Christmas Carols and Camouflage

An old tradition here on Kudjip Station, is for the missionaries to carol on the ward on Christmas Eve, and to give gifts to the patients. Throughout the year Judy, as storeroom manager, saves items that come in donation boxes to include in the gift packages. On the 23rd she is usually ready with her assembly line. She counts patients on each ward, and makes gifts for each category. She includes clothes, toothbrushes, soap and a few pieces of candy for everyone. Lotions for the ladies, diapers and baby powder for the babies, toys for the kids. On Christmas Eve she does a last-minute re-count to make sure that there's a gift for every patient. She makes a couple extra of each kind, to account for last minute admissions.

But this year she was worried. There weren't many gift items in the storeroom. She just didn't have enough to make up the bags. That's when it came.

Several times a year we receive a 20-foot container of donated supplies from Nazarene Hospital Foundation. Dr. Todd Winter in Medford, Oregon has made this his ministry. He gathers medical supplies for Kudjip hospital, loads the containers and ships them to us. He holds fund-raisers to help pay for shipping costs. He has been here several time, and knows our needs well. He manages to get items that are most needed, and in good quantities. People who have items to donate to our ministry can also ship their gifts to him, and he includes them in the containers. This has become very important with the great increases in shipping costs.

On the 23rd the latest container came. Judy's day was already busy, but the container is a real big deal for us, the medical supplies are the very important to our work. So, busy as she was, and concerned as she was about the Christmas gifts, she happily supervised the unloading of the container, and the distribution of supplies to the various storage areas, or departments of the hospital. We've recently had a serious shortage of certain sizes of gloves, and that container had a lot of gloves. But if the container had arrived a few days later, it would have been just as valuable to our work.

Baby powder, hats and toothbrushes don't save lives, but they bring joy to people who have little, and the container had an abundance of great items for the Christmas packages. And it didn't arrive later, it arrived just in time for Judy, along with Gail Dooley and her girls, to assemble the gifts. The clothes, toothbrushes, toys and lotions were transferred to pillow cases, tied up with bright ribbon (the color of the ribbon coding the type of patient it was intended for) for us to give out on Christmas eve.

Another great friend of Kudjip Hospital is Dr. Larry Hull. This kind, gentle orthopedic surgeon from Centralia, Washington has come to PNG every year for the last...well, I've lost track of how many years, to do surgery, and to encourage us. All year long he looks for ways to help us out. We hadn't heard anything about it, but somewhere he had found a large quantity of camoflauge hats, trousers and shirts. He sent them to Todd (he and Todd are old friends, by the way) and they were in this container. Every big kid got a hat. Every adult got a shirt or trousers. Imediately trading and bartering began for those who wanted complete outfits. You should see them all!

So we went from ward to ward, singing, praying, shaking hands and giving out those pillow cases. It brought great joy to each patient and to each family member. And great joy to us.


If you would like to help us by helping Dr. Todd (through Nazarene Hospital Foundation) with the cost of shipping containers to us, go to the NHF web site. Look over the whole site, but go to the donations link. NHF has no salaried staff, just volunteers, so 100% of any gifts to them are directed to the ministry of Nazarene Hospital. Any donated supplies or equipment need to be cleared with Judy prior to shipping to Todd. We are bursting at the seams in our medical storeroom and need to build a new and larger building. Of course, your continued support of our work is also greatly appreciated.

Some photos shamelessly stolen from the Dooley's blog. Take a look at it for a lot more photos of Kudjip Station during Christmas week.

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