Epilogue
Well, it’s been nearly three weeks since the outreach team departed and life has gone on. After closing up the clinic on the Wednesday we all visited a local school for some health & dental education, and for once Dani and I got to do this together! We handed out a load of toothbrushes and toothpaste for them to take home and in turn the children treated to us to a selection of songs in Fijian and English. Pretty good lungs for their size!
We packed up and headed back to Lautoka the next day, stopping for a congratulatory ice cream on the way. That evening we had our ‘graduation’ dinner – a top-notch BBQ by Daesong and Karen (Marine Reach Fiji staff). On Friday our team members departed a few at a time and the base went back to business as usual.
During November we are planning three more, smaller Outreaches two or three days long. These will involve the fulltime staff here in Lautoka. In addition, we have two large Outreaches planned for next year and already people have been contacting us hoping to sign up – we must have done something right!
But probably biggest of all is our plan to run a Healthcare & Medical Discipleship Training School starting on the 30th March 2015. The DTS seeks to bring students into a more intimate relationship with God and is a full-time program consisting of lecture and outreach phases over 5 months. Ours will be aimed at healthcare professionals or anyone with an interest in medical care. Needless to say we have some work to do to prepare…
Also of interest, Tomasi has returned to his home in Nagado and is able to walk a few steps with crutches. His follow-up care has been transferred to Nadi Hospital which means that Dani won’t be able to visit him anymore, but she is being kept updated by phone. And last but not least we would appreciate some prayer for Ane, our medical GP on staff, who has been battling bureaucracy and red tape with the Medical Council and Immigration Office to obtain her medical registration. She has been here over three months now and is still unable to practice for seemingly pointless reasons, so a prompt resolution would be much appreciated!
Sponsored by Colgate? 😉
Exciting news about the DTS! When you say ‘run the DTS’ are you the only main leaders or do you have others to help you? Also do you need to design the program your ‘students’ go through…medical/spiritual/etc!>?
Exciting times indeed!
Ps don’t worry about answering now as I’m sure you have far better things to do than answer my questions…look forward to catching up at Christmas!
Hmm, think we can squeeze a few answers in.
The DTS will very much be a team affair. As we have never done one ourselves we are not allowed to be official staff but at the very least we will be involved in the planning, publicity and background assistance. The DTS will follow a fairly predetermined structure set by YWAM, but there is enough flexibility there for us to give it a theme (Healthcare & Medical) and to add our own personal touch to it. We also get to choose who gives the lectures and what format the outreach takes (again, medical). If you want to know more you can visit ywam.org or soon (we hope!) I’ll have a new website up for marinereachfiji.com with all the information on it.
Hope everything’s going well with the wedding planning! You’ll have to think hard to trump a minion cake though…