Ashley's Updates

  Pioneering is not easy, and it’s rarely comfortable or glamorous. You don’t always get to see the fruit of your labour, and there’s a guarantee that the enemy is going to come against you because you’re trying to take ground; but when I look back at what we’ve accomplished and how many opportunities the Lord has opened up, I’m not surprised at all that the enemy has been attacking us so relentlessly!   When we arrived in Madang five weeks ago, I had about three contacts for medical ministry, churches, transport, etc., and now I have almost twenty! We have been able to make connections with officials high up in the Provincial Health Authority, and they are eager to work with us to reach the remote areas of Madang Province. We’ve connected with pastors, healthcare workers, other ministries, village and business leaders. It is absolutely mind-blowing what the Lord has done! As I write this, we’ve got two weeks left in our outreach. Our primary ministry on this trip has been vol...

 The time is finally here!! On Monday I am flying to Madang to do medical outreach for the next seven weeks! It has been twenty months since the last medical outreach, so this is a MASSIVE breakthrough! Our medical team has been onboard the ship for the last three weeks, preparing for outreach and helping out on the ship and boosting the community. We’ve had an amazing time getting to know each other, building relationships with locals and crew onboard, and they’ve honestly been such a blessing to me. In early July I was looking at the outreach plans, and they seemed so hopeless. The nation had just instituted a 21-day quarantine, I had no leads, the ship’s surveys were being delayed AGAIN. I was having doubts about whether the outreach would even go ahead, and I was googling flights back to Canada for September; but in one of my quiet times one morning, the Lord whispered “you’re going to do medical outreach this year”. It was all I had to hold onto, and I am just BLOWN AWAY by th...

     What does it mean to persevere? I’ve been pondering on that a lot lately. I think often, we consider it to mean holding on, white knuckled, doing everything we can to stay with something, no matter how painful it is: just get through it. I know I’ve been guilty of that. My 2021 experience of living on the YWAM Liberty in Papua New Guinea has been exactly that. It has not lived up to any of my expectations, and has basically been exactly the same experience as last year, except with maybe a bit of a healthier environment. Everything I feared would happen before I came is exactly what has happened, and now I’m stuck here and trying to reconcile that. I traveled to PNG because I felt the Lord prompting me to do so. I was afraid I would get stuck on the ship not going anywhere and filling all the admin roles, and had to trust that God had a bigger plan and was going to come through and I’d get to do some nursing. Yet here I am, living out my greatest fear.  Is God s...

  It’s been a while since I put out an update, or really posted anything in general. That’s honestly because nothing very interesting has been going on, and that’s a reality of being in missions. Not every moment is leading the charge, intense stories, or groundbreaking moments. Sometimes it’s administrative work, buying provisions, or cooking for the whole ship; but just because these tasks aren’t necessarily what I signed up for, or even related to my role as Chief Medical Administrator, it doesn’t mean they are any less valuable or essential to reaching the vision. I am part of something that is greater than myself, and it’s not about me getting good stories or recognition, it’s about God getting the glory and pushing the entire ministry forward so that more people can be impacted by God’s love. Jesus called us to be servants, and that means to help out where I’m needed, even if it’s not necessarily where I want to be. Just because I’m not doing exactly what I want, doesn’t mean...

 So I guess the biggest news I have to share is that I have finally booked my plane tickets back to Papua New Guinea! I'll be traveling there on May 17, and then having to quarantine for two weeks in a hotel. I should be back on the ship on June 4, and I will remain in PNG until December when our outreaches are scheduled to finish. This has been a really emotionally complex decision for me, and I really feel like I'm stepping out in faith by travelling to PNG at this time. On one hand, my visa for the US runs out June 1, so I need to leave and go somewhere anyhow, and I WANT to go to PNG and I'm excited to start outreaches. On the other hand, I have so enjoyed my time here; I have been able to do such fruitful things, and have begun to build such wonderful friendships that I don't want to leave! I'm also battling the fears of being disappointed like I have been in the past, but also the knowledge that God is moving and giving us momentum like never before, and wanti...

 This latest post is going to be really fun for me to write, and hopefully for you to read, because I have lots of practical accomplishments to report! Contrary to popular belief (that's a lie, I don't know if it's all that popular), I haven't been on holiday in Hawaii for the last four months, aka "writing policies". I've been working really hard, and I've got the proof! I have been prepping, dreaming, and building new systems and processes to implement when we start outreaches in July!  Due to Covid, it's been over a year since we've run a medical outreach. That's been tough on my heart (see every previous post since March 2020), but it has given me and the rest of the team lots of time to take a step back, evaluate our processes, and implement new things for the great reset, if you will. I can tell that God's hand is in this, and I'm so excited to share what I've been up to! So without further ado: 1. I was able to source and...

 It's been a weird week. It seems like there are a lot of things in my life currently that are in God's hands,  and they are at a tipping point between breakthrough and not going how I would like. I have no control over so many things, and I am having to trust in God's goodness and provision. This is a week of believing for breakthrough, but preparing myself to be okay if it doesn't happen. God is reminding me to stay in the present. When you worry about the future, you miss what's right in front of you. Even if every single thing that I am believing in faith for doesn't turn out how I want, God is still sovereign and I'll be okay. Find the joy in each day, because God is good! He has good things for you every day, no matter what is going on, no matter what you are uncertain about. Take the changes as they come, and trust that God knows what he's doing. We have seen SO much breakthrough with the Liberty over the last month. We finally got our dry dock da...

 Well, it's a new year, and that's a time for new starts, new vision, and a fresh perspective. I tried to write this update last week, and I didn't know what to write. I just felt at a loss, because there has been a lot going on, but comparitively to other times in my life, there really hasn't been much going on. I realized that with everything that I went through last year, I had forgotten how to walk with the Lord when things are really good. I got so used to relying desperately on Him, and crying out for every need, that I forgot how to spend time in his presence when I had no desperate need. That said, this time in Kona is a blessing. It has given me an opportunity to pause, and to just be grateful for God's faithfulness; to look back on everything he has brought me through, and to pray into what he wants next for me. To bask in the grace and blessing of being able to walk through life with him, even though there are a lot of unknowns and uncertainties.  I'v...