Family Gives Up the American Dream to Serve Africa’s Poor (Part 1)

The Newquist family was living the American Dream in California. They left it all behind to serve God onboard a medical missions ship off the coast of Africa.

Listen to their extraordinary story on this new episode of GPS.

You can connect with us through email at gps@billygraham.org or on Billy Graham Radio on Facebook.

If you’d like to dedicate your life to Jesus Christ, or if you have spiritual questions, you can chat with a trained volunteer – available 24 hours a day – at FindPeacewithGod.net.

Transcript

MUSIC STARTS

Raeanne Newquist:
00:00:01 I’m kind of the wild and reckless one in the marriage. My husband being a first responder is very conservative and safe and calculated. And I thought, there’s no way in the world this man is going to move his three children and his family to live on a ship in West Africa. There’s no way. 

Jim Kirkland: Turns out, Raeanne Newquist was wrong about her husband, Roger. It was his idea to leave their life in California to serve on board a medical missions ship off the coast of Africa.

Phil Fleishman: Raeanne and Roger sold their house and their belongings and they headed to the other side of the world, along with their three children. And then they wondered if they had made a huge mistake.

Raeanne:
00:00:42 They would cry themselves to sleep at night and be like, We miss our friends. We miss our school, we miss our home. And, my husband and I then would in turn, lie in bed and cry and go, what have we done? 

Phil: The Newquist family had been so sure God was calling them to the ship to serve the poor and forgotten. But, would they have the courage to stay the course? We’re about to find out. I’m Phil Fleischman.

Jim: And I’m Jim Kirkland. You’re listening to the first installment of our new November series here on GPS. We’re just going to open up the stories of people who have seen God work powerfully in their own work on the front lines of needs around the world. They are what some would call, certainly, missionaries. And we’re kicking off this series with a two-part episode about the Newquist family’s story. GPS: God. People. Stories., it’s an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Phil: Raeanne Newquist and her family surrendered their whole lives to Jesus, and a little later in this episode you’re going to hear Billy Graham talk about that kind of faith.

Billy Graham: 
00:01:45 I believe that God wants all of us to live lives of total commitment and service to Him right now where we are tonight.

Jim: We’ll hear more from Billy Graham a little later. First, we want to make sure you’re subscribed to GPS, because we trust you’re going to want to hear the second part of today’s story. So if you haven’t already, find “GPS: God. People. Stories.” on your favorite pod-catcher, and tap “Subscribe” or “Follow.”

Phil: And we’d also like to quickly tell you about a link that has changed the trajectory of a lot of lives: FindPeaceWithGod.net. If you have spiritual questions as you listen today, you can go there and find some answers. You can even chat with one of our trained volunteers. It’s all free and it’s available 24 hours a day. FindPeaceWithGod.net.

Intro: GPS: God. People. Stories.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Raeanne: 
00:02:43 I grew up in Northern California in the Silicon Valley. My father was working in the silicon industry, so kind of grew up in all of that newness. 

Phil: Raeanne’s dad traveled a lot, so she grew up learning about a lot of different cultures and meeting people from all over the world.

Jim: And church was a big part of her life, too. Her family went every Sunday. 

Raeanne:
00:03:02 When I was 5 years old, I was a part of a little Sunday school group called Whirly Birds. And we wore red and white striped beanies, and there was a little helicopter with a propeller on top of our beanies. And they told us that if we asked Jesus into our heart, we would be given this little tiny Bible charm that we could sew on our beanie. And the remarkable thing about this charm was there was a little magnifying glass at the end of the Bible, and when you looked through it, all of John 3:16 was written inside.
 
Jim: In case you’re not familiar with that Bible verse, John 3:16 reads, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”


Raeanne: 
00:03:47 So I thought that was a miracle, that they could fit that whole verse in this little tiny charm. And so I said, Absolutely. I want to accept Jesus. I want the charm. And they kept telling us that, you know, if you ask Jesus into your heart, that saves you from going to Hell one day. And I didn’t want to go to Hell, and I wanted the charm, so I accepted Jesus. 

Phil: Little Raeanne may not have understood the full picture of what it means to follow Jesus Christ, but her time as a Whirly Bird laid the foundation for her to accept Christ as an adult.

Jim: She made that decision in college, after transferring from Pepperdine University in Southern California to Wheaton College in Illinois—which happens to be the alma mater of our late founder, Billy Graham.

Raeanne: 
00:04:27 When I went to Wheaton, I really found Jesus as my Savior, not from Hell when I die one day, but the hell that I was living in in that moment. And it really was extreme loneliness, kind of leaving everything that I knew to go to what felt like a very foreign land in the Midwest—from Malibu to the Midwest was very different. 

Jim: Raeanne spent her junior year and the following summer at Wheaton.

Raeanne: 
00:04:50 And I was faced with a question at the end of that time, and it was, OK, Raeanne, you’ve gone through this transformation, do you want—and I felt like I had become this diamond that had been, you know, chiseled and faceted and polished—and the question was, do you want to keep this diamond in the jewelry box or do you want to put it in a setting where it can shine and everyone can see it? And I felt like, you know what, I want to shine, and so that was my decision to return back to Pepperdine and to be in an environment where I had Christian fellowship, but also had the opportunity to really share my faith. So very last minute, I decided to return to Pepperdine.
 
Phil: Towards the end of her senior year, Raeanne showed up at church one Sunday morning and immediately noticed a new face.

Raeanne:
00:05:36 There was this man in a navy blue suit standing up front, and he literally took my breath away. I didn’t know who he was, I didn’t know his name, but I said, I will marry that man one day. 

Phil: That man turned out to be the new associate pastor at the church. As they were getting to know each other, Roger asked Raeanne to volunteer with him in the college ministry.

Raeanne: 
00:05:56 So I volunteered mostly ’cause I wanted to spend time with this man that I thought was so handsome. And I absolutely fell in love with college ministry.
 
Jim: Raeanne had majored in Christian education but was working in the television industry when she began working with college students. Now until this point, she hadn’t even heard of a church that had that kind of ministry. 

Raeanne:
00:06:18 I felt like God opened up my eyes and my heart to something that I never knew existed, and that changed everything. 

Jim: She left her TV job behind to work in college ministry full time. And that man Raeanne thought she was going to marry? Well, he left the church to begin a law enforcement career and serve as a chaplain with the California Highway Patrol. And then Raeanne, she moved a thousand miles north.

Raeanne:
00:06:43 I moved to Seattle, Washington, to work with the largest college ministry in the nation, to be their associate director. Until that man came back and said, Now, will you marry me? [laugh] So, and I’m like, No, I don’t want to leave my dream job. But, I did.
 
Phil: Nine years had passed from the time Raeanne had first seen Roger Newquist. They finally got married in 2004. A couple of years later, Raeanne gave birth to identical twin girls, Emma and Georgia. They added a boy, Mack, to the family a few years after that, and they raised their family in Southern California.

Raeanne:
00:07:18 So my husband had been working in law enforcement. He was an officer with the California Highway Patrol and then moved up to being a sergeant. And he had a unique role when he first started—he was an officer, an armed officer, but he also was serving in their chaplaincy department, and he was able to minister to that community. Now, it wasn’t maybe two or three years after he joined the CHP that they did away with the chaplaincy program. Really what they did was they renamed it like peer support, you know [chuckle], but it took a different turn. So he continued and when he was kind of nearing the eligibility to retire, he started thinking, you know, I really want to get back into full-time ministry. 

Phil: A few years prior, a good friend had asked the Newquists if they would support her volunteer mission work with a ministry called Mercy Ships. 

Raeanne:
00:08:13 Well, we had never heard of Mercy Ships before, but we loved her. And we said, Of course, we’ll support you. And really, through our relationship with her, we got to learn a little bit about Mercy Ships. So my husband is looking for different opportunities after he retires and finds that Mercy Ships is looking for a chaplain for 2019 and 2020.
 
Jim: Some background: Mercy Ships is an international ministry that offers free medical care to people in remote parts of the world. It docks its massive ships offshore and brings patients on board for a variety of life-changing medical procedures … all this is done in the Name of Jesus Christ.

Phil: And all of the hundreds of people who serve on the ship are volunteers, who pay their own way in order to live on board. Everyone from the captains to the surgeons to the teachers who run the schools for the children of the crew—they’re all volunteers.

Jim: When Roger started researching the ministry, it’s safe to say Raeanne wasn’t packing her bags for Africa.

Raeanne:
00:09:14 And I got to be honest, I’m kind of the wild and reckless one in the marriage. My husband being a first responder is very conservative and safe and calculated. And I thought, there’s no way in the world this man is going to move his three children and his family to live on a ship in West Africa. There’s no way. 

Jim: Well, this time Raeanne was wrong about Roger.

Raeanne:
00:09:34 God put a call upon his heart and his life and said, This is what I have for you. We applied and we talked to the children about it. Is this something you kids would be open to? Because if the kids weren’t in, there’s no way we would’ve taken them and uprooted their lives, but they were all open to it. And so we made a two-year commitment and radically changed our lives.
 
Phil: One of the most challenging parts of the process was making the decision to raise financial support through donors as opposed to just wiping out their savings. They needed about $50,000 a year to cover room and board for the five of them … times two years. 

Raeanne:
00:10:15 So it was quite a large amount of money, but it’s an incredible part of our story as well ’cause God provided extravagantly during that time for us.
Phil: Here’s one story of that extravagant provision. A few weeks before leaving for their training and then heading to the ship, the Newquists returned to the church where Roger and Raeanne had met years earlier. They had an opportunity to share their story during the church service. The church is right across the street from Pepperdine University.

Raeanne:
00:10:42 And during the service, it happened to be parents’ weekend at Pepperdine, so there were a lot of Pepperdine parents in the congregation that day. And the missions pastor came up front and said, The Newquists have almost reached their full support for two years to go, let’s close the gap for them. And I think we were about $10,000 short. After the service, the missions pastor came up to my husband and said, There is a man that just gave me a check for $10,000 for your family. 

Jim: Roger chased the man down in the parking lot to thank him.

Raeanne:
00:11:16 He was from Chicago; his daughter was at Pepperdine. He was there for parents’ weekend. We never met him. We didn’t know him, didn’t know his daughter. But he said, When I saw that video, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, You need to close the gap. And I mean, I’ve got so many stories like that. God provided so extravagantly for us that we had no doubt in our mind that we were doing what God called us to do.
 
Jim: The Newquists had just over two months to secure the financial support they needed and prepare to leave.

Raeanne:
00:11:49 To wrap up our lives, to sell our home, to get rid of everything that we owned—by choice—Mercy Ships didn’t require that. My husband to retire from his career, all sorts of things. We had about two months from the time that they said yes, and we left for Texas for training, and it was a whirlwind.
 
Phil: Raeanne, Roger, their 13-year-old daughters and 10-year-old son all boarded the ship, Africa Mercy, in July of 2019.

Raeanne:
00:12:18 And when we finally got on board the ship, the first couple months, especially for the kids, they would cry themselves to sleep at night and be like, We miss our friends. We miss our school, we miss our home, and my husband and I then would in turn, lie in bed and cry and go, what have we done? What have we done to our kids? What have we done to our family? And we would tell the kids, Guys, we can leave at any time. We don’t have to stay here. Like, we can go back. But there was this undercurrent of: God called us here. He made it so abundantly clear. He provided above and beyond every step of the way. We just have to trust Him.
 
Phil: Roger was to serve as a chaplain, while Raeanne worked part-time with the ship’s communications team and took care of Emma, Georgia, and Mack. The kids would be going to school with other children from all around the world.

Raeanne:
00:13:06 Yeah. So we knew that we were getting on board the then world’s largest nongovernmental hospital ship, pretty much focusing in surgery. So we don’t do general medicine, but Mercy Ships provides free, life-changing, in some instances lifesaving, surgeries for people in West Africa that do not have access to medical care, that do not have the resources if there was medical care. So Mercy Ships pulls in to a port and stays for about 10 months for a field service. 

Jim: Here are just a few of the specialties Mercy Ships focuses on.

Raeanne:
00:13:49 One of them is maxillofacial surgery. These are large tumors that are usually on the neck or face that are actually benign. They’re not deadly except they become deadly when they grow so big, they can block an airway or, you know, cause someone to not be able to eat properly because of these tumors, so those are removed. There is a whole facet of plastic surgery and reconstructive that comes from releasing burn contractures. We see a lot of burns in the African nations and also in developing nations where people largely cook over fires and over open flame, and children will fall into those fires and get burned, and then their hands, their arms, their legs, different parts of their body will, the scars when they heal, will contract. So we do surgery to release those and then plastic surgery to recover those. The windswept legs, you know, orthopedic surgery to correct those. 

Jim: These surgeries are often transformative, and not just in the physical sense, but also transformative on an emotional and spiritual standpoint.
 
Raeanne:
00:14:53 The mission of Mercy Ships is really to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to give hope by providing healing for people who have been cast aside or marginalized. They’ve been ostracized because of their conditions. They’ve been deemed as cursed because of the tumors they have on their face. And they might be, you know, put out of their community for decades because no one wants to go near them for fear that they might catch that as if it were contagious. So it’s just a beautiful model of being the hands and feet of Jesus through a very tangible need, which is reconstructive surgery in many ways, but also to offer the hope of Jesus through telling these people that we see you and we love you. You are God’s child no matter what deformity you have, no matter what disfigurement you have.
Phil: The ship was docked off the coast of Senegal in West Africa when the Newquist family came on board.

Raeanne:
00:15:52 I had never been to Africa before, I will say that, but this was very new for our children. So my expectation was that it was going to be difficult for them, that the things they saw, the things they smelled would be difficult. We got off the ship. Walking through the port itself is an experience. I mean, you’ve got these huge ships that are, you know, loading and unloading rice and onions, and it’s noisy, and there’s these fancifully painted trucks, you know, that are loading containers on and moving out of the port. It’s filthy. It smells. It’s hot and humid. And the kids are just walking through, and we get into the city where obviously nobody looks like my children. They’re all African. And my kids were completely fine. They acted as if it was totally normal, and I was shocked, like, Are you nervous? Are you—they’re like, No, we’re good.
 
Phil: The tears shed during those first nights on the ship gradually gave way to joy as the Newquist kids adjusted to their new life. 

Raeanne:
00:16:53 They transitioned so beautifully, and my kids fell in love with the patients and wanted to spend time in the hospital. And I thought, what? And one of my daughters would say, Mom, can we go down and visit the patients? And I kind of thought, Uh, what are we going to do? I mean, we don’t even know their language, like, what? This is so strange. And I guess—obviously growing up in California, you don’t just go hang out in a hospital and hang out with patients—but for my children, it became normal. They lived in a hospital, and so all we had to do was walk down two flights of stairs, and we were in the hospital. That was not off limits by any means. And so we would walk in and there would be patients in gowns and, you know, bandages and drains and wires and, you know, the noise, it was just so uncomfortable for me, but my kids were like, Oh, do you have a balloon? Let’s go play. You know, we can volley a balloon back and forth with these little kids, and it was extraordinary to see my children, a side of them that I never knew existed. 

Jim: Before they left California, Raeanne and Roger told each other they wanted to ‘radically change’ their children’s worldview, and that’s exactly what happened. 

Raeanne:
00:18:06 We wanted our kids to see that the life that we had in Southern California was not normal. It was not what most of the world experiences. And it just was remarkable to watch that happen before our eyes, to watch our kids grow and mature, to watch our kids become so comfortable around the 50-plus nations that are represented on board.
 
Jim: The adults on the ship made many sacrifices, and the Newquist children were no different.

Raeanne:
00:18:34 My son sacrificed baseball. He had played baseball for years, you know, even though he is only 10, he started when he was like 4. Two of—my daughters, one of them played soccer and was very, very good. One of my other daughters was a ballerina, and she danced five days a week. She was a committed dancer. And those kids gave up all of that to come. And it was sad for us. We grieved that, we grieved that as a family, and it was hard for my husband and I to have moments where we’re like, These kids are missing out on so much, until we quickly realized, But my gosh, what they are gaining and getting to do instead? It’s priceless, absolutely priceless.

Phil: Jesus said, “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” The Newquist family lost some things that most of the world chases after. But, they found a whole new life on board that ship.

Raeanne:
00:19:30 It was this beautiful, extravagant community where no one thought of themself as more important than the other. Everyone has a critical role to play. It’s the body of Christ functioning. So to live in that environment, it felt like living in Heaven, you know? 

Jim: Something that amazed Raeanne was the lack of selfishness and ego that she saw among the crew on the ship.

Raeanne:
00:19:55 And so the unity on board, it’s really otherworldly, and there is no hierarchy on board the ship. And I remember the captain invited my husband and I to come to his cabin for tea, and I thought, Oh my gosh, are we allowed to do that? Like, this is the captain, this is the master of the vessel, you know, like, are we allowed to do this? And I remember we walked in and sat down, had a little plate of cookies and had tea for us, and we just chitchatted, and you quickly learned that your mealtime, I might be sitting with a surgeon and a housekeeper and my kid and a nurse, and everyone’s just on equal playing field.

Phil: Everyone is there to share the love of Christ with the patients. For the Newquist family, one of the highlights was attending the Sunday morning church service with the patients who chose to come.

Raeanne:
00:20:46 So we would go down as a family and sit in these services. Again, the patients are in their hospital gowns. They’ve got drains and, you know, it’s not super comfortable, but to get to worship with them, and it was amazing. We also would go to the HOPE Center, which was an off-ship facility where our patients would go before their surgeries and they could stay. And then after their surgeries, they would return to the Hope Center to stay, to come back for rehabilitation or for physical therapy, you know, whatever their needs were, checkup, follow-ups, and stuff before they returned to their villages. We also would go to the HOPE Center, and my girls would help out with Sunday school. Again, totally voluntary, if the patients chose to come to any of the services we offered. And they would have so much fun playing with these little kids that maybe were fully in casts because they had their legs, you know, straightened and they weren’t able to walk, so they were carrying around these little kids. 

Phil: Raeanne loved watching her children connect with the patients, including a girl they met at the HOPE Center ahead of her surgery.

Raeanne:
00:21:53 Her name was Fama, and she was having a surgery on her leg, and we weren’t totally clear what it was, but at the HOPE Center, we started talking to her, my daughter Georgia and I, and just my daughter said to her, When you come onboard the ship, we will visit you in the hospital. And I remember thinking to myself like, Oh gosh, don’t be making promises. Like, who knows, you know, how that’s going to work? Like, but she said, We will visit you. We will visit you. Well, sure enough, when Fama came on board, my daughter, we found out, we became very close friends with nurses and doctors that we were living with, of course, and we heard that Fama was on board, and so my daughter, Georgia said, Mom, we have to go visit her. We promised her that we would go visit her. 

Jim: Each day, there is a period of time when the patients can go up to the deck and get some fresh air.

Raeanne:
00:22:39 It’s a wonderful time. And the crew is all welcome to go visit with them and hang out with them. And so we went outside and just sat next to her and held her hand. And I speak French a little bit; my daughter speaks French a little bit, and we were able to, you know, communicate to her through our broken French and talk about all sorts of different things, but it was just this beautiful time of connection to say to someone, you know, we see you and we value you, and you are so important to us. And she would say to us, Why are you here? Why are you doing this? And we said, Because Jesus loved us so much that we’re compelled to go share His love with other people as well. And it was, it just was a huge moment for me with my daughters to see that. 

Jim: The love, the selflessness, the deep sense of community—it all reminded Raeanne of what Jesus’ first followers experienced in the earliest days of the church.

Raeanne:
00:23:35 You know, the book of Acts where everyone came together and gave to each other according to their needs, that’s what it felt like. And literally, people do that. Like, there’s a little boutique onboard the ship, and it’s where when crew are leaving, they leave all their stuff in the boutique, you know, like, Oh yeah, here’s some clothes I no longer need, and here’s some suntan lotion, and things I don’t need at home anymore. But when you arrive on board the ship, you go down to the boutique and you take whatever you need, you know, and people will say to you, Hey, we’re leaving and we had shipped over on the container, you know, a huge thing of macaroni and cheese, do you guys want it? We’re like, OK. But everyone gives to each other according to their needs. 

Phil: Well, the Newquists didn’t want to leave, but as they were joyfully embracing life on the Africa Mercy in early 2020, the rest of the world was beginning to take notice of a new virus, one that was spreading rapidly from one country to another. Raeanne and Roger—and the entire crew—were about to face some excruciating decisions.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Phil: You’re going to hear Raeanne Newquist talk about those ‘excruciating’ decisions on part two of her family’s story. You’re listening to GPS: God. People. Stories.

Jim: The Newquist family chose to abandon a far more comfortable life in Southern California in order to serve as missionaries with Mercy Ships.

Phil: You might be wondering, “What would compel someone to do that?” Well, we invite you to find answers at FindPeaceWithGod.net. It clearly explains who Jesus Christ is and what following Him means. If you’d like to know more, head over to FindPeaceWithGod.net. 

Jim: In just a moment, you’re going to hear a preview of next week’s episode, part two of this story, and also a word from Billy Graham.

Voice-over: You’re listening to GPS: God. People. Stories., a podcast production of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

MUSIC STARTS

Billy Graham: 
00:25:44 We’re in the world with a mission, the mission of proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ and serving our needy world.

Voice-over: Billy Graham …

Billy Graham:
00:25:53 “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” That is the call of God to your life. I believe that God wants all of us to live lives of total commitment and service to Him right now where we are tonight. Are you willing to let Christ change your motives and be the master of your life’s work? If you’re willing to go anywhere and do anything for Him, you’ll be amazed at the opportunities He’ll open up to you. Have you given God every key to your heart and every key to your life? I’m asking you to make an affirmative response to the call of God tonight, a response in which you dedicate your life totally to Christ.

Phil: If you’d like to know more about totally dedicating your life to Jesus Christ, go to FindPeaceWithGod.net. That’s FindPeaceWithGod.net. You’ll also find a link to that site in the show notes.

Jim: Our guest on this episode of GPS is Raeanne Newquist. She and her family had signed on to serve for two years aboard a medical missions ship, starting in July 2019. But about eight months into their commitment, March 2020 to be specific, their plans were suddenly thrown overboard. The ship was shutting down, and the Newquists were headed … well, we can’t really say “home,” because they didn’t have one. They sold their house in Southern California just less than a year earlier. 

Jim: There’s a video Raeanne took of her family stepping off the ship as the COVID-19 pandemic was sweeping across the globe.

Raeanne:
00:27:38 And in my video, you can audibly hear my family sobbing. I mean, you could hear the kids just, and my husband just heaving. Everyone was just devastated. It was absolutely devastating. We had given up everything to go do this, and in some ways it felt like it had blown up in our face, [chuckle] but it also felt like we were leaving behind the most extraordinary experience of our life.

MUSIC STARTS

Phil: That is where we’ll pick up the story in next week’s new episode. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss it. I’m Phil Fleischman.

Jim: And I’m Jim Kirkland. GPS: God. People. Stories., it’s an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association—Always Good News.

CLOSING MUSIC

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