HILDREN ARE DYING IN THE ISLANDS OF Vanuatu (formerly the New Hebrides) because their parents don't have 10 cents to buy medication. That's the standard fee for an antibiotic treatment. But even that small cost is too much for many families. All they can do is watch their sick children die.

Seventh-day Adventists are doing something about this. They're sending out medical teams in oceangoing yachts to save the lives of people who can't afford the 10 cents. When Pacific Yacht Ministries arrives with free antibiotics, it seems like a gift from heaven. And it is.

Pacific Yacht Ministries (PYM) is a medical evangelistic venture started about four years ago by a group in a small Adventist church in Queensland, Australia. Today it saves a life almost every time it arrives at an island with a medical team on board. In fact, even before it officially started operating, it saved a child's life. While the crew were sailing their yacht north to rendezvous with a medical team, which was flying in from Australia, they sheltered at an island overnight. The arrival of any yacht is a big social event. No trading vessel had been to that island for 12 months, and it had been 20 years since a doctor visited. But to one local family, a yacht meant the possibility of medicine. The first canoe to reach the yacht carried a 3-year-old boy who was dying from pneumonia. Our staff treated him with antibiotics and saved his life. The yacht left in the morning with a promise to return in a month.

There were only two Seventh-day Adventist men living on that island. One had been elected chief of the main village; the other had become head of the copra cooperative. The community obviously regarded these Adventists highly to entrust them with such high office. But officials from the main Protestant church didn't want the Adventists given any status at all. At the very time when our yacht first arrived on one side of the island, they were plotting against one of the Adventists on the other side. They reported him to authorities on a false charge, which was so serious that the army came and took him away. However, the magistrate realized that this was a case of religious persecution. He ordered the Adventist to be released from jail and to be returned to his island.

Islanders talking about this court case created a huge focus on Seventh-day Adventists. Then right at that very time our medical yacht returned. Imagine the impact! The "dreaded" Seventh-day Adventists had a medical team saving lives and helping everyone they could. The other church hadn't done that.

The leader of the Protestant church had a 3-year-old son with a hernia the size of a tennis ball protruding through his navel. It was so serious that whenever the child cried, the hernia would double in size. The boy spent the whole of his life only minutes away from possible death. If he had fallen over while playing a children's game and had something puncture the spot, he would have died from infection in just a few days. The yacht left the island with the boy and his father on board, taking the boy for surgery at a hospital on the main island. That type of love beats almost any religious prejudice. Now the Protestant church members who persecuted Adventists welcome PYM back to their island with open arms.

The original plan was to have a native Adventist minister working on the yacht as a deckhand. The minister would then fill a pastoral and evangelistic role when the yacht reached shore. However, persecution of Adventists in this part of the country is so strong that the church decided not to send the minister. They wanted the yacht to travel the waters for a year to reduce prejudice before they put a minister on board. So Pacific Yacht Ministries is making the health message the "entering wedge" that Ellen White promised it would be.

Using "Bribery" to Help
In one amazing incident the yacht team virtually had to bribe a father to let them save his child. Two days before the yacht arrived, two of the three children from that family had died. The boat crew saw that the only remaining child didn't have long to live. And since they could not treat the child with the facilities on the yacht, they wanted to transport her to a hospital on a larger island.

But the father refused to let his daughter go because he had no money to pay for transportation. Even when the yacht captain told him the transportation would be free, the father still refused, feeling his daughter could not go alone. The captain then offered to take the father with them, but again he refused, because he felt they might not bring him back and he would be stranded on some strange island.

Then the captain had a stroke of genius. He radioed the yacht and told them to bring his money belt ashore. "How much does it cost to travel from the big island to this island?" he asked the father. After being told, the captain put that amount of money in the father's hand, saying, "if we don't bring you back, you have the money to come back yourself." The father gave a shy smile and nodded. But there was no time for niceties. "Go and get some food and tell your wife that you are leaving in 10 minutes," the captain shouted. And they picked up the near-lifeless form of the little girl and ran toward the beach.

It was almost nightfall, and bad weather was coming. The little girl could die before morning. This was now a race against the weather and against the clock. As they ran toward the beach another voice called out. It was a man with a severe wound in his foot that also needed urgent treatment in hospital. "Come with us," the captain told him.

As the wind filled the sails, the captain looked to the shore. Everyone from the village stood on the beach as if mourning as they watched the yacht sail into the storm. The weather was horrific. The small boats that are normally used for interisland travel would certainly not have survived that night. But our large yacht plowed through 100 miles of turbulent ocean and sighted land at dawn. They arranged emergency hospital treatment for the little girl and the man. And a radio message back to their island told the locals that both patients were recovering well.

"How different it was one week later when we returned to that island," the captain said. "We saw the shore lined with happy smiling faces of people who wanted to be the first to touch us."

To Stop at Least One Funeral
There are very few oceangoing yachts traveling around the outer Vanuatu islands. In fact, the government Health Department's provincial manager had never been able to visit all the islands in her province. She asked to travel with PYM. Because she is a trained nurse practitioner, having her on board gave the team extra medical firepower. And it gave this senior government official a deeper understanding of and love for Seventh-day Adventists.

The average life span on these islands is only 47 years. So almost every time the medical team anchored at an island, they saw a funeral being conducted for someone who had died just before they arrived. But because of their visit, they usually prevented at least one funeral before they left.

Almost all children in this area suffer untreated chest and ear infections. Whenever Pacific Yacht Ministries anchors at a new village, virtually all the local children line up for treatment. Fortunately, the infections can be treated very quickly and effectively. The children the PYM crew leave behind are much happier and healthier than those they find when they arrive.

Yet while treating the children is easy, it's not so easy with the local women. They have a culture of "suffering in silence." Says Steve Woodward, boat operations coordinator for PYM, "Our usual timetable is for the yacht to provide four days of medical care at each location. For the first three days almost everyone treated is a child or an adult male. Then as the boat is about to depart, suddenly the women start presenting themselves. And often these are the most serious cases we face. It plays havoc with our schedules."

The South Pacific tropical areas are notorious for their heavy downpours of rain; but the rain, it seems, doesn't know how to fall when Pacific Yacht Ministries is running a clinic. Most clinics are held outdoors, but up to the time of this writing it has never rained on a single one of them. Heaven keeps the heavens from pouring down on them. It's just a small practical sign that God is with them.

Pacific Yacht Ministries divides its time between medical and dental tours. On a medical tour it treats about 50 people a day. But dental problems are far more common in this area. People often sit in the line waiting five or six hours to have the team remove a tooth that has caused them years of agony. The yacht's dental team treats up to 200 dental patients a day. That is an incredible one patient every three minutes.

Profile of Dedication and Commitment
The medical and dental teams for Pacific Yacht Ministries are mainly Adventist professionals taking their holidays from America or Australia. They pay their own airfares to join the team, and generally they pay someone to look after their practice at home while they're gone. So it is expensive for medical personnel to donate their time. But it is a tribute to the dedication of Adventist medical professionals that they are so willing to take on the task-and to pay for the privilege.

The best example of this dedication was what was supposed to be Pacific Yacht Ministries' first day of operation. The yacht crew had sailed from Australia, with a doctor planning to join them by plane when they arrived in Vanuatu. But on his way to the Australian airport the doctor had a stroke and had to stay home for medical treatment. Another Adventist doctor immediately volunteered. On virtually no notice he walked away from his comfortable medical practice in the suburbs of a major city to rough it with Pacific Yacht Ministries.

Pacific Yacht Ministries sails yachts about 50 feet long, thereby providing a high level of safety. Most interisland travel in Vanuatu is done in 15-foot canoes with outboard motors attached. If a storm blows up, travel in these canoes can be fatal. "Twice canoes traveling through the same storms as our yacht didn't make it," Woodward says. "Another time we found a half-submerged canoe, its passengers obviously washed away and probably drowned."

The yachts used at present are donated. The yacht that PYM will use for the next season is still under construction, with its owner giving the ministry first use of his brand-new craft. His yacht will be called Elvis, after the well-known American entertainer. When Pacific Yacht Ministries builds its own yachts, they will have names far more significant to Seventh-day Adventists.

Pitcairn, for example. Adventists will remember that early Adventist Sabbath school offerings collected in America bought the Pitcairn, which took the Adventist message to the South Seas. Now almost 130 years later, Pacific Yacht Ministries has rekindled the vision of the pioneers who sent Pitcairn on its historic journey. So it will be appropriate for us to sail in a boat with the name they selected long ago.

Another yacht could carry the name Calvin Parker, a highly respected name in South Pacific Adventist history. Calvin Parker was the pioneer American missionary among the cannibals in what is now Vanuatu.

When he arrived there, it was just before Sabbath. The boat crew placed his bags on the beach just above the low tide mark and quickly sailed away to escape becoming a meal. A little later a local man came to the beach thinking that Parker was the American schoolteacher the islanders had requested.

After discussion, the cannibal offered to let the missionary sleep in his hut for the night, which Parker accepted. The local man went to carry the bags, but it was now just after sunset. "The American" told him to leave the bags there because they shouldn't do any work on Sabbath. The local man protested that the bags were near the low tide mark and would be washed away by the rising water. But Parker stood by his principles. The bags would not be moved.

There were two high tides before sunset on Saturday night. The high water washed all around those bags, but neither high tide touched them. After sunset the locals carried the bags from the beach completely dry-a dramatic miracle demonstrating God's power and showing the locals that God honors those who keep His Sabbath. Pacific Yacht Ministries wants the same power and blessing that God gave to Parker, so they want to name one of their yachts the Calvin Parker.

Many infections that are only minor in some places are major problems on these isolated islands. Bacteria grow well in the humid tropical climate, and many locals don't have medical clinics nearby to treat them. One man had a simple splinter in his foot, not a serious problem elsewhere. However, he couldn't remove it, and there was no local doctor to cut it out. By the time Pacific Yacht Ministries arrived, the splinter had festered in his foot for several months and had the potential of developing into fatal gangrene. "We had no sterile surgery rooms, but we had prayer. We laid a mat on the dirt floor of a hut. The man lay on it, and our surgeon knelt beside him to operate. Prayer overcame the risk of infection. Surgery removed the splinter. And the man was healed."

Villagers helped by PYM are incredibly grateful. When a yacht is about to leave they always want to hold a feast to honor the crew. And so far every island the ministry has visited has offered to give them land for a house. They want the Adventists to stay permanently. Yet these are villages that a few days earlier were well known for their opposition to Adventists!

PYM started four years ago as an "impossible" dream at a small country church in Queensland, Australia. Some four years later this ragtag group of idealists actually got their idea afloat (pardon the pun).

PYM is proof that old ideas are often good ideas. Sending out a yacht is how the Adventist Church started its giant South Seas evangelism program. And now the same simple idea is helping to finish that very same work.

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Phil Ward, a retired journalist and former television news photographer, operates a Christian radio station and lives on the sunshine coast of Queensland, Australia.

Postscript: The success of the first season on the water has encouraged PYM to broaden its horizons. They want doctors and paramedics from Australia and America to regularly spend annual vacations on board their yachts. They want Adventist sailors to volunteer as crew for six to 12 months. They want Adventist Church members to donate the money needed to buy and operate the yachts. And they have set up a Web site (www.pacificyachtministries.org) at which Adventists can volunteer to help.