Adopt-a-Clinic

Adopt-a-Clinic—Mt Diamond Health Clinic and the Nurse's Inn, PNG

Our church here at Park Ridge has a strong mission focus—supporting missions both at home and abroad. One of our major overseas missions is supporting the Mt Diamond Health Clinic in Papua New Guinea.

In 2007, our church elected to be a part of the South Pacific Division's Adopt-a-Clinic Program. It then took another two years to raise enough funds to send our first “fly & build” team along with all the equipment and supplies to build a new stand-alone health clinic. This new clinic replaced the single-room clinic that operated on the campus of the Mt Diamond Adventist Secondary School.

The Mt Diamond Health Clinic not only provides medical and health services to the school community of students, teachers and their families, but also to the local communities that surround the school.

The Mt Diamond Adventist Secondary School is located in PNG's Central Province on 300 hectares of land 30kms east of the capital, Port Moresby, and 6 kms off the Rego Highway along an unsealed road.

Approximately every two years, our Park Ridge Church sends a “fly & build” team to Mt Diamond to maintain and support the Clinic and the School—all team member expenses are self-funded and all equipment is either donated or purchased through generations donations by our members and supporters.

In 2017, it was realised that to retain a nurse onsite, adequate accommodation was required, so our church, once again, rallied together to raise over $20K in funds to build the "Nurse's Inn" beside the Health Clinic and as a result, our team returned in 2019 and built the purpose-built accommodation for the Nurse and their family.

The internal framing was manufactured by the men of our Park Ridge Church Community Men's Shed then loaded into a container along with all the other construction materials, tools and equipment, and donated furniture to complete the job. We also packed 1,500 Bibles—generously donated by one of our sponsors—to be distributed to students and villagers in the local communities.  

Our team not only consisted of our “fly & build” team, but also a team of young people led by our Minister, David Peñate, to run the school's "Week-of-Prayer" program which culminated in seeing 42 young people dedicating their lives to God in Baptism. The Bibles were distributed to baptismal students and also delivered by students giving Bible Studies to people from numerous villages surrounding the school.

Our 2021 trip was cancelled due to the unstable "COVID" climate. However, we continued to collect donations in support of our trip and in July 2023, our “fly & build” team travelled back to Mt Diamond to complete regular maintenance and numerous upgrades to the Clinic and the Nurses' Inn, and although there were many delays and mountainous obstacles in our way, with much prayer by our team, the school community and our members at Park Ridge, God was faithful in seeing His work completed - 2 week's worth of works were completed in 1 week - praise God! Also, once again, our "Week-of-Prayer" team witnessed to the students of the school and 23 young souls gave their hearts to the Lord in Baptism - praise God! 

Lastly—we want to sincerely thank YOU!  We could not do this work without your generous support, donations and most importantly - your prayers.