Samaritan Aviation Team Gains New Skills Through Trauma Healing Course

In September, our Papua New Guinea staff had the opportunity to take part in a SILs (Summer Institute of Linguistics) course called “Trauma Healing.” This course teaches how to cope with trauma, and help others going through trauma, in light of the Gospel. Our staff were quite excited to attend the week-long course, knowing it would help them present the Gospel to our patients in a tangible way, as well as apply to their own lives. The training included topics such as healing wounds of our hearts, what happens when someone is grieving, taking your pain to the cross, domestic abuse, and helping children.

We also walked through the Scriptures, explaining that God is always by our side through our pain, as well as how to deal with their emotions in a healthy way. In PNG culture, expressing emotions can be hard, especially since physical, emotional, and sexual abuse is quite prevalent in the home, and the language (Tok Pisin) lacks a lot of emotional vernacular.

This Trauma Healing course helped our team dive deep into the work of Christ to introduce hurting people to the cross. With our new training, our staff members are excited to spend more time with our patients, helping them grieve through healthy practices while using scripture to help them understand that God is ever-powerful and almighty, but He himself also became man and experienced grief and pain. At Samaritan Aviation we have always tried our best to be the hands and feet of Jesus through pursuing physical healing with spiritual transformation. Now, with this training, we will also be able to help patients experience Jesus in a whole new way, by coming alongside them in their psychological and emotional needs.