{"id":1932,"date":"2016-07-10T11:53:44","date_gmt":"2016-07-10T01:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/josh-verdonck\/?p=1932"},"modified":"2016-07-10T11:53:44","modified_gmt":"2016-07-10T01:53:44","slug":"currently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/josh-verdonck\/2016\/07\/currently\/","title":{"rendered":"currently"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been a bit gunshy since my last post. I shared all about my trip into the bush to help put on a little preventative clinic for a village; since most of you who read here regularly know I work in the medical clinic this shouldn\u2019t surprise you. However, the rest of the world is not as knowledgeable or understanding as you, and I encountered something I\u2019ve never had to before: hate mail. Hundreds of hateful comments between Facebook, this blog, and my personal email.<\/p>\n

The post and comments have since been removed, but the sting is still there, making me wary of writing again. The hateful comments, while they certainly hurt, are not the thing that upset me the most. It\u2019s the ignorance. The ignorance that these treatable diseases are making a comeback, with deadly results in places like PNG where they can wipe out entire villages because there\u2019s no access to treatment. Even if you choose not to vaccinate your children, they won\u2019t die because there is help easily available there if they do get sick. You don\u2019t have to watch your baby suffer and die from hepatits, or measles, or whooping cough, or tetanus. Without help, these village mamas do.<\/p>\n

\"Sweet
Sweet village mamas with their babies.
?: Erin Verdonck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Apart from that, life here has been pretty quiet. Since graduation at the beginning of June, a lot of people have left for summer break or home assignment. At the end of July, many will return and many new people will arrive. Until then, I\u2019m loving the quiet of the center, and the easy, relaxed attitude that is permeating the center. It helps that \u201csummer\u201d is a little cooler in this hemisphere, as it\u2019s technically fall\/winter on this half of the world. We don\u2019t get much variation in temperature, but the cool mornings and evenings are a nice change.<\/p>\n

\"A
A quiet day at the clinic front desk.
?: Erin Verdonck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Josh has been flying and\/or riding along a lot lately. In addition to flight time, he\u2019s the flight coordinator in the hangar. This has been good, as it keeps him busy, plus he\u2019s getting more experience in-country. Win-win! The Kodiaks have been a huge blessing here. They have opened up more opportunities to fly into our more remote, and far away areas. Once a week or so, a team of two pilots will fly to one of these areas and stay there for a night or two to get all of the flying done in that area. This is a huge encouragement to the missionaries there, who are often quite isolated.<\/p>\n

\"Missionary
Missionary aviation is dirty work – but someone’s gotta do it!
?: Josh Verdonck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We\u2019ve also had a couple med-evacs from the tribe to our clinic lately. As one of the receptionists in our clinic, I get to work closely with NTMA\u2019s flight coordinator (my hunky husband), to arrange transport for these med-evacs. It\u2019s always amazing to me to watch our team here in PNG pull together to help out in these situations. Between the guest house preparing rooms for them, to people making meals for them and the clinic the staff, to people all over praying, to NTMA being on-call for a possible evac to Australia, to our nurses and doctors (and even receptionists) pulling all-nighters to give the best care they can. This is what the Church is; this is 1 Corinthians 12 in action, and it\u2019s amazing.<\/p>\n

\"Josh
Josh flying a med-evac.
?: Josh Verdonck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Josh
Josh with one of our nurses and team transporting our med-evac patient
?: Koen Verdonck<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been a bit gunshy since my last post. I shared all about my trip into the bush to help put on a little preventative clinic for a village; since most of you who read here regularly know I work in the medical clinic this shouldn\u2019t surprise you. However, the rest of the world is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1080,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1239,1249,448,2396,91613,91837,1196,68449,85834,637,2147,490,638,86387],"class_list":["post-1932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-ministry","tag-aviation","tag-erin","tag-ethnos360","tag-josh","tag-josh-and-erin-verdonck","tag-josh-verdonck","tag-missionary-aviation","tag-missionary-aviation-png","tag-missionary-life","tag-new-tribes-mission","tag-new-tribes-mission-aviation","tag-ntma","tag-papua-new-guinea","tag-quest-kodiak","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/josh-verdonck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/josh-verdonck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/josh-verdonck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/josh-verdonck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1080"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/josh-verdonck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/josh-verdonck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/josh-verdonck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/josh-verdonck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/josh-verdonck\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}