However, the vehicle that was meant to take her there was trapped on the other side of the river due to flooding. This courageous woman began to deliver. You would scarcely have known she was in labour save the small comforting rub she gave her stomach and back as the contractions came, along with the beads of sweat on her brow. She spoke next to no words; only a quiet nod as her mother-in-law asked if her water had broken minutes before. She quietly laid back and did what came naturally to her body. After delivering six babies before, she was accustomed to what was next.

At 10:28am on 24 April 2013, little baby Casey was born, and was named after IPHC leader, Casey Unruh! She got to assist in the delivery and also amazingly happens to have the same birthday as the baby! The IPHC reported that both mother and child are healthy and were able to rest well in the hospital afterward.

It was an amazing experience that every team member was honoured to be a part of. The river flooding is not a new occurrence; just before this mother arrived, one team member was checking on a mother who just hours before, delivered in a vehicle that was stuck due to flooding on her way to the hospital.

Home births are far from rare here in Papua New Guinea and unfortunately with this comes a high maternal mortality rate. Saint Margaret’s hospital and staff are a beacon of hope to the people of this area. The team felt privileged to work along side the nurses, nursing students, midwife, and healthcare workers that reside there. They learned so much, exchanged training, and built deep friendships through it all.

Skateboarding was born out of a positive place of activism in the 1940’s and 50’s when a couple of restless Californian surfers were bored with their flat, lifeless sea. Looking for some fun, they seized upon the idea of a surfing alternative; ‘sidewalk surfing’, saving them from the boring wait for the waves to come back! Wooden boxes evolved into planks, and planks evolved into decks which we now have today! The decks sold in surf shops across the United States and for a while both surfing and skateboarding had interchangeable skills, culture, and mindset.

During Australia’s National Youth Week, YWAM Townsville wanted to provide a space for members of this unique sub-culture to express themselves. Complete with a six foot half pipe, a skate fun box, rails, boxes, and over a thousand dollars of free giveaway prizes courtesy of Cre8ive Sk8, YWAM’s ‘I Want to Live Youth Event’ celebrated and championed the youth skating culture of Townsville.

Johnny Cochrane, a full-time youth worker for YWAM Townsville, was able to witness the unique dynamic of different generations of skaters working together. He says enthusiastically “The younger youth looked up to and respected the older skaters while the older ones encouraged the younger and were giving them tips and advice.” It was clear to see that skateboarding can provide a platform for different ages to work and learn together as well as how to respect and encourage each other; some pretty critical life lessons.

Respecting the need of youth to express themselves is often an important step in avoiding our young people to grow restless. In listening to our future leaders, allowing them to explore and create new trends, we will help to build their confidence, and help them discover purpose. We might even learn something ourselves!

Helen first developed her sea legs working onboard Disney Cruise Line in the Caribbean. After waving goodbye to Mickey Mouse, Helen moved to Townsville, Australia to complete her DTS in 2008. It was at this time when Helen started hearing whispers of something new and exciting stirring in Townsville which would prove groundbreaking in the way which YWAM Australia would operate: ‘I remember hearing about the dream of having our own medical ship on my DTS and after living on a ship for four years and being a trained physiotherapist, it seemed only natural to want to be involved’, she says enthusiastically.

Now in an established position of leadership, Helen has grown increasingly passionate about the holistic approach which the school embraces as it partners with the ship in its outreaches along remote regions of the Papuan coast. Students spend three months of their DTS in Papua New Guinea and some of this time is spent working alongside medical professionals where they are given opportunities to assist in treating and educating patients. Students are able to build relationships and share messages of hope with those that they stay with in the villages. Out of this place of relationship, there is opportunity for education which is an integral part of the work which YWAM Medical Ships provides. Helen relishes the opportunity to use her background in physiotherapy to educate local women in how to look after their backs and joints properly. “There are some things that seem natural in our own culture that people in PNG are not taught about”, Helen explained, “once people are educated they are empowered to help each other.”

Helen, is eagerly anticipating, along with other members of staff, the new wave of students who will be arriving for what will be the fourth Ship DTS at the beginning of May. So far, there are 20 students representing seven different countries confirmed for the training school. Helen has great anticipation of more students signing up in the last few weeks before the school starts – those who are unable to resist the tug of adventure!

Click here if you would like to find out more about the Ship DTS!

At 18, Kate had experienced more heartache than most adults. With a family background immersed in depression, alcohol, drugs, divorce, and abuse, the odds were stacked against her. Kate was born to a family filled with instability. Her mother was a drug addict, while her biological father was physically and emotionally abusive. Growing up, Kate was often told by family members that she would not amount to anything.

Kate soon realised that her life was meant for more than beer bottles and started to get proactive by sharing her story with younger girls she knew. By realising the significance of her story, Kate was able to positively influence the young teens around her including her three siblings.

“I realised that if my story could touch one person then it could make a big difference with many more,” says Kate.

Sometimes people do not realise how much of a fight it can be for youth to maintain their identity when they lack positive role models in their lives. This is where Kate shines.

She now lives and works in the Garbutt – West End area as a full time volunteer with Youth with a Mission (YWAM), giving her time to mentor, encourage, and empower Townsville youth.

“These teens are a part of my family,” Kate says, “They are like my brothers and sisters. I want to be a stable person in their lives and show them that they can be someone amazing.”

It is these statistics that have driven me, provoked me and ultimately, brought my group and myself on outreach in Australia. We are passionate about helping to instill a sense of purpose in the lives of Australian teens. During my team’s time on outreach we’ve had many an opportunity to do just that, and the results were almost immediate amongst some of the young people we met. This is the story of the students of West Wallsend High School in Newcastle.

The thing about this school in particular, was that the older students had actually seen YWAM Townsville’s medical ship on it’s last Australian tour, just over three years ago. Not only that, but they had been so inspired the students themselves organized a toothbrush and glasses drive to load up the ship to give out to the people on its tour through Papua New Guinea. That passion and drive to make a difference in the world, regardless of age, continues to this day in the new group of year eight students.

I was blessed with the opportunity to be a part of the next wave of students inspired to make a shift in the world. It quickly became clear to us that there was a huge opportunity here to challenge kids to see how they can make a difference in the world as well as find out for themselves what beliefs they choose to subscribe to.

One of the days we spent at this school we had an opportunity to speak to five different classes of year eight teenagers. We shared about the medical ship and how it ties in to the commission to love God and love your neighbours as yourself. Considering the fact that Papua New Guinea is the closest neighboring country to Australia, that couldn’t ring more true to the medical ship’s purpose. As we spoke and showed videos of what the medical ship is doing, you could see a visible change in interest in every class. Each time we went deeper into what the medical ship does you could see a longing in many of the students eyes to be a part of something great like that; to not only acknowledge there is injustice in the world, but that they could play a pivotal role in how injustice can be changed. Just as the classes before them felt moved to donate toothbrushes, toothpaste and glasses, so did they.

After only a week’s time we came back to the same classes to find that these five classes donated 50 toothbrushes, 9 tubes of toothpaste and 47 glasses. It inspired me not only to see the results that came from this drive, but to also see something deeper stirring in the students in these classes. They had seen there is something greater, they had stumbled upon a purpose.

After all was said and done I know that nothing is finished in the hearts of the young people that we were privileged to have met. The main theme every time we presented the story of the medical ship was that many people question God’s love and desire to give people the quality of life they deserve, when all they see is injustice in the world. But what they do not see is how He gives each and every one of us the times and opportunities to be the answers to those injustices. We have capacity to love and be broken-hearted for those we reach out to, and this sometimes happens through the awareness of the tragic things of this world, and softening of our hearts. I am thoroughly convinced, based on the response and the continued interest in how they can help, that the students in every class that we visited will continue to be interested in what’s going on in the world and how they can be the agents of change. There has never been, nor will there ever be an age limit or inability to change the world.

1. http://www.ynot1.com.au/magazines/Teenage%20Suicide.pdf.

On Friday we got to celebrate with the October DTS as they graduated from their school, it was a morning full of celebration and fun as we recalled some of the highlights from the past 21 weeks. If you were unable to join us on the day, here is the video for you to enjoy.

October 2012 DTS Graduation Video

Growing up in YWAM, this isn’t my first outreach, but every experience is different and has changed me in its unique way, breaking my heart for the things I’m witnessing but determining my spirit to reach out further.

Our team was on our way to Darwin, which meant an extremely long drive through the outback. We stopped off at a small indigenous town called Tenant Creek for two days. I have never worked with Aboriginal people so this is a new culture that I haven’t ever experienced before.

Among the many wonderful things I noticed about the Aboriginal people I met, I also noticed there seemed to be a lot of fear, which I didn’t fully understand. One day, some kids were telling me about a female snake in the lake (which we had swam in the day before) that attacks boys when they went swimming without the girls,

“Miss, the big snake come up and grab the boy and pull him under the water until he stop breathing! But if girl is swimming there, boy is safe,” one of young boys told me. His eyes wide at even mentioning the scene that fills his nightmares.

Knowing how awful fear is to live with, I could feel my heart breaking for these children, having a belief system filled with fears that caused them sleepless nights and haunting nightmares.
I wanted so much for that young boy and the other children with him to understand the perfect Love that makes fear go away.

And I guess that’s where we come in. After 11 weeks of lectures, we were all raring to go and share the Hope and Love.

The happy ending of this story is that five men and women in this community came to understand that perfect Love, which casts out all fear, one of our nights at Tenant Creek when we got to share in the park. It was my first experience of leading someone to life in Jesus and the look on the man’s face after we said, ‘amen’ was a picture I will forever carry with me – freedom.

Meeting these people, loving them and helping to bring life and freedom is a privilege. I am reminded daily of God’s love for us as He uses our team in the outback of Australia.

Newcastle is a city in New South Wales, Australia; NSW hosts approximately one quarter of the country’s total population. Of that total population approximately 105,000* people are by legal definition, homeless. That still does not account for the total amount of people who live below the poverty line in Australia, which is 2,265,000 people (12.8% of all people)**. Like all heavily populated cities there will be a higher case of homeless in the area for a wide array of reasons, and on one of the nights in Newcastle our team got the opportunity to spend time with a few people who tragically fall under these categories. Craig and Rachel (and their dog Dexter) were a some of these people.

Craig is twenty years old and as we were talking I found out that he had been on the streets homeless since he was 13, I could only venture to guess as to how long his girlfriend has also been homeless. In a short amount of time I got a glimpse into their lives, having to live out of one suitcase and be constantly protective of that as well for fear of having it stolen or fought over by people stumbling through the streets around them.

Before this time I struggled with justifying compassion for people and the mentality of them just having to try harder, but as the night went on, seeing more and more people come up to the Night Vision van for coffee and food I began to think that maybe it’s more my lack of compassion that keeps these people out on the streets as opposed to the lack of wanting to take care of themselves.
How often do we cross the street, how often do we pretend not to hear, how often do we, in that silence, make up our own stories of how we think they got there, instead of reaching out in love, to the point they’re at then and help them make a better future? It was long overdue for me to stop wondering at someone’s past and be more concerned for their future. With the way my past has looked dramatically different to my present and future, I felt responsible to give someone else that same opportunity.

Because we were working with the Night Vision team we had access to information about the area that otherwise we wouldn’t have. With that help we were able to find a shelter that was near a pet centre that had a team specifically focused on housing pets of people who didn’t have a home so they could have the reassurance that their pets would be taken care of. Not only that, but the Night Vision team kept extra blankets on hand for people they met that we were able to give to the couple. All of this coming together could not have worked out more perfectly with us working as a team with the organizations in Newcastle already and being able to show that these individuals mattered to us.

We were actually able to catch up with those same two people the very next night at the free sausage roast and see how they were doing! It was a great thing to have the opportunity to follow up with those that we meet, unfortunately that is often not the case due to so many circumstances. Just seeing the difference one night spent with them and showing that they mattered to us and to God through our actions and sharing with them, we could see a visible change in their outlook on things and for me personally I could absolutely see that hope had been put back into their lives.

+ Names changed for privacy issues
* http://www.homelessnessnsw.org.au/did-you-know/
**http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/publications.nsf/0/ABCBACB37DBBAE7ACA25758C008258FD/$File/HomelessnessFINAL.pdf

For the last week my outreach group has been in Lautoka, Fiji, serving at the local special needs school. We helped out wherever we were needed: taking down buildings destroyed by the resent cyclones, building a new green house for the school and restoring rust stained swing.

During our time here the children attending the school would devour us in their love, literally at any opportunity they had. From the very beginning they included us without any inhabitation, straight away treating us like family. It was these open hearts and welcoming spirits, none like any that I had ever experienced before, that spoke volumes to me. A few of the children were more outgoing then others, but one girl stuck out the most. Her name is Mary.

Mary especially loved Mel, endlessly presenting her with her treasures: sticks, branches and flowers. She posed for pictures and the taught us her flower picking games with patience, exploding in contagious laughter whenever we got her game wrong. How can Mary who has so little love so easily, laugh so loudly and smile so broadly? It was then that I realised, that even though I had come here to serve these children, through their beautiful nature they were teaching and serving me.

The Fiji team outside Lautoka special needs school.

The last day at the school was tough. The children had welcomed us so readily to be part of their family; their downcast eyes reflected back our own sadness. Mary sought me out in the crowd, wrapping her arms around me and enveloping me in her embrace. She asked me where her friend with the short hair is, chewing her bottom lip to keep in her tears. I knew she meant Mel. Mary tailed behind me as I quickly ran to find Mel. Mary shot past me running and jumping into Mel’s arms. That is why we are here. God has called us to love on His children, but not only that to love like His children, to love like Mary.

*Name changed for privacy issues.

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[1] Poverty Issues in Fiji. (n.d.). Think Pacific – 2013. Retrieved February 5, 2013, from http://www.thinkpacific.com/pages/aims-in-fiji/poverty-issues-in-fiji

[2] Poverty Issues in Fiji. (n.d.). Think Pacific – 2013. Retrieved February 5, 2013, from http://www.thinkpacific.com/pages/aims-in-fiji/poverty-issues-in-fiji