
In this podcast episode, Mark Turman discusses the importance of serving in the Christian faith, highlighting the work of Mercy Ships, an international ministry that provides surgical care to the world’s forgotten poor. Raeanne Newquist shares her personal journey with Mercy Ships, detailing the transformative impact of their work on patients and the community. The conversation emphasizes the significance of restoring dignity and humanity to those in need, as well as the personal growth experienced by volunteers and their families.
The discussion explores the various roles available for volunteers, the unique family dynamics aboard the ships, and the spiritual impact of serving in diverse communities. Raeanne emphasizes the importance of prayer, the need for various skill sets, and the profound experiences that come from working in a global mission context.
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Topics
- (00:00): The Call to Serve: Understanding Christian Service
- (06:02): Introducing Mercy Ships: A Unique Ministry
- (12:06): The Impact of Mercy Ships: Transformative Patient Stories
- (17:57): Personal Connections: How Mercy Ships Changed Lives
- (26:25): Transformative Journey with Mercy Ships
- (31:40): The Broad Scope of Service Opportunities
- (35:43): Family Life Aboard Mercy Ships
- (39:55): Commitment Levels and Volunteer Roles
- (44:00): Navigating Complexities of Service
- (48:29): Spiritual Impact and Community on Board
Resources
About Raeanne Newquist
Raeanne, her husband, and 3 children joined Mercy Ships in 2019. After leaving everything behind in Southern California, they boarded the Africa Mercy in Las Palmas and made their first sail down to Dakar, Senegal for their first field service. On board, Raeanne volunteered in the communications department and later in chaplaincy. Currently, Raeanne works in the Mercy Ships U.S. Marketing department. Raeanne is the host of the New Mercies podcast, is the voice of the Mercy Minute daily radio broadcast and serves as a staff writer.
About Mercy Ships
Mercy Ships, founded in 1978, operates hospital ships that deliver free surgeries and other healthcare services to those with little access to safe medical care.
Mercy Ships bases its work from its two hospital ships, the Africa Mercy®, which went into service in 2007, and the Global Mercy® — the world’s first purpose-built civilian hospital ship—which began serving African nations in 2022.
Direct Medical – Mercy Ships provides safe, free surgeries on board its hospital ships, focusing on seven specialties: maxillofacial/head and neck surgery; reconstructive plastic surgery; pediatric orthopedic surgery; specialized pediatric surgery; general surgery; opthalmic; and women’s health.
Education, Training, and Advocacy – Mercy Ships focuses on long-term, sustainable education and training across the surgical ecosystem, working to create lasting impact by increasing surgical capacity in host nations.
Since 1978 Mercy Ships has provided:
- 117,000+ Life-Saving Surgeries
- 541,000+ Dental Procedures
- 54,300+ Professionals trained in their area of expertise
- 2.87 million+ direct beneficiaries
About Dr. Mark Turman
Dr. Mark Turman is the Executive Director of Denison Forum and Vice President of Denison Ministries. Among his many duties, Turman is most notably the host of The Denison Forum Podcast. He is also the chief strategist for DF Pastors, which equips pastors and church leaders to understand and transform today’s culture.
About Denison Forum
Denison Forum exists to thoughtfully engage the issues of the day from a biblical perspective through The Daily Article email newsletter and podcast, The Denison Forum Podcast, as well as many books and additional resources.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
NOTE: This transcript was AI-generated and has not been fully edited.
[00:00:00] Dr. Mark Turman: I’m Mark Turman, your host for another Denison Forum podcast. We want to help you to be equipped in your walk with Christ to think biblically, to live a life of holiness and beauty and to serve eagerly. And today we are focused on the last part of that statement, which is Helping you find every kind of good place where you might be able to serve God.
And to not just simply be somebody who knows what the Bible teaches, but actually lives it and does it. You know that Jesus talked a lot about serving. He said incredible things like the greatest among you and the greatest in the kingdom of God are the ones who serve. We know. That Jesus modeled that in every way right up until the last hours of his life, when he was washing the feet of his disciples and then telling them that that was an example and caring for the least, the last, the voiceless, the under resourced we know is at the heart of the Christian faith.
James tells us that we are to be about caring for widows and orphans. And so we’re going to talk about doing that today through a very beautiful, powerful, and unique international ministry called Mercy Ships. My guest today is Rayanne Newquist, who has had several positions with Mercy Ships, and she’s going to tell us a little bit about not only her own experience becoming involved with this ministry, but more importantly, we want to tell you about the ministry at large and ask you to pray about how.
God might want you to be engaged, even if that’s just to know about Mercy Ships and to make it known to other people that might be interested or in other ways that God might want you to connect and be involved. And if you haven’t ever heard of it, we are really excited to introduce you to Mercy Ships.
Welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:55] Raeanne Newquist: Thanks. Thank you. It’s happy. I’m happy to be here.
[00:01:58] Dr. Mark Turman: Well, as we get started, tell us a little bit about your family. We got acquainted before we started recording, but tell us what you would want us to know about your family.
[00:02:07] Raeanne Newquist: Well, I have been married for 20 years. to an incredible man who also is working at Mercy Ships with me.
And we have three children, twin daughters, who are currently freshmen in university, one in Alabama, one in Texas. So they’ve left their home of California and ventured out quite, quite far from us, but they’re doing well. And then we have a son at home who’s a sophomore. So I’ve got about two and a half more years of kids at home, and then we’ll experience a whole new chapter of life.
[00:02:40] Dr. Mark Turman: All right. And you were telling me native Californian, right? Or at least for a very long time.
[00:02:45] Raeanne Newquist: Yeah, all our children were born here in Southern California. And I actually was born in New Jersey, but I moved to California before my second birthday. So by California standards, I’m a native
[00:02:57] Dr. Mark Turman: and my
[00:02:57] Raeanne Newquist: husband is definitely born and raised in California.
[00:03:00] Dr. Mark Turman: Well, California is very much obviously in the news because of the terrible fires. What are you hearing in your part of Northern California? Do you have friends, relatives still in the LA area? What’s, what’s your read on that terrible situation?
[00:03:14] Raeanne Newquist: Yeah. You know actually Los Angeles, I would still say is home to us.
We’ve only been in Northern California for about three and a half years. But it is. Really unbelievable. What is going on down there? The destruction is It’s really unfathomable and you know, we have several friends who have lost their churches and lost their schools. I don’t have a personal friend yet that has lost their home in the area, have lots of friends who’ve been evacuated and have been without power for many days.
But it’s, it’s going to take a long time to rebuild the, the destruction that has taken place. It’s really, it’s really quite tragic.
[00:03:53] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, just, you know, we thought we had seen the height of devastation when we saw the hurricane and floods over in the eastern part of the country. And then when we saw what happened in Hawaii with the fire in line and all this, but this is even on a grander scale, just something hard to And it’s still going on.
It’s not yet under control or completely out of the picture yet. So it’s just really hard to believe. We’ll pray for that. And we try to connect people with ways that they can give and serve in those environments. We’re very connected to Texas Baptist men and other resources. We’ll put those in the show notes if you’re looking for a good, credible place to donate, that type of thing.
We’ll put some of those in our show notes for this episode, episode. But tell us, what in the world is Mercy Ships? Let’s, let’s imagine that the person listening to us has never heard of this ministry. And full disclosure, I’ll tell you a little bit of my connection to Mercy Ship if we have time for that.
But, What is Mercy Ships, Raeanne?
[00:04:59] Raeanne Newquist: Well, we have the world’s largest non governmental hospital ships. And we specialize in surgery specifically, so we don’t provide general medicine, but we are surgery ships, if you will. So we have two ships currently in our fleet, and we have been around for over 45 years, bringing hope and healing to the world’s forgotten poor.
So right now, we primarily serve in Africa. off the coast of Africa, mostly off the west coast. Although we do have a ship currently in Madagascar and another ship that is in Sierra Leone serving the people there. But we have kind of two branches to our, our mission. One of them is direct medical care, which is surgery.
And we have about six areas of specialty that we serve. And then another branch of our organization is really education, training, and advocacy. So the countries that we go into, we love to train and equip. To further educate medical professionals in the countries where we’re serving and to bolster the health care system in any ways that we possibly can.
I think the dream is to work ourselves out of a job. If we can train up enough medical professionals in these developing nations, then Maybe one day there won’t be need for us to come. So there’s a lot that we get to do. It’s pretty incredible at this point. We’ve hit, I think, over 120, 000 life changing surgeries that have been performed for free for people in developing nations.
And that, that number continues to rise.
[00:06:34] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that’s that’s incredible. So yeah, so many people love cruising, right? In all different kinds of places. Tell us more about the ships because I think people are like, what do you mean a hospital ship? We know the military. Has had hospital ships, but what do you mean somebody other than the military has something that’s like a floating hospital?
Tell us a bit more about the founder’s story and, and what the ships are like.
[00:07:01] Raeanne Newquist: Yeah, so our founder, Don Stevens, he has a really interesting story. Cause he grew up in rural Colorado, so no oceans in sight for him, but God gave him a vision really as a young teenage boy to have hospital ships serving the poor.
And he really just continued to pray and grow into that vision until he purchased his first ship. I believe it was in Greece. And had it converted into a hospital ship. At that time, early on in Mercy Ship’s history, they weren’t performing surgeries on board, but they would do medical services on land that the ships would take them to.
And the ministry has just grown and grown until we purchased the Africa Mercy was a Danish rail ferry that we converted into a hospital. But a couple of years ago, pretty exciting, we took possession of the first ever purpose built hospital ship for mercy ships. And that took many years to create and to build in China, but we took ownership of her.
I want to say 2023 was her first field service. It all happened in the midst of COVID. So that was a little bit crazy, but the global mercy is our purpose built ship that has. six O. R. s on board, 199 hospital beds. It’s quite a large ship.
[00:08:23] Dr. Mark Turman: And
[00:08:24] Raeanne Newquist: whereas no, our vessels are not cruise ships by any means. We do have gyms on board and swimming pools and there’s cafes because all the crew that come and serve it, it becomes their home.
And so they’re really like floating cities. We have not just nurses and doctors that serve on board, but there’s also teachers. My family served on board. I brought my three kids with my husband to serve on board. And our kids went to school with teachers from all over the world and students from all over the world.
So they’re like floating cities. We don’t have go kart racing and, you know, bowling alleys and things of that nature. But there are actually quite, quite a few very fun activities to be had on board as well.
[00:09:06] Dr. Mark Turman: Okay. Wow. Okay. That’s amazing. So people think about numbers, you know so I recently got to take a cruise and this particular ship had 1400 or so people on it as passengers.
Not sure how many people were in the crew. We thought it was. You know, significant enough until we pulled into a port and there were ships that came in beside us that had, you know, three, five, maybe even 7000 people on them. So not counting tell me if you know, not counting the patient numbers, how many people are crew members?
All the people that do the medical treatments, but then all the other people that support the ship, steer the ship, all that, about how many people are on each of the ships?
[00:09:49] Raeanne Newquist: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t know that I could throw out exact numbers, but I’ll give you a rough idea. On the Africa Mercy, which is our smaller vessel where our family served.
At any given time, I would say when the ship is in field service and if it’s to capacity, there’s about 700 people on board and part of that population is national crew that live and work in the country where we’re serving. So when we pull into port, we will employ really about 250 or so national people to come on board every day.
They don’t. live on board with us. They’ll return to their homes every night, but they come and serve as our cultural translators and our language translators really bridge the gap for the culture of the country that we’re in. But the global mercy, it’s almost double the size of the Africa mercy in many ways.
And so the capacity is much larger. I would. say that the crew, not the national crew, is closer to 800 if we’re at full capacity.
[00:10:56] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. Okay. Well, people really like to know stories, so is there kind of a a story that kind of encapsulates for you, okay, this is really a great picture of what we do. Is there one patient story that really stands out for you that’s, that, okay, this really is kind of the epitome.
Of what Mercy Ships is about. Is there one that stands out?
[00:11:19] Raeanne Newquist: Oh gosh, there are so many, there’s honestly just so many incredible people that have their lives transformed by Mercy Ships, but they really in turn kind of transformed our lives when we got to meet them and get to know them. I will highlight one patient that I actually didn’t meet, but.
A nurse that we served with met and told me her story and we talked at length about this woman. But one of our areas of surgery that we do is one of our rotations, if you will, is women’s health. And this is where we do fistula repair. Now, maybe some of your listeners aren’t familiar with that term. I know I wasn’t, but in developing nations where medical access there’s limited medical access and you know, not many surgeries available or hospitals.
If a woman is pregnant and goes into labor and there’s some kind of And, you know, difficulties with the labor some of these women, they can’t just go to a hospital and have a C section like we would here in the West. But some of these women will labor for four and five days. And I know having had three children myself, I can’t even wrap my head around that.
But what happens more often than not is that the babies will die. And the mother, when she finally is able to pass the baby, she’s left with a torn up body. So fistula means hole, and they’re left with holes, oftentimes on their bladder, leaving them incontinent. So in these cultures these women are deemed cursed.
And they’re really outcasts in their communities, which really is kind of a lot of the patients that we see regardless of their condition, whether it’s a large tumor on their face or burn contractures or severely bowed legs, they’re considered Cursed and they will become outcasts in their community.
Well, for a lot of these women who suffer from fistula, they are abandoned by their husbands. They are, you know, cast out of even their village. And there was one woman in particular named Rugi and she suffered from a fistula after having a stillborn baby. And She was out in the bush by herself for 10 years.
And this woman, you know, every morning she would wake up and her dress would be wet. And she would wash out her dress and put it back on again after it dried and kind of repeat this cycle every day. Just living by herself, having limited to no human interaction. Well, we found Ruggie, and I say found her because we have teams that go out when we pull into prior to pulling into a country, we have teams that go out and they will, Screen patients.
Okay. So we have our list of specialties and that will be made known throughout a country and they will go to different spots in the country nurses and they will screen patients to see if their conditions are things that we can care for. And during one of our screening trips Ruggie was found and was told that we could help her.
Of course, you know, for a lot of these people, that’s just unfathomable that there is hope for them, especially someone who has been alone for over 10 years. And when we brought Ruggie to the ship, her. Healing really began far before she ever walked into an O. R. Her healing began when a nurse from Australia named Kelly, a sweet friend of mine reached out and grabbed Ruggie’s hand to walk her up the gangway into the ship.
And this woman had not been physically touched in over 10 years,
[00:15:06] Dr. Mark Turman: just
[00:15:06] Raeanne Newquist: someone holding her hand. She fell apart. And I think that, you know, if I could encapsulate it, the mission of Mercy Ships. I know we talk a lot about surgery. We talk a lot about, you know, training, but really, It’s restoring humanity and dignity to people looking them in the eyes and touching them and saying, you matter and you’re enough and you are loved.
And that is more powerful than any surgery could possibly be, you know, but Ruby did get on board and had her surgery. Another miraculous thing for her was to be a On the hospital ward with several other women who had her same condition, you know, she thought she was all alone as, as, as many of these people do, as we do oftentimes in our struggles in life, we feel like we’re all alone in it and it’s the lie of the enemy really, but when they’re brought into community and they see that they’re not alone, these women quickly, you know, bond with one another.
Heal one another even emotionally and mentally by their care for one another then after their surgeries where they are dry for the first time in years, we do a dress ceremony for our women and we give them all brand new dresses in these fabulous, bright African fabrics. There is a huge celebration on board where there’s music and dancing and drums.
And just a huge celebration of the new life that they’ve been given, similarly to the new life that we are all given when we give our our lives to Jesus. So it’s pretty incredible. Ruggie will always stick out in my mind because sitting with Nurse Kelly over lunch one day and hearing that story, it just brought me to tears.
I can’t wrap my head around not being touched for over 10 years. It’s just, it’s amazing. But the healing that she received was quite remarkable.
[00:16:58] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, and just, you know, while you’re talking, I’m just, I’m just thinking about how that is in the spirit of and such an extension of Jesus’s healing ministry and just like the, the woman that we read about that came to him in desperation with that, if I could just touch his robe and how Everything in her life transformed at that point after, you know, a similar length of time, not being accepted and not being touched by anybody.
And that, that really kind of connects to part of my personal connection to Mercy Ships. So I learned about Mercy Ships about 35 years ago. When I came to pastor in a little town in East Texas called Van which is kind of the midway point between Dallas and Shreveport going down interstate 20.
And it’s right next to Lindale, which is the home office of the ministry of Mercy Ships. And in my church, I had some of the mercy ship staff that would come to our church and worship with us. And then the word fistula that you mentioned, I had no idea what that word was until my wife was pregnant with our first child and we were seeking care in my hometown of Tyler, not a few miles away, about 25 miles away from both mercy ships and van.
And he had come across Mercy Ships, and he had gone on a short term mission trip for a few weeks with Mercy Ships, and he had encountered women just like Ruggie, and what eventually happened was he was so moved by all of that that he ended up, shortly after my second child was born, so I have two children, 30 and 34 a couple of years after my second child was born, our doctor, and closed up his really successful practice OBGYN practice in Tyler and became a long term volunteer servant with Mercy Ships and was one of the first to help set up a fistula clinic for women in Sierra Leone, I believe.
And but he told us, I remember the first story he told us from his short term mission. And he said, I met this woman who, kind of like Ruggie, had had a traumatic pregnancy, and she had ended up with damage to her bladder, and her husband had regulated her to a small shack in the, you know, at the edge of their property, and he only had just the most limited contact with her, and would only allow limited contact with family and friends.
She would have to find a way to do the best she could to clean herself up every day. But even after that, he would only allow very minimal contact. And she had been that, she’d been living in this hut for years.
[00:19:44] Raeanne Newquist: Wow. Yeah.
[00:19:45] Dr. Mark Turman: And it just, it so gripped my, my doctor friend’s heart that kind of like you.
He took his wife and his kids and he went on board and, and stayed several years serving in that part of Africa. And it just is astounding to see that, number one, people suffer like this in our world. And then how a ministry like Mercy Ships can be so impactful in these ways. And like I said, just touching that woman’s arm and helping her up the gangplank.
So Raeann, tell us, how in the world did this come across the radar of you and your husband? How in the world did y’all get into mercy ships?
[00:20:22] Raeanne Newquist: Right. Well, living in Southern California we had never heard of mercy ships. Not because of Southern California, but We had a friend though who was a teacher.
She was a kindergarten teacher down south and she came to us one day and said, I’m going to go volunteer on board a hospital ship, which also raised our eyebrows like you’re a kindergarten teacher. What? And she said, I want to know if you will support me if you’ll pray for me and if you’ll financially support me, a lot of our crew are volunteers and they raise support to go serve.
And we thought, well, we’ve never heard of Mercy Ships, but we love you. And so we would love to support you. And as we began to support her, we began to learn about the mission of Mercy Ships. She would FaceTime us from the ship and kind of tell us what all was going on. And we got the newsletters and various things.
We found out about Mercy Ships. It sounded pretty incredible, but my husband was a first responder in Los Angeles, and we were pretty dialed in, in our community, in our church, and there was nothing on our radar about leaving where we were at. However about three years later or so, my husband was nearing the age of Being eligible to retire with the California Highway Patrol, and he kind of was thinking when I first met my husband He’s an ordained Presbyterian pastor, and I first met him in the church in Malibu many years ago, and he God called him into ministering to the law enforcement community and so he did that for, for decades.
But when he was kind of nearing a time to retire, he said, I feel like I want to go back into full time ministry, but maybe not the church specifically. And so as we started to research, Mercy Ships popped up because of our friend who’s serving there. And he said, Oh my goodness, they’re looking for a chaplain.
For 2019 for a two year commitment. Do you think we could do this? And I thought there is no way in the world that my very conservative, you know, first responder husband, who’s very safe and calculated is going to take his wife and three children to live on a hospital ship in West Africa. So I kind of laughed and I said, Oh yeah, look into it.
There’s no way. Now, truth is. It was like a dream of mine. I would love to live a crazy, you know, off the grid kind of life. But I, I didn’t marry that man. And so I thought, you know what, it’s yeah, go ahead, look into it. Well, I was completely wrong because God gripped his heart and absolutely. Changed him and got him to a place where he knew he wanted to leave everything behind and go.
And we talked to our children and at the time our son was 10, our daughters were 13. And we said, you know, we’re not going to do this if the children are opposed to it, but the kids were all in and they said, yeah, let’s go. And so. It definitely was not as quick as I’m making it sound, but we did sell our house in Southern California.
We pretty much got rid of everything that we owned, gave away our cars and decided that God said no plan B, you know, now that’s just our story. Mercy Ships does not require people to sell their homes and everything, but for our, for our family, you know, God just said, I want you to trust me completely with no fallback plan.
Now, it was interesting because. When God really impressed that on my husband and, and my heart very clearly, and we agreed and no regrets whatsoever, God knew that it would be 10 months later that COVID would hit our world. We did not know that. So it was a little bit, you know, of an interesting situation.
Our, our service on board was cut short because of that. But it was. The most incredible experience of our lives, and I can honestly say to this day, it’s been about five years that we’ve been off ship now a little less than five there is not three days that goes by when we do not talk about our life on the ship as a family.
It brought us together in such a beautiful way, changed our lives, changed my Children’s lives. I mentioned I have two daughters who are at university right now, and one of my daughters at university, Gonna get emotional here. At 13 years old God called her to become a nurse and she is in nursing school right now at Samford University.
And all she wants to do is go back and serve aboard one of our vessels as a nurse. And it’s, it was the most incredible experience we’ve ever had.
[00:25:04] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, it just, my, my brain is just exploding Raeann, listening to that because I’m thinking. Wait a minute. Two 13 year olds and a 10 year old. What are 10 year old and 13 year olds usually thinking about getting on board a medical ship and doing life there even for a week, it would be a stretch but going for a longer period of time sounds Exceptional.
And now I was going to ask, how is this affecting the long term trajectory of your family? But you have a daughter now that’s pursuing a career in nursing and you and your husband are Now, in various positions with with Mercy Ships, I’m assuming you didn’t think you would be in the positions that you’re in now when you said, okay, we’re going to, we’re going to do this.
[00:25:49] Raeanne Newquist: No, not at all. And in fact, to be honest, we had made a two year commitment to serve with Mercy Ships, but we knew it would be longer than that. We assumed at the time that it would be on board the vessels. We knew we would extend our commitment to continue to live on board. I never thought that our extended commitment would be remotely from the United States.
But, you know, God God knows. God knows what is best, but it definitely has transformed our family. You know, I think it transformed our worldview. It really transformed my relationship with Jesus, I will say, because I was raised in a Christian family in California and I realized living in a community of people from all over the world, we usually have at least 50 to 60 nations represented on board at any one given time amongst our crew.
And to be in a Bible study with women from Switzerland and Brazil and the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, you know, and we’re discussing scripture, they’re saying certain things in the study. And in my mind, I’m thinking, Oh, I don’t think that’s right, you know, and then a couple of days goes, goes by and I’m reading the scriptures and I’m praying and I’m like, Oh, maybe I’m not right.
You know, and realizing all of a sudden that gosh, in a lot of ways. My faith is pretty Western and dare I say, maybe American and that’s not the Jesus of the Bible and I don’t know. I had a big life transformation myself. I think in my faith, having my worldview opened up also working in a developing nation that’s primarily Muslim and working with our national crew who are Muslim.
Most of them. God, I just really learned a lot. I really, really learned a lot. We all were transformed with our, just our global outlook, you know, and our global perspective of situations and also our faith. So we all were, we all were impacted quite radically in many different ways.
[00:27:55] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, as it, as it always is when you go in the direction that God wants you to go.
I was reading the story of Abraham this morning and just, you know, he decided in faith to courageously obey God and everything changed because of that, right? Yes. We’re having this conversation today in part because of the decision that Abraham made to trust God. But I, I can imagine, you know, one of the things I learned Rayanne, when I first encountered Mercy Ships through one of the volunteers that had come to worship at my church in East Texas.
He was actually, he and his wife were from From Britain from the UK and but he wasn’t a medical doctor and part of unashamedly folks. We’re gonna let you know We are doing this conversation in part because we want you to know about what God is doing But we also want you to consider where you can be serving including with mercy ships And so we’re going to give you some of the details here in a few minutes about how how do you become a volunteer and a servant?
With something like Mercy Ships. We’re going to map that out for you. But I remember when I met Collin and I was getting acquainted with Mercy Ships. I was like, well, you said that they do medical missions. You’re a civil engineer. Why are you on this boat? And I don’t know if they’re still doing this kind of work or not.
But in those days, he said, well, We go inland and we do all kinds of things to try to help communities in these countries to get better and to get healthier. And he said, I got put onto this ministry because I go in and I lead teams that help to create clean water projects within these communities.
Because as he told me, 80 percent of all illnesses are waterborne illnesses. He said, so if you can give people clean water and many people. In the christian community many people that will hear this have supported efforts to drill Clean water wells in all kinds of places around the world one of the most essential Things that you can do to help a community Is to give them sources of clean water and that’s what colin was helping through the ministry of mercy ships to do so part of the reason I set that up is because of what you said which is Many people are maybe thinking about this.
Well, i’m not a nurse. I’m not a doctor. I’m not a dentist I’m not a surgeon. I’m not a lab technician. So why would I even listen to this conversation? Talk about a little bit more of the wider scope of ministry And then also that there is a need for servants who support those who are doing Not only the medical side, but also some of the other kinds of ministries There’s a huge area of support that has to go into all of this effort.
So Paint that picture for us as As broadly as you like.
[00:30:36] Raeanne Newquist: Yeah. Well, you know, we often like to say that we encourage people to consider either giving, going, or praying. And really, one thing that we need the most at Mercy Ships is prayer. Prayer for our leadership that are serving in East Texas and around the world, but for wisdom and discernment as our ministry grows, as we have two ships that need lots of people on board to make them run.
And also just to pray for our crew on board, pray for our patients, that they would See Jesus as the nurses and doctors look them in the eye and tell them that they’re valuable and that they are loved that their lives would be transformed beyond the operating theater, but then also as you mentioned, you know, our Surgeries are all free to our patients and we will operate on anyone regardless of their race or their religion And that is all through donor dollars that we are able to operate these hospital ships with state of the art technology.
We have on our new ship, we have simulators so that we can bring in, as I mentioned, medical professionals in the local community and let them learn new skills on simulators that we have. So there’s so many things that go into it, but really the people that pray for Mercy Ships and financially support the ministry, they’re.
really the most powerful partners that we have. And then for some people, maybe God is stirring them to go, to get on board and serve on one of our vessels. And we need cooks. We need engineers. We need electricians. We need carpenters. We need teachers. We need HR executives. Like I said, it’s a whole floating city.
There’s a cafe on board. There’s a little ship shop on board. There’s people that run the AV sound systems for, you know, meetings and events and, you know, basically I say, if you can do it, we need it. So whatever, whatever your skills are, whatever your talents are, if God is calling you to come and be a photographer, be a writer to get the stories of our patients out, then there are opportunities for everyone.
And really all those can be found at, at mercyships. org. And if you just look at. little volunteer button. It’ll pull up a whole list of different opportunities where you can serve. As I mentioned, my husband was a chaplain on board and got to minister to the crew who was ministering to the patients. And we really try to give full care to our crew who were on board and to realize that they’re giving up a lot to come.
A lot of them are apart from their families and friends. Maybe they’ve made big financial decisions in order to be able to afford to go. And so we also want to care for our crew and to honor their sacrifice by providing care for them, whether that be through chaplaincy or through a crew doctor on board that can help with medical needs just for our crew, there are, you know, just many ways that people can come and serve.
[00:33:53] Dr. Mark Turman: So. A lot of people in the churches that I serve, so I pastored churches for 35 years, and when we came to serve, especially when we wanted to serve outside of the church, in the community, or in places farther away, a lot of people wanted to know, especially if they had children at home, as you and your husband did, Okay, where and how can we serve as a family?
Yeah. So what did that, you’re, so you’re on board and your husband’s serving as the chaplain and I think people can wrap their mind around that, you know, okay, I get that. So what did you and the kids do while you were on board?
[00:34:27] Raeanne Newquist: Yeah, well, One thing I will say that was really special is when we lived in Southern California, my husband worked in downtown Los Angeles.
So he had about an hour commute from where we lived and He would, he would be with us for dinner. I would say 90 percent of the time, but of course he never had breakfast or lunch with us, but on board, the ship was the first time that our kids who are in school on the vessel, they have an hour break for lunch to go home to their families.
And so we had lunch with our kids every day. And my husband thought it was the coolest thing ever. He’s like, I’ve never got to have lunch with my kids every day. This is amazing. You know, but we do have. fully accredited academies aboard our ships. So Children who come aboard, they are taught from kindergarten through 12th grade.
We’ve had kids graduate from high school on board our vessels, which is pretty awesome. And the teachers are from all over the world and it is a first class education that is biblically based. And the field trips, as you can imagine, in a developing nation on a hospital ship are pretty wild and the retreats that the junior high kids take it’s
[00:35:42] Dr. Mark Turman: a very unique study abroad kind of experience that you don’t have to wait for college to get right.
[00:35:49] Raeanne Newquist: Absolutely. So I know the kindergarten class, they have these stuffed animals that the teacher will put things like Inside of, and then they get to go down to the x ray machines and they get to like put their little stuffed animals through, you know, the MRI machine and see like, Oh, there’s a, you know, a little heart inside.
Cause maybe the teacher put something in there, you know, but they get to experience all these crazy things. Not to mention the fact that the kids also get to interact with the patients on board, which was super special for my children when really. My daughter who’s in nursing school right now, she would say to me all the time, mom, can I please go hang out with the patients?
Can we please go down in the hospital for visiting hours? And yeah, the education my children got, when would they ever get to hang out in a hospital with patients in the United States? That doesn’t happen, you know, so it was pretty incredible. So the kids were in school all day from eight o’clock to three, just like normal.
And. When you come aboard as a family, one parent, which in this our case was my husband, works full time and then the other parent is the primary caregiver of the children. But when the children are in school, then we are required to work as well. So I served in the communications department helping our writers and our photographers and our videographers tell the stories of our patients.
And that was a blast, but the minute the kids were out of school, then I was kind of off duty, if you will, and got to be mom got to hear about their day, but also I got to lead Bible studies on board and do a lot of special things. I actually got to volunteer off the ship a couple of times serving with our I team.
Getting to help with their screening, just handing out, you know, place cards for patients who were waiting to be seen and, and help with some minimal things, but there’s so many opportunities and the children, gosh, for the kids after school, there would be some crew on board who maybe they were passionate runners.
And so they said, we want to develop a running club for the kids. So after school, you know, some kids could join the run club. There was soccer teams that they could play. Soccer is huge in Africa. So a lot of people on board want to play soccer. There’s just endless activities for everybody.
[00:38:07] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, so like you said earlier, it, we all kind of have the sense, right, that these ships are floating cities.
[00:38:13] Raeanne Newquist: And
[00:38:14] Dr. Mark Turman: so everything that happens in a city on land happens in some way on the ship for the most part. And and so that’s how you operate. So map out some of the categories of, how people can serve. As they’re thinking about this, is there is there a way to kind of put your toe in and have a short term experience with mercy ships that might then lead to something larger?
What are the larger term commitments? Kind of give us some of those categories of how that works.
[00:38:44] Raeanne Newquist: Sure. So I know for our teachers who come on board, they usually make a two year commitment. And that is, you know, really important because it is a different environment to be teaching in. There are similarities, but it’s also a pretty unique environment.
So we ask our teachers to make a two year commitment, but we’ll have some of our surgeons who will come just for two weeks, a two week rotation where they will do as many surgeries as they can in their area of expertise. Similarly, our nurses. Might come for a rotation that might be as short as four weeks and maybe As long as four months, depending on you know what they want to do Really our shorter commitments.
Can fall in the medical realm but also if you want to come and serve as a receptionist on board or Serve in the ship shop. Some of those commitments are about a three month commitment right now Because we have two vessels in service and we need all sorts of volunteers, there’s lots of opportunities for people to maybe say, Hey, I would love to come and do this, but I can only do it for two months and we might be able to work with them on that.
But for the most part, I would say our shortest commitment. It’s really about three months and then we have people who’ve been on board for over 20 years. So we often find that people who come extend their time of service or they return time and again because really the community on board is pretty incredible.
It’s like a little taste of heaven. So it’s, it’s a it’s a life changing experience, not just for our patients, but also for all the crew who come on board as well.
[00:40:24] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. And so help us understand most of the volunteers, including much of the medical staff, kind of pay their own way or they raise their support, right?
Is that generally how that works?
[00:40:37] Raeanne Newquist: It is. Yeah. And at different times, at different stages in our history, there’s different things in place. Like right now, our crew fees are on pause. So normally our crew pay their room and board. But right now, through the end of 2025, those are eliminated for the time being.
So, you know, at different points in time, there might be different costs that people incur. Most people pay for their travel and their flights to come on board also for vaccinations that they need travel insurance, you know, things of that nature. So people do often have support that they raise and not just financial support, but also having a community around them back at home to pray for them and encourage them and just care for them in any way that they need.
[00:41:22] Dr. Mark Turman: Right. Which is a really big area that the Christian church is getting hopefully better at, which is that when people go out, like we had missionaries go out from our church. But Right. We needed to do better and we are doing better in some categories of staying in touch with them and supporting them, not just prayerfully and financially, but emotionally and relationally, staying connected to them and praying for them about specific things.
That happened during a week or a month because it’s always a dynamic environment and, and people do miss being at home. They, they, they oftentimes have incredible experiences, but it is an adjustment. I mean, to jump into these environments, especially coming from the West, going into some of these underdeveloped countries where there are, you know, sometimes it’s the first time you see.
Experiences of extreme poverty.
[00:42:13] Raeanne Newquist: Yeah,
[00:42:13] Dr. Mark Turman: And as people can go to the website mercyships. org and see Some of these people of all ages, from young to old have really some pretty extreme medical needs Yeah and that’s what mercy ships is trying to address and maybe that’s a question. I want to get to before we wrap up which is how does mercy ships decide where they will go and who they will help?
[00:42:38] Raeanne Newquist: Tell us a little bit
[00:42:39] Dr. Mark Turman: more about that.
[00:42:40] Raeanne Newquist: Yeah. Well, a lot goes into it. So we don’t just show up in a country. We only go to countries where we are invited. And so we actually have people who are working years in advance before one of our vessels pulls into port. Building relationships with the government, with the Ministry of Health with the port authorities.
There’s a lot that goes into it before we arrive. But like I said, we only go where we’re invited. So we might go to some Leaders, some leaders in a nation and offer our services and if they agree, then a relationship begins all the logistics are, you know, kind of worked out and that actually takes a couple of years.
So it’s not just like, Hey, We’ve got this date available. What do you guys think? You know, yeah, come on over. You know, I mean, we start by building relationship and finding if a country can also support us, you know, we pull into port in a country for about 10 months, that means that a country has to give us.
Port space and for a country to give up port space, you know, or dock space rather that means that they’re missing out on the commerce. They’re missing out on ships that come in to sell and trade goods. And so that’s a sacrifice for them as well. We also, you know, require. Clean water, as you mentioned, it’s essential.
And so there’s different things that, that we need as a vessel as well, but we only go where we’re invited. And then we make an agreement with the government and ministry of health of what services we will provide, why we’re there and in turn, what they are able to do to support the mission that, that we’re doing and.
Those decisions, like I said, are basically made on the relationships and then also if the resources are available for us to be in a country. We have one country in particular that we’ve been trying to return to, and unfortunately There’s a water issue in the country. That means that we would not really be able to have the water that we would need on board for our crew.
And so we just can’t go there right now. So there’s a lot of different factors that play into where we’re going. We also are constantly assessing the need, you know, what need do we have? In the countries where we’re currently serving, we’ve decided that we’re going to extend and we’re going to stay.
Actually, we just returned to Madagascar because we had extended to stay longer. We had built great relationships. There was kind of great groundwork that had been done. And we thought, you know what, it’s probably going to be most effective if we extend our time and stay here longer to continue. So it just, there’s several factors that go into the decision making process.
People are praying years in advance, you know, where are we going to be in 2028? And they’re already working on things now and just asking for God’s wisdom and discernment.
[00:45:34] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah. So you, you know, the more you think about this and listen, you get a sense of just how complex it is. This is, this is ministry at a very significant scale because, you know, medical work, especially medical work in the kinds of extreme cases that y’all deal with that’s pretty complex in and of itself, but then trying to do it from a ship, trying to do it across culture and language barriers.
Trying to do it across governments that are often changing and very fluid in their dynamics. And you could, you could work on something for several years and then something could change and you wouldn’t be able to carry out those plans. And so there’s all kinds of things. Raeann, before we finish up, just a, it’s just so many ways to talk about this, but I would imagine some of our listeners are wondering.
What’s the spiritual hope that the people behind Mercy Ships and the people that are doing the ministry What’s the spiritual plan when you move into these areas in some of these countries? How do y’all think about and address spiritual needs when they come across these opportunities?
[00:46:39] Raeanne Newquist: Yeah, that’s a great question.
Because we are serving in a lot of Muslim nations, we’re not, Going out and, you know, preaching in the streets and, you know, things of that nature. We really feel that for the ministry of Mercy Ships, we’re called to be the hands and feet of Jesus and the vehicle through which we’re doing that is surgery.
And we find that so many times when our patients come on board, as I mentioned, a lot of them have been outcasts in their communities. The love that they receive from the nurses and doctors. It causes them to ask questions. Who are you? Why are you here? Why would you come from Brazil? Why would you come from the Netherlands or, you know, China?
Why, why are you here to help me? And then there’s opportunity to say, because Jesus changed my life. I want to come and do what he did, and that is to transform lives through love and through hope that comes in knowing Jesus. And they have opportunity to share because they’re asked. So there is a very our, our nurses and doctors pray for our patients all the time.
You know, we’re always asking, you know, can we pray for you? They pray before they have surgery, but even, and. You know, even if a patient says, no, you know, I don’t want that, which is very rare, but, you know, we obviously have the opportunity to continue to pray for them in our hearts regardless, but still our teams, you know, of doctors, they meet regularly.
Every day before surgery to pray, you know, our nurses get together and they pray. And as well as, you know, everything I know in our just ship wide, there might be a situation in the OR where something is going wrong. This happened to us several times. And all of a sudden the captain of the ship will get on the PA system ship wide and say, I need everyone to stop right now and pray.
We have a young woman in the OR right now who is not responding and we need everyone to stop and pray and the whole ship will just stop and everyone will pray. We have just the, the spiritual I guess community on board is, is very strong. We have regular times of worship on board and times of Bible study.
There’s all sorts of small groups that take place. Like I said, we have a pretty robust chaplaincy department on board that care for our crew and lead them the. times of worship and services on board. There’s lots of opportunity. The spiritual climate’s pretty high. I think a lot of people realize very quickly that even if you’re coming as a professional with lots of experience, there’s only so much that we can do.
[00:49:35] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah.
[00:49:35] Raeanne Newquist: You come to the end of yourself rather quickly. And even our, our phenomenal surgeons will say sometimes if the situation gets so complicated, we just need to call for prayer. You know, because this is out of our hands. So it’s, it’s a beautiful, beautiful place to grow in your faith.
[00:49:54] Dr. Mark Turman: It’s so good.
Well, I was like, I thought I would say, okay, well, that’s Mercy Ships, but actually it would take us several more hours before we could even really claim to have any way of describing what this ministry is all about. But Ran, tell us again, the website where people can find out more, where they can investigate opportunities.
And unashamedly, we want to tell our audience, Hey, this, We often say this is about praying. It’s about giving, it’s about going. I want to flip that around and ask you to pray, ask our audience to pray about that the other way, which is start with going, maybe God would want me to go or somebody I know that might be looking for this kind of opportunity and giving and obviously praying where can they find out more?
[00:50:35] Raeanne Newquist: Yeah. Mercy ships. org is the best place to go on and just get lost on the website. I also would say unofficially that if you go on YouTube and you look up mercy ships, there are so many videos that we’ve created that are beautiful of the stories of our patients. Before and after, but then there’s also a lot of videos that our crew have created of kind of a day in their life.
The adventures that they have on their days off, you know, exploring in the country that we’re serving in, having a great time doing adventures, but also to get a look at what the cabins are like, what the cafe is like, what the OR is like. There’s plenty of, of videos on YouTube as well to get lost in.
[00:51:20] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, that’s, that’s the great use of technology, both YouTube and just directly on the website. So if somebody does that and they say, okay, I want to take another step, I assume that there’s a place that you click and you start a conversation with the Mercy Ship staff. Is there
[00:51:35] Raeanne Newquist: kind of an,
[00:51:35] Dr. Mark Turman: I want to know more place to click on?
[00:51:38] Raeanne Newquist: Yep. It says volunteer. There’s a button very clearly that says volunteer. You just click on that and it’ll take you to a place where you can fill out some things to get some more information about how you can serve and get on board with us.
[00:51:50] Dr. Mark Turman: Yeah, awesome. We hope that our audience will do that. And like I said, not only for themselves, but for others that may be looking for these kinds of opportunities.
It’s just one of the greatest things that God is doing around the world. To really be the hands and feet of Jesus and to serve those who need to be served, who are under resourced and don’t have proper medical care. This is a really way, you know, of doing what Jesus did. Of caring for people when they’re hurting and then having spiritual opportunities to to take that ministry even further beyond the physical realm.
So rayanne, thank you for your time I want to thank you for all that you’re doing for the kingdom of god just a delight to get to talk with you today and to come back from where I started so many years ago, reconnecting with this ministry and just really excited about that. Folks, we want to thank you for joining the conversation again.
We want to help you to be equipped as a follower of Christ to not only think biblically and to live holy, but to serve eagerly. So that the world can flourish until Jesus comes again. And how can we help it flourish for everybody everywhere? That’s what mercy ships. And that’s what Denison forum is all about.
Thanks for listening to the conversation. Please rate, review us and share this with others as God leads you to. And we’ll see you next time on the Denison forum podcast. God bless you.