Local nurse set to depart for second volunteer trip
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- Published on Friday, April 15, 2016
Submitted photo. Paula Lofamia (right) in Honduras in February of last year. She leaves for her next mission trip on April 27.
By Kira Paterson
Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press
A nurse who has lived in Neepawa for the past five years is using her skills to help those less fortunate. Paula Lofamia, originally from the Philippines, is leaving for Africa at the end of the month to volunteer as an operating room (OR) nurse on a Mercy Ship. Mercy Ships is a global organization that has hospitals on ships that dock at developing countries to provide free health care services to anyone who needs it. The ship Lofamia will be aboard, the Africa Mercy, is docked at Madagascar right now and will be there until June.
Lofamia is leaving on April 27 and will be volunteering on the Africa Mercy from May 1 to 28, then returning to Canada on June 1. This is not the first time that she will be sharing her OR skills with people in need.
She first tried to apply for Mercy Ships in 2013, but there were scheduling conflicts as well as the Ebola virus outbreak that prevented her from going. She still wanted to do a mission trip, so when she heard about another opportunity from co worker who was planning to go on a trip to Honduras, she decided to try that. She applied to go to Honduras with a missions organization called International Health Services in 2015. She worked in an OR in Honduras for 18 days in February of 2015, on a urology surgical team. However, she still hoped to be able to volunteer with Mercy Ships eventually.
It was her fiance who convinced her to go on the trip now, Lofamia explained. “I have met this guy and he asked me if I have something in my mind and in my heart that I want to do, that I really want to do in this lifetime. And I said I have that Africa Mercy Ships trip that I really wanted to do,” she said. “So one day he told me to ‘start your application and we’ll do everything so that you can do this Africa Mercy Ships trip before we plan ahead about anything.’”
Lofamia has many reasons for wanting to do this trip. “It’s just a different setting. It’s a hospital ship, which, I don’t think they have that in any other places. It’s exciting to be in a different hospital setting. It’s the same, it’s a hospital, but it’s in a different form. It’s a floating hospital,” she began.
Then she shared what she was most looking forward to about the trip. “Meeting new people... and being in a setting where you will be working with people from all over the world, because this is a hospital run by volunteers. And it’s also a different environment, because here [at home], you are employed, you come to work because you’re getting paid... where, in Mercy Ships, it’s different. You are there because you choose to, you volunteer and you’re not expecting something in return,” she explained. “Although, for me, I view it as, I am not just extending help, I am learning and I am gaining more than what I am giving,” she added.
Another reason is that she hopes other people will become interested in volunteering when they see what she’s doing. “I want to be a person that will create curiosity in other people. That they will be aware that there are places like this, there is need like this all over the world. Not just Mercy Ships, not just Honduras, but even in the Philippines, even here in Canada, all over the world,” she said. “That’s my main goal. Not just to go to satisfy my own curiosity, but to create more curiosity in other people as well, especially the young people.”
Once she does her Mercy Ships trip, Lofamia said that she would like to go back to Honduras. If a new opportunity came up to volunteer somewhere else, she said she would do that too. However, she has plans a little closer to home as well. She and a friend from her church, the International Worship Centre, have been talking about how they can get people interested in mission trips. “Encouraging people to have a heart for volunteering,” she said, was something that she and her friend were brainstorming.
Getting youth involved in missions is something very important to Lofamia. She is involved in a local youth group called Uprising Neepawa Youth. It is a group of between 20 and 25 kids ages 13 to 20 that meet every Friday to share their interests, talents and experiences. “If the young people will not be concerned, will not be curious, will not be willing to participate in things like what I am doing now... the world will be in trouble,” she stressed. “So getting them involved... getting them aware of the need, the drive to volunteer, understanding that giving a helping hand is important, [if] we will not be introducing that to the young ones, this world will be in trouble. I think that’s very important.”
Lofamia moved to Canada from the Philippines in 2010 and started working in Neepawa just over a year after that. She took her nursing education in the Philippines and was an ophthalmic nurse for three years before she moved to Canada. Initially, she wanted to be a doctor, so she took her nursing as preparation for medical school. However, she found that she enjoyed nursing and knew that going for further schooling would cost a lot of money, so she stuck with nursing. In Neepawa, she started off at Country Meadows Personal Care Home and now she works as a nurse at the Neepawa Hospital.
Lofamia is trying to raise funds to help cover the cost of her Mercy Ships trip. She has a page on the Mercy Ships website, where anyone can donate. Her goal is to raise $6,000 and so far she has just over $4,100. The address to the web page to donate to her is http://mercyships.donorpages.com/MERCYGIFTS/PaulaLynLofamia/ and donors can be named or remain anonymous, as well as leave comments with their donation.
