"Why are we here?"

Stephanie touched on this subject in her Mother's Day blog, and it's something I've given a lot of thought to as well. This is a long post with lots of reflection. Consider yourself warned.

I think it was 24 hours plus into our trip here when Stephanie asked me this question with tears in here eyes: "Why are we here?" By that point, we had been puked on, peed on, cried on, and slept on (and wishing we had been slept on a LOT more). We were finally in Papua New Guinea, and taking off on the final leg of our marathon trip up to Mt Hagen from where we would drive another hour to Kudjip, where the mission station is. There in the airplane, poor Stephanie was at her wits' end on a journey half way around the world that, in a lot of ways, she wasn't very excited about. With an exhausted child on her lap, I just put my arm around her and told her it would be okay. For me, the answer to "Why are we here?" starts back several years. I won't bore you with all the details, but here are some high points:

-Around age 4 or 5, I "ask Jesus to come into my heart." I didn't know what that really meant, and to this day I don't really know how significant those words were at the time. I've certainly had to make multiple decisions to follow or not follow God in my life since then. I kind of like to think of this event as the beginning of a journey, which is really what a relationship with God is.

-Age 16, my mom dies. I get pretty serious about figuring out the whole God thing, making sure He's really around, figuring out how I fit in to His plans, etc. Thanks in part to a great mom, I decide that God really does care about me (and everyone else), and I really want Him to be in the driver's seat in my life, even if I have no idea where I'm headed.

-I go to college to follow some girl named Stephanie. (This ends up working out pretty well for me.) There I meet a some guys that become my best friends and accountability group. They have had a pretty big influence on my life, and always for the better.

-My sophomore year of college, after previously ruling out any sort of extended education, I decide that medicine is kind of intriguing.

-That summer, I hear a guy named Phillip Parks speak at my church. He is a Korean guy who was training to become a missionary to China. Listening to him talk about God's call on his life and the way life can be... it really kind of grabbed me. He talked about the needs in our own backyard and all over the world, and what we can do to meet those needs. I think it was then that I decided to try to be a doc, so that I could put myself to good use no matter where I was.

-In medical school, I hear about an opportunity to travel internationally for a month or two. I also get ahold of a list of mission hospitals that take rotating med students, and lo and behold, there is a Nazarene Hospital in Papua New Guinea that catches my attention. Stephanie says no way is she going there with a two year old child. So, after much discussion, we go, along with Josh and Sara Adams, one of my best friends from college who is also in med school.

Now, I don't think I can really underestimate the magnitude of impact that trip had on our lives. I got exposed to medicine in a pure sense, without all the fancy tests, fear of litigation, wanting to make lots of money, wanting to look better than the guy you are competing with for grants, grades, a residency slot, etc. I got to be around a group of people who were/are doing what they love to do because they love the people they are serving and the God they are serving. We also got to experience life outside of "western culture" without TV, super fast internet, fast food, cell phones, and sexually charged advertising bombarding us. It was a great experience. Life was not so much harder or easier, but definitely different and much simpler. After a few weeks of adjustment, Stephanie and I both loved it. I knew after this trip that I wanted missionary medicine to be a part of my life, be it full-time as a career (still a bit intimidating), a month or two out of each year (pretty appealing), or something in between.

But, I guess all that only partly answers the question: Why am I here, now, in Kudjip, Papua New Guinea?

1) I really believe this is where God wants me to be right now. I know that sounds hokey to a lot of you, but it's true. Now, I'm not one that believes that God has every second of every day planned out for you. Would it have made a difference if we had come a couple months earlier? Later? For only one month instead of two? Probably not. I don't even know if it would have mattered had we chosen to serve and learn some place else for a month or two. Hard to explain, I guess, I just know us being here is right.

2) I'm here to learn my trade. It's no secret, I've got a lot to learn about medicine. I'm just completing my second year of residency, and there's a lot I haven't seen and even more I haven't actively taken care of. This hospital is really pretty ideal for that, in the sense that I get tons of hands on experience, and people come from all over to this place with all sorts of weird and sometimes classic pathology. There aren't any specialists, and to refer someone means them traveling a good distance, so we take care of just about everyone. I also get great experience with tropical diseases that just don't exist in the States.

3) I'm here to learn about life. Like I said, life is different here. In some ways harder, as I think about hopping in my truck and making a quick Wal-Mart run for whatever we need, and being far from family. But in other ways, life is much easier. I love the slow pace of life, the lack of cell phones and TV that distract and divert attention so easily from more important things. And, in terms of family, everyone here on the station does a great job of filling that gap, with the kids even calling other adults "aunt" or "uncle." It's a pretty cool thing.

4) I'm here to serve. The people here are pretty incredible. It seems like around the world, that happiness and wealth are inversely related, that is, the less a person has, the more likely they are to be happy. The stories of the suffering of folks here would break your heart, but you wouldn't know it by seeing them live their life or the big smile on their face. It is a great privilege to help these folks physically and share with them some of the love that God has shared with me.

5) I don't want to get too comfortable. Coming here was a bit of a big deal in terms of leaving our life in Nebraska, even for a short time, as well as just plain spending the amount of money needed to get here. At times, the choice was a bit uncomfortable. I realize, though, that there will never be an easier time for us to come. One function of this trip is to remind us of how much we love it and how right it feels, so that we can continue to make the uncomfortable choices in the future that will put us where we need to be.