BREVITY OF LIFE

BREVITY OF LIFE

Nate and others watching the patient with concern.

By Jackie Fallis - 2009.09.09

Routine emergencies in Papua New Guinea emphasize how fragile life is.

Missionary aviator Nate Schrag and his son Brock picked up medevac patients in two locations last weekend.

The first was fairly normal. A woman having complications in child birth was picked up along with her caretaker. In the local hospitals, it’s the job of the caretaker, or “watch papa” to attend to the patient, not nurses. That means providing the food, blankets, and sometimes even the medicine the patients need, running to local shops for the supplies.

The second stop was to pick up a man bitten by a death adder.

“The man was put into the plane, but then had complications and seizures,” wrote Barb, “so he was pulled back out and resuscitated by the health care worker.”

About five minutes after taking off the health care worker tapped Nate on the shoulder and told him to go back, the man had died.

The belief in the area is that if you do not die in your tribe, then your spirit goes on wandering looking for a home. It’s not at rest. So when the people heard the plane coming back, they knew what it meant physically and according to their beliefs. The Schrags don’t know if the man was a believer, but they do know the anguish of the people who surrounded the landed plane.

Please pray for those who lost their loved one, that they will come to know Christ and His peace, if they do not yet know.