LIMM provided a travel grant for a parish nurse from Papua, New Guinea to attend the 2015 Parish Nurse Travel Tour. Below is a summary from Elizabeth Natera.
Parish Nursing in Papua New Guinea
Parish Nursing in Papua New Guinea started when some nurses from Goroka learnt about Parish Nursing in the Internet and so started researching it and eventually attended the course in Adelaide, South Australia. When they came back, their congregation which is the St. John’s Lutheran Church in Goroka (a town in PNG) included Parish Nursing as a ministry of the congregation. Their Pastor (Pastor Graham Baital) was very much involved in getting this ministry going.
All the Parish Nursing course was conducted in Goroka by Rev. Bob Wiebush and his wife Lynette of Adelaide, South Australia. So St. John’s Congregation in Goroka, Eastern Highlands Province was the only congregation that had Parish Nurses.
In 2014 Pastor G.Baital invited some of us from Madang to attend the workshop in Goroka. About 9 of us from 4 different congregations were participants of this workshop. Coming back to Madang, we started conducting clinics in all these congregations. We moved from congregation to congregation because we all did not come from the same congregation. Got good results from our clinics.
From September 23rd to the 1st of October 2015, 6 of us attended the Study Tour in New Zealand. Four were from St. John’s congregation in Goroka and two of us from Memorial congregation in Madang. The two from Madang (Walpain Lagot & myself) were Blessed with the scholarship that was from the “Lutherans in Medical Missions”. Thankyou so much.
Being part of the Study Tour gave us the opportunity to:
- Firstly, meet other parish nurses from other countries and learn about what they are doing in regard to Parish Nursing.
- Secondly, there are other sessions that were presented by Rev. Wiebush and others that gave us a global perspective of the Parish Nursing.
- Thirdly, gave us the opportunity to see parts of New Zealand.
Thank you and may God continue to Bless you as you continue to serve Him in what you are doing.
Back row, L to R: Elizabeth Natera, Walpain Lagot, Epau Toa Above: Team from Madang during the workshop at Goroka
Front row, L to R: Leke Kamale, Judith Gureri, Janet Asa
Elizabeth Natera
