Update May 2019

Hi friends :) I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last update! I’m sure May has been a busy month for many of you, as school is wrapping up and graduations seem to happen every week. It can be a bit overwhelming. I have to admit that it’s strange seeing all of the graduation posts of people from back home, but not actually being part of the celebrations. Even though I haven’t been home for the end-of-school madness, things here have been quite busy as well.

One exciting bit of news is that I was able to finish the very first project I started working on back in February when I first arrived. The project was basically to mail out newsletters for Medical Boomerang (Med Boom). Med Boom is a mission's opportunity for Health Care professionals to go on short term Medical outreach trips. The heart behind this is to provide opportunities for people trained in Medicine or health care to experience Medical Missions work. Mailing out a newsletter doesn't necessarily sound like an intense project, but there were many steps to obtaining mailing addresses, getting designs approved, finding a place to print them, figuring out how to mail them and the costs associated, and then redoing everything when things went wrong. Let's just say this was a very long-winded and tedious project, but on May 10th we finally finished and sent out over 200 newsletters!

We are about to enter week 9 of 12 in the April quarter, which means that the current schools will be leaving for outreach soon. There are several ministries that are also going on outreach soon, so the last few weeks there have been fundraisers everywhere you look. Two of my housemates are in a ministry called Island Breeze. This ministry has a focus on using performing arts as a tool for evangelism. The idea behind it is to bring redemption into the world sphere of celebration and show God's heart for the Arts and culture. They are going on outreach soon and are currently in the process of raising funds for this trip. As a strategy for fundraising, they had a free show and asked the crowd for a donation! I got to see another group from this ministry during my outreach in Germany, so I was super excited to see another performance. It was a really beautiful night, they did such an amazing job!!

One of the main things I got to be a part of this month was teaching. A few of the schools wanted to receive Health Care teaching, so that they could use it on their outreach. I really love teaching, so this is something I volunteer for any chance I get! In the past few weeks, I was able to help with teachings for two different schools. I think my favorite part is getting to share the heart of Health Care in Missions with people who aren't familiar with it.

Often, people think that Health Care in Missions is just proving Medical care to people in need, and that is a huge part of it, but it's so much bigger than that. It's about opening doors into closed nations and people groups, it's about empowering individuals and communities to impact their futures, it's about bringing life, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well, but most of all I think it's about bringing hope to something that seemed hopeless. I love getting to share this message with people in the hopes that they too will catch a heart for how impactful and useful Health Care can be to reach a community for Jesus.

The Birth Attendant School just got back from outreach this week and the Primary Health Care School and Medical Missions Schools will be back in a few weeks. The first week of July will mark the beginning of July quarter and the start of the Medical DTS. All this to say, we as Health Care, are gearing up for a busy season. There will be familiar faces returning and new faces arriving for the first time, it's such an exciting time!

Also, I'm getting to experience Fall for the second time in the last year, which I'm honestly fine with :D

In other news, I am also going on an outreach soon!! I will be heading to Cambodia in July as part of a Medical Boomerang team. We are planning on working alongside a hospital there as well as setting up mobile clinics in rural areas. I am so excited for this opportunity, because I have never actually done a medical outreach trip before, so I'm looking forward to being able use my nursing training in Missions. We will be in Cambodia for 3 weeks with a small team of other YWAMers and Health Care professionals. I should have a bit more information about this trip soon, but I just wanted to share it, so that you guys can be praying for me and my team as we start to prepare.

Thanks to all of my amazing supporters, I have all the funds that I need for this outreach! This is such a blessing and I am unbelievably grateful to you guys for all of your support and encouragement both financially and otherwise! Also, I am working on another update right now about what God has been teaching me over the past few weeks, so I should have that up sometime this week as well :)