Grace Chew’s Blog

15/2/2009: Day 4, Kapuna Hospital

First Sunday at Kapuna, and more glimpses into
God’s family which has taken root here. Service
starts between 9 and 930 am, in typical PNG style
(and also Malaysian, I must add) with people
trickling in at any time they want. The
musicians, 3 guitarists and a keyboardist, are
all self-taught, but the music they make is quite
professional. And sitting in the midst of the
crowd of singing PNGians makes for one
surround-sound experience. More about the
musicality of this people another time!

Most of the congregation are the staff members,
who come from all parts of the country – from the
Highlands to just down the river. Some parents
choose to send their children here to study
because it’s the only Christian-based community
health worker training centre, as I found out
when talking to some of the new students. Some
are roped in by marrying into the community, and
some join the discipleship courses held in Kapuna
for the youth of the surrounding villages and end up staying.

There are some patients I suppose, but only a
few, and perhaps only the kids. The staff members
hold separate services in several languages for
the patients later in the evening. The rest of
the congregation are the light-skinned people –
regulars like Dr Calvert, Dr Archer, and the
Calvert family; regular visitors like Uncle John
the resident engineer who comes at least twice a
year from Australia to make sure everything runs
smoothly; another Uncle John who flew in with us
to do electrical stuff; and the Pettersons –
Debbie whom we met in Port Moresby and her
husband Rob, who are with SAL and help train
people to translate their language into English
and vice versa. And occasionally there’s the odd
visitor – some Chinese girls like us, maybe some
Japanese, the occasional American student through INMED.

There is a family-like atmosphere in the church
service, and what underlines that for me is the
sitting on the ground, with older people at the
back on chairs, and the little kids fidgeting up
front, as well as the laid back way things are
handled – no worries, no pressure of schedule –
just God’s family meeting together on a Sunday to worship Him.

Later on in the day, when the heat was more
bearable, we took a walk downriver to the nearby
village Ara’ava. Dr. Valerie led the way, and led
the greetings as well, saying hello to almost
everyone we passed. People from Ara’ava regularly
come up to the hospital for treatment, and so
they have sort of a congenial relationship. And
having grown up here and treated them, the
doctors are definitely well-known. That being
said, everyone’s pretty friendly anyway. The walk
along the river was breezy and picturesque, and
I’d like to do it more often, except for my knee
and the fact that the heat is only bearable for
exercise for about 1 hour in the evening, then it
gets too dark to walk safely. Now most exercise
is from going produce-gathering in the surrounding garden!