An Open Garden Gate: Compassionate Care in Papua 

The woman smiled. She’d found relief from a painful toothache, and she smiled. For TEAM Papua worker, Noelle Carr, that smile brought another type of healing as well. Noelle, her husband Ben, and their children have served in Indonesia for the past seven years. In a setting Noelle likens to living “at the ends of the earth,” the Lord showed His faithfulness to bring beauty from ashes through a woman’s smile—a smile that opened the door to trust, hope, and compassionate Gospel impact. 

In Search of Life-Giving Lemon Leaves 

Four months earlier, Noelle received a knock on her door and a request for lemon leaves from a tree in her backyard. Although requests like these from Noelle’s neighbors are not uncommon, the sun had already set, and these visitors sounded urgent in their need for what they believe to be a cure for illness. 

“They said, ‘We’re going to grab the lemon leaves and some ice because this baby is really sick.’ We had heard a baby crying all day from the house next to ours, but I didn’t know whose it was,” Noelle recalls. “So I said to my husband, ‘I’m just going to check it out.’ Something didn’t sit right.” 

When Noelle got to the baby, he was struggling to breathe, and his family was already in mourning, anticipating his death. Noelle quickly offered to take care of hospital bills and transportation, and after her neighbors agreed, she took the infant and some of his family members to the local emergency room. 

“I drove the mom, cousins, and aunt holding the baby to the hospital, praying the whole way that the baby wouldn’t die in the car,” Noelle says. The hospital did everything they could, but it was too late. They all watched helplessly as the baby took his last breath. 

“As soon as the doctor said, ‘He’s gone, we can’t resuscitate him anymore,’ and everyone started weeping, my first thought was, ‘Why, God? Why did you just let that happen?’” Noelle shares. 

After the baby’s funeral, Noelle didn’t see the family much, and she worried that a bridge had been burned in being able to share the love of Christ with them. “I felt really scared that they would hold me responsible, and that it would really ruin my rapport with the family,” she says. 

A Toothache and a Healing Smile 

But God wasn’t finished working all things together for good in this situation. Four months later, when the baby’s mother needed relief from a toothache, she didn’t condemn Noelle or even shy away from coming to her for help. Instead, she came to the clinic where Noelle volunteers to get medicine for the toothache. When Noelle saw her again a few days later, a new kind of healing took place. 

“She just had this huge smile. I couldn’t believe it. She shook my hand, and she smiled so big. That already was like healing for me,” This same woman began bringing others to the clinic. “This suffering ended up being an open door into this community.” 

Now the people know that not only can they come to Noelle and the other clinic volunteers to get medical care, but emotional and spiritual care as well. Through the suffering one family endured, Noelle gained their trust, and that spread to others. Noelle says the clinic has seen hundreds of patients since April. 

“Patients come with small things like toothaches and skin rashes to more serious illnesses like undiagnosed leprosy and tuberculosis,” shares Noelle. “I am currently working with students to get them all screened and tested for TB, and I’ve found an alarming number of positive cases.” 

Caring for Body and Soul 

As Noelle helps with the clinic and loves her neighbors, she not only proclaims the love of God, but also the image of God and His fingerprints on each human being she encounters, whether they know it or not. 

“If Jesus was living in my town, he would be healing my neighbors, and preaching the Gospel,” Noelle says. “When Jesus meets all the multitudes—there’s so many who are blind and crippled and have leprosy—he doesn’t turn away and say, ‘Let me preach you the Gospel.’ He enters in and touches them—like actually touches their bodies—and has compassion on them.” 

Volunteering at the clinic provides Noelle opportunities to care for her neighbors’ humanity, both soul and body, because that’s exactly what Jesus did. She sums it up this way: “God made our bodies. God loves our bodies. God had a body. In Jesus’s body, He experienced all the things we experience. He suffered. He felt pain.” Just like Jesus’s example, Noelle’s care for the temporal and tangible has lasting, intangible effects when she tells her neighbors the motivating “why” behind her ministry. 

“The opportunity is to tell someone ‘I’m doing this for you because God did this for me. He loves me, and He loves you. And right now you’re really sick. So I want to hold your hand, and I want to help you in this,’” Noelle shares. “As a Gospel-minded person, it changes everything. We’re not just doing it because bodies are important or because sickness is bad, we’re doing it because it’s all important to God. Caring for people now, showing them that they matter now, can change eternity.” 

In the Garden 

Through all the suffering and “ickiness” as Noelle calls it, God reminds her of His goodness, joy, and rest in her garden of flowers and fruits, the same one her neighbors requested lemon leaves from. Much like in the story of the mother who lost her child, Noelle’s garden is a metaphor for those seeking life-giving fruit. Noelle and her family leave their garden gate, the medical clinic, and their hearts open for neighbors to come in and find life. 

Pray for the Carr Family 

• Pray that God would give Noelle and her family perseverance and emotional energy to sit in suffering with their neighbors and each other. 

• Pray for medical resources and compassionate, mission-minded medical personnel to join their team in Papua. Currently, the on-campus clinic is open for four hours a week since it has no full-time nurse or doctor. The needs are great and the obstacles are many.