Family Gives Up the American Dream to Serve Africa’s Poor (Part 2)

The Newquist family was loving their new life onboard a medical ship off the coast of Africa. Then the COVID pandemic struck.

“It was absolutely devastating,” Raeanne Newquist said. “We had given up everything to go do this. And in some ways, it felt like it had blown up in our face.”

Find out what happened next in the second half of the Newquists’ extraordinary story.

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

Transcript

MUSIC STARTS

Raeanne Newquist:
00:00:01 It was this beautiful, extravagant community where no one thought of themself as more important than the other. So to live in that environment, it felt like living in Heaven, you know? And why would you ever want to leave that?
 
Jim Kirkland: Raeanne Newquist, her husband Roger, and their three children sold their house and said goodbye to California. They served as missionaries on board a medical missions ship off the coast of Africa—and they loved it.

Phil Fleishman: They boarded the Africa Mercy in July of 2019 and they planned to stay for at least two years. But then came March of 2020; the COVID-19 pandemic suddenly wrecked their plans.

Raeanne:
00:00:43 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.

Phil: This is the second half of the Newquist family’s story—and the second week of our November series, “Going Into All the World.” We have three more stories on deck for you this month. I’m Phil Fleischman.

Jim: And I’m Jim Kirkland. This is GPS: God. People. Stories., it’s an outreach of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Billy Graham:
00:01:11 What were the disciples commissioned to do? To preach the Gospel. Nothing else can meet the crying need of mankind.

Jim: You’ll hear more from Billy Graham in just a few minutes. First though, a reminder, if you haven’t already, make sure that you are subscribed to GPS, so you will not miss a single episode. You can do so on your favorite podcast app, if you have not done so already, and that way it will be ready for you every single time, with every story.

Phil: And we also want you to remember this link: FindPeaceWithGod.net. It’s an interactive website where you can ask spiritual questions and get answers in real time. You can visit FindPeaceWithGod.net yourself or you can share it with a friend who has questions. Again, the address is: FindPeaceWithGod.net.

Intro: GPS: God. People. Stories.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Raeanne: 
00:02:07 It was this beautiful, extravagant community where no one thought of themself as more important than the other.

Phil: Raeanne Newquist is describing the community of volunteers on board the medical missions ship, Africa Mercy.

Raeanne: 
00:02:20 It’s the body of Christ functioning. So to live in that environment, it felt like living in Heaven, you know? And why would you ever want to leave that?

Jim: By the start of 2020, which is six months into the Newquist’s two-year commitment to serve on board the Africa Mercy, the family had basically overcome all the initial homesickness they felt.

Phil: In fact, Raeanne, her husband Roger, and their three children—13-year-old identical twins, Emma and Georgia, and their 10-year-old brother, Mack … they were all loving life on board.

Jim: By the way, if you haven’t listened that, to part one of their story, this would be a really good time to just hit ‘pause’ and go back to hear how the Newquist family wound up on the ship. But to recap quickly here, the Newquists heard about a Christian ministry called Mercy Ships from a friend who served on the Africa Mercy. When Roger spotted an opening for a chaplain on the ship, he felt an inexplicable pull towards the ministry, which was a big surprise to his wife and kids. 

Phil: In July of 2019, the whole family said goodbye to their life in Southern California in order to serve God on board the all-volunteer medical missions ship.

Raeanne:
00:03:36 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: From cleft palate repair to tumor removal to surgeries for burn victims, the care that patients get on board the Africa Mercy is life-changing—and life-changing in three ways: physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and all the care is completely free.

Raeanne:
00:04:31 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.

Phil: The ship was docked off the coast of Senegal, in West Africa, when the Newquist family came on board in 2019. After initially second-guessing their radical decision, Raeanne, Roger, and their children adjusted to their new life. And they fell in love with the people they met, everyone from the patients to the crew.

Jim: Yeah, they got to know each other pretty well as they shared life together—and that is a very unique and pretty isolated environment. 

Raeanne:
00:05:28 When you’re on board the ship, your life becomes very small in a lot of ways. There’s not news, you know, playing on TVs in the lobbies and stuff. We really had no idea what was going on in the outside world. I wasn’t on my computer watching the news, on the internet, or anything of that sort. You’re very present and there’s so much going on on board that’s important.

Jim: That’s why the Newquists were oblivious to a major news story that was being reported around the world in early 2020, news of a virus spreading rapidly from one country to another.

Phil: They first heard about it from friends in California who were planning on spending a week in France and then visiting the Newquists on board the ship. These friends were the Newquists’ former pastor and his wife. 

Raeanne:
00:06:16 And all of a sudden she starts calling me and she says, Hey, Raeanne, are we going to be able to come, you know? And I said, Well, what do you mean? And she said, Well, you know, there’s this virus, the COVID virus, and it sounds like now it’s in Europe. And, I said, Gosh, I have no idea. It’s business as usual here. You know, we’ve got people coming in and out all the time from all over the world. We haven’t heard anything about it. So she kept checking in with me, and then they decided, you know what? Now we heard that it’s in France a lot, and so we’re actually going to cancel our France portion of our trip, and we’re just going to come straight to Dakar. And we said, OK, great. Yeah, it’s business as usual here.

Phil: The friends arrived at midnight on March 12, 2020.

Raeanne: 
00:06:58 We were so excited to have encouragement from home. They brought a 50-pound suitcase full of, you know, goodies and treats and candies and all sorts of stuff. On Friday morning, Friday the 13th, I took them out to some markets and when we were at a local hotel hanging out by their pool to recover, you know, from their travels, and I got a call that there was going to be an all-crew meeting at 4 o’clock.

Jim: Their group got back to the ship just in time for the meeting.

Raeanne:
00:07:30 The whole entire crew was in there and in front of us sat this panel of our chief medical officer, our head surgeon, our—we did have a person on board that was in charge of infectious disease at all. We had our hospital director, I mean, all the bigwigs, you know, were sitting in front of us and kind of talking to us a little bit about this virus, giving us an education and whatnot. But I still just didn’t really think anything of it. Now, our friends who had just come from California, they’re like, This has been all over the news at home, and there’s all this stuff going on, and they were so fascinated to get information that actually was pretty different than the information they were getting in the United States. By the next morning, the whole thing was shut down.

Jim: So many hopes were wrecked in an instant. More than 50 patients had had their surgeries canceled. The local day-crew learned the ship would be leaving port ASAP. And the Newquists, like so many of their fellow crew members, were devastated.

Raeanne:
00:08:27 By the next morning, Saturday morning, our friends were back on a flight, back to California. They were with us for maybe 36 hours at most. And, everything shut down. No one was to leave, no one was to come on board. We were in complete lockdown mode and isolated, and everything changed at that moment.

Phil: A team of nurses had the difficult task of telling the expectant patients that their surgeries would not be happening … at least not for a while.

Raeanne:
00:08:54 Those nurses are absolute heroes. They’re the most extraordinary people with such kindness and compassion. But I remember thinking like, What can we do? And I gathered some kids together at the academy and the school, and we threw up some verses in French on a whiteboard, and I said, Let’s make cards. You know, so all the kids were drawing pictures, and we gave them to the nurses to then take to the patients at the HOPE Center to tell them they weren’t going to receive surgery—just doing whatever little thing we could to say we love you, we’re praying for you, and we see you.

Phil: Then came the enormous task of shutting down an enormous ship.

Raeanne:
00:09:32 It was literally all hands on deck. There were nurses who were also cooking in the galley and also serving in housekeeping. Everyone was doing every job because people were leaving like crazy, you know, trying to get out while they could. We had no idea what was happening or what was coming ahead of us. All we did know is that we wanted to shut down the hospital, to get our current patients in safe enough state that we could safely return them to either a local rehab facility or, you know, get them care that they needed so we could leave. And in the midst of that, when you’re on a ship with a bunch of medical professionals, all of them were thinking, a lot of them were thinking, I want to get back to my home country and help my own people.

Jim: The Newquists had a decision to make: whether to get out while they could or stay on board until the job was done. 

Phil: Raeanne remembers the conversation she had about this with Roger.

Raeanne:
00:10:29 When he came to me, it was actually midnight ’cause there were all these people leaving the ship in the middle of the night. And people had come and said, Are you going to get your family out of here? Are you going to go? We had some acquaintances that were actually working at the U.S. Embassy in Dakar who had called me and said, Raeanne, we have five seats on our plane. Do you want them? We will give them to your family. Everyone was—it was so crisis mode, you know? And my husband with complete conviction said, God called us for such a time as this; we are not leaving. And really his authority and his conviction and his, you know, hearing the voice of God so clearly just gave me complete peace. And God totally provided for all of us. He provided for every crew member who needed to get out, there was a way out. And for those who had to stay, they stayed, and I just felt complete and utter peace.

Jim: Before serving as a chaplain on board the Africa Mercy, Roger had spent 20 years as a first responder. He had been a chaplain with the California Highway Patrol, and as one, he was trained in critical incident debriefing—a crucial step for first responders as they process traumatic events.

Raeanne:
00:11:42 And when everything got shut down, it was actually very, very traumatic for our hospital staff, for much of our hospital staff, especially the nurses; it was very traumatic for them. Because several nurses did leave, the nurses that remained were working 24 hours; they were exhausted. And so for my husband to come in and be able to offer critical debriefing. Once we left, once we were sailing and arrived safely in the Canary Islands, you know, we began to offer debriefs for the whole entire medical staff. And it really felt like God saying, This is the reason that I had you here.

Phil: Even in the midst of the most heartbreaking part of their journey, the Newquists could see God working things together for good. 

Raeanne:
00:12:34 And when we arrived in Tenerife, I kind of took over this role of, I feel like I was Julie, the cruise director, you know, from The Love Boat, and I said, We’re going to start the isolation vacation, is what we called it. And I started planning these events, and then we just started doing all these fun activities to really keep up the morale of the crew. 

Phil: Take a moment to think back to March or April of 2020, when the pandemic was shutting down schools, and workplaces, and churches.

Jim: Many of us were at home, cut off from friends and extended family, at least physically. Not so for the residents of the Africa Mercy.

Raeanne:
00:13:14 The thing that was beautiful was there was about 250 of us remaining on board, and we were isolated together, where we quickly learned the rest of the world was shut up in their homes all alone. We were 250 isolated together. We had a great time. 

Jim: The Newquist family stayed on board until the end of May 2020. Then they prepared to head back to California. But keep in mind, they didn’t have a house to come back to. They had sold their house 10 months earlier.
 
Raeanne:
00:13:44 We packed up our cabin and we kind of told the kids like, we don’t, we assumed we were coming back, you know, we’re coming back, but just in case, you know, take the things that you want, you know, just in case.

Phil: They had no idea the COVID-19 pandemic would drag on for years, taking millions of lives and disrupting the whole world. The Newquist family thought they’d be back on board the Africa Mercy soon after leaving it. Even so, walking off that ship was heartbreaking.

Raeanne:
00:14:16 We started this tradition when people were leaving, and it’s a big—I don’t really know all the history behind it—but it’s a big honor when you disembark a ship, if they blow the horn. And so for some of our crew who had been on board and had served for like seven and eight years or more, 10 years, you know, when they were leaving and kind of ending their commitment, when they came down on the dock, there would be a big party and a big celebration, and then we would, the captain would blow the horn, and that was kind of like a big thing. 

Phil: But in light of the extraordinary circumstances brought about by the pandemic, the captain of the Africa Mercy blew the horn for each and every crew member who disembarked.

Raeanne:
00:14:55 So it was, you know, this huge honor. We all got the horn, you know. And I have a video of our family all masked up. The seamstresses on board and different people who were talented created, you know, masks for everyone out of African fabrics, and we were in our masks, and we were down on the dock, and we got in this shuttle to go to the airport, and they blew the horn. 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 we are leaving behind the most extraordinary experience of our life, and we were not ready for it to end.

Jim: As they arrived back in California after less than a year with Mercy Ships, the Newquists were faced with a difficult transition.

Raeanne:
00:16:00 We had sold our house. We had gotten rid of all of our furniture. We gave away our cars. We had nothing. And to come back in the midst of a pandemic was insane. Nobody wanted us in their home. Nobody wanted us anywhere, you know? But God was so extravagant with His provision, and friends of ours had just inherited a home from their uncle who had passed away, and they said, Go stay in this home. And, you know, we stayed there. And really for a year and a half, as a family, we were kind of vagabonds. We bounced around from guest room to guesthouse. We rented a house for five months, and we kept thinking we were going to go back.

Jim: It was about a year and a half after they left the ship that Roger and Raeanne realized they were not going to be able to go back anytime soon.
Raeanne:
00:16:46 We don’t know when this thing’s going to end. We’ve got three kids who are entering high school. We need to give them a home, you know? We need to settle down. And it was the hardest decision we’d ever made, to buy a home and start over. I can honestly tell you, I think my husband is still reeling from it. He is still struggling. I’m kind of surprised in some ways at myself that I’m even emotional about it because I feel like I’ve kind of moved on about a year ago. But the kids are so much more resilient, you know, the kids kind of transitioned a little bit better than we did. But I would say that we’re still transitioning. I would say my husband and I are still transitioning. It’s very hard. 

Phil: Roger and Raeanne decided to move to Northern California to be closer to the grandparents and that’s where they are today. All three kids are teenagers now, and Georgia and Emma are applying to colleges.

Raeanne:
00:17:40 One thing that has been a complete joy—I mentioned that all my children were very impacted by our short time with Mercy Ships. But one of my daughters in particular, Georgia, had her heart, and frankly, her life, radically changed as a 13-, 14-year-old kid. She is applying to nursing schools right now, and all she wants to do is become a nurse and spend two years getting her experience so that she can go back and serve on board. That’s all she wants to do is go back.

Phil: The family still has ties to Mercy Ships, especially since Raeanne is working for the ministry.

Raeanne:
00:18:14 I’ve been blessed to stay connected to the mission by getting to work in the marketing department. I get to host and produce our podcast as well as do radio spots for our Mercy Minute® around the nation and do a lot of writing. My husband is praying and really seeking God on what is next for him, but we are all back, settled down in Northern California.

Jim: Even though it’s been difficult to start over, the Newquists know they have a lot to be thankful for.

Raeanne:
00:18:45 We are seeing God bring new life into our lives. We have a beautiful church home now and a wonderful community that is just beginning. God is definitely bringing beauty from ashes. 

Jim: Just as God hasn’t forgotten the Newquists, He didn’t forget about the African patients who had to have surgeries canceled in March of 2020. Today, Mercy Ships is back up and running again.

Raeanne:
00:19:11 And every single one of those patients received the surgery that they were promised.

Phil: You might have noticed one word Raeanne used throughout her interview with us is “extravagant.” The Newquists’ experience with Mercy Ships put a spotlight on God’s extravagant love—for the poor and ostracized people of West Africa, and for the believers from all around the world who sacrifice homes and money and comfort in order to serve in the Name of Jesus. 

Raeanne:
00:19:40 That’s who our God is. Our God is extravagant. He’s extravagant with His love. He’s extravagant with His forgiveness. He’s extravagant with His redemption. I mean, you know, when you are a follower of Jesus, you are going to be living an extravagant life, because that’s what He came to give us: a life, but a life in abundance—and it’s extravagant.

MUSIC TRANSITION

Phil: You just heard the second part of the Newquist family’s extraordinary story. And while it may be the end of their story for this podcast series, we trust God has good things in store for Roger, Raeanne, Mack, Georgia, and Emma. 

Jim: If anything you’ve heard so far today has moved you to draw closer to God—or it’s brought some questions into your mind—we invite you to visit FindPeaceWithGod.net. That is our website that uses all sorts of material—videos, text, and even a live chat feature—to explain who Jesus is and what following Him means for your life. If you’d like to know more, head to FindPeaceWithGod.net. In just a moment, you’re going to hear a word from Billy Graham and then a sneak preview of our next episode.

MUSIC STARTS

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

Billy Graham:
00:21:11 When Jesus said, “Go ye into all the world,” these words were like the cry of ‘charge’ to a soldier. 

Voice-over: Billy Graham …

Billy Graham:
00:21:18 He meant that all of us were to have compassion on a lost world, that all of us Christians were to be concerned for a lost world, that all of us were to communicate to a lost world a saving Gospel of redemption. Off the disciples went, filled with the Spirit. They went prayerfully. They went fervently. And with God’s help, they made an impact on the world and turned the world of their day upside down. What were the disciples commissioned to do? To preach the Gospel. Nothing else can meet the crying need of mankind, for at the bottom of all evil in the world is the problem of sin, and the Gospel alone holds the answer to the problem of evil. “He shall save [the] people from their sins” is still the Good News that the world so desperately needs.

MUSIC FADES

Jim: Good News indeed. And, if you would like to know more about that Good News, the News that was shared by Jesus’ disciples and by Christian missionaries like the Newquists all around the world, visit our website: FindPeaceWithGod.net. It’s place where you can ask spiritual questions and even chat with trained volunteers about your questions. It’s available 24 hours a day. FindPeaceWithGod.net. 

Phil: We have a new episode of our series, “Going Into All the World,” coming your way next week. You’re going to hear from a multigenerational missions family. Rick Anderson and his mother-in-law, Carolyn Pace, have stayed committed to serving the people of Peru despite suffering tremendous personal loss.

Carolyn Pace:
00:22:47 For 12 years we were under a military rule. You know, and it was nothing to see guards with their shields and guns and stuff on the street, but the Lord took care of us and we were able to continue preaching and teaching and doing everything that we needed to do.

MUSIC STARTS

Phil: Make sure you’re subscribed to GPS so you don’t miss that story. 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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