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Spin the globe, find a calling
March 30, 2006
By Carol Flaherty MSU News Service
BOZEMAN -- Jon Balgeman says he still laughs when he thinks how
the spin of a globe has shaped his life.
The near-4.0 senior in Montana State University's College of
Nursing was a Manhattan High School sophomore in 1990 when he
heard of a world-wide mission project. Wanting to help but not
knowing where, he made the general choice of the Southern
Hemisphere. Then he closed his eyes, spun the globe and landed
his finger on New Guinea.
"My parents said if I could raise the money, I could go, so I
wrote letters to a couple of churches and raised the money for
the trip," Balgeman says.
He not only went back the following summer, but wanted to
continue working in the area. So he took training with the New
Tribes Mission, and during language training in Missouri met his
wife-to-be, Linda Wiebe of Manitoba, Canada. They met in January,
became engaged in May, and spent their first anniversary in the
remote and crocodile-infested Sepik River region of New Guinea.
Three years later, they returned to the United States with Jon
committed to becoming a nurse.
"We did a lot of education for community health" in New Guinea,
remembers Jon. "It could be as basic as hand-washing and bathing,
or could include childhood immunizations." He and his wife also
had the task of learning and writing down the until-then mainly
unwritten language of the village they lived in. He says the
culture worked on what is called a pay-back system, where when
you supply someone's need, that person is indebted to you to
supply your need if one arises in the future.
"Keeping the debts you owe people in mind is pretty much how the
culture works," he adds.
That principle seems to have continued to guide their lives when
they returned to the United States in February 2000. Jon wanted
to be trained in medicine because it "is a beautiful way to
connect with people." Linda began working at MSU Employee
Wellness.
Now in his final months of upper-division nursing training in
Bozeman, part of Jon's nursing education includes work experience
this spring at Bozeman's Bridger Clinic, where he counsels men
about sexually transmitted diseases, and learning about medical
administration by working at the Livingston Memorial Hospital.
Jon was recently honored as the Rotary Student of the Month for
March. After graduation, he will begin work at the Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minn. Long-term, he says he and Linda may yet find a
use for their talents in mission work, whether full-time or as a
break from more conventional stateside employment.
"Once you have experienced the challenge of living in other
cultures, it is difficult to stay put in America," he concludes.
This is available on the MSU web at:
http://www.montana.edu/cpa/news/nwview.php?article=3557
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