very excited to see what’s coming. We should be in Townsville for about 9 days before we fly to Port Moresby to join the ship (the PNG). Thank you to each one who has prayed for my health (I can feel it) and for our journey, we have been very blessed and relaxed as we patiently wait!! Next stop, Sydney!!

Starting a New Journey

Hello, I have kept an email journal for more than a decade, but for this adventure I have decided to open the gate a little wider, and while I will keep the Update Journal, I am going to add this for anyone who would like to stay informed about our trip. Good reading, friends! I wrote this first update a week ago, but it's such a good explanation of what is going on, I've repeated it here on a public forum. 

Today is the beginning of a new season for us. In 5 days we will be getting ready to hop on a flight to LA. From there we will attempt a flight to Sydney (though today there are but 24 seats left, we will need two seats by next Saturday. On the bright side all the remaining seats are in Economy Plus or better, so if we do make the flight, the chances of legroom for me are excellent). We have our passports, visas to Australia and Papua New Guinea, we made our first run at packing and I feel like a DTS student trying to figure out how to make everything I want to come fit.

I will attempt to bring some comforts from home to make the transition easier. Among the things I find comforting (you should think about what you would bring that would help you ease into a different culture!) that might not be considered necessary are (in order of importance):

-       French Press, personal mug and coffee I love. (includes some sweetener/powdered flavor)

-       A blanket to sleep under (the ship is equipped with air conditioning)

-       Some pictures of home and people I love.

-       Oatmeal for breakfast (most of the world eats Muesli and yogurt, not my favorites)

-       Powdered protein shake mix

-       And assorted other things that I could get there, but choose to take (mostly toiletries)

These are the things that will help me make a transition. Don’t get me wrong, the ship (confusingly named the PNG) is first class! At the same time, it IS a new culture, two new cultures, in fact, and will take some patience to get used to. In addition, when we went to Afghanistan 11 years ago, on our first adventure, I had a strong “culture shock” reaction and that was difficult, so I am attempting to prepare myself better, by being more aware. 

But the adventure feel is unmistakable, and I will be attempting once again to capture my sensory perceptions in this journal and allowing you to come along with us in a “virtual” experience around the world! Perhaps one of the hardest parts for me (and perhaps for the best) is the loss of connectivity to the world wide web!! Once we leave Townsville on March 3^rd, we will be in a place of vastly limited access to the outside world for about 6 weeks. Probably I will be able to hop online to upload these updates, but in all likelihood, that will be it. I am so used to surfing the web, streaming shows, skyping with friends around the world and mainly keeping in regular touch with people I love and like; that will be the hard part for me. But I know it will be good to be forced to live in the radical present, to experience the people and culture I will be serving and perhaps gain useful perspective!! Ready or not, it’s happening. So, to those friends that I text or write or skype daily, weekly or monthly, I’ll be back, pray for me! lol

The Thesis is turned in, the DTS graduated, the plans have been set, the money raised (we received a gift of over $5,000 recently towards the trip, praise God!) and the tickets we can buy, bought! We have a few loose ends to wrap up here, some communication to do, but mostly, I think we could walk out the door tomorrow and be on our way!! Last night I had the chance to spend an hour with a close friend and say goodbye (or see ya later, at least) and that’s the last and hardest part. Some friends will have left staff at ywam before we get back and though it is quite natural for people to move on from Denver, we have been here for 25 years. Who knows what the future holds, but I’m glad I know Who holds the future!