About us (briefly):
We are both Melbournites by birth, although have each had stints in other places during our childhood - Steve in country Victoria and Kelly in Papua New Guinea. We met for the first time...well, neither of us can actually remember , it was so long ago(probably at church or school??!!). Many years after this uneventful beginning, we got married on a cloudy Melbourne day in October 2003, and soon after started our new life together in Auckland NZ.  Steve had already lived in NZ for over a year before we got married, and by the time we leave for the Solomons Steve will have been in NZ for 5years.

We have been involved in leading the "young-ish" adult group (called Life) at our church, Greenlane Christian Centre, and we are going to miss our mates dearly when we leave.  They have been our NZ family, and we have shared many exhilarating, exhausting, and encouraging times with them, not to mention countless meals. Did we mention that we're really going to miss them?

St. Matthew's Community Church in Endeavour Hills, Victoria, Australia is our home church.  We first traveled to the Solomons with St. Matthews in 2005 for a two-week mission trip - and this sparked our need to go! During this time, we worked alongside and got to know a number of colleagues at the National Referral Hospital in Honiara.

In the Solomons we will be continuing our professional work, this time at Kilu'ufi Hospital, in Auki, the capital of Malaita province (east of Guadalcanal, which houses the nation's capital, Honiara).

Steve is an orthotist/prosthetist* who works for the Orthotic Centre in Auckland, who provide private consultations and are also contracted to Auckland's major hospitals. Steve provides the orthotics service to Auckland City Hospital & Starship Children's Health and Greenlane Clinical Centre. The former two facilities are the country's major specialist hospitals for adults and children respectively. Steve's specialist area is spinal orthoses, which is a valuable skill given the nature of patient injuries seen at these major trauma centres. 

The Orthotic Centre have generously allowed us to accumulate good quality used and superseded products to take to the Solomons - saving their hospital system thousands of dollars! 

--------

Kelly is a physiotherapist at Starship Children's Health in Auckland. She works on a number of wards, providing neurological and neurodevelopmental physiotherapy. Much of her work is with young head-injured children, but she also sees children with a variety of other neurological disorders, and infants who have, or are at risk of developmental problems due to their illness or to prolonged hospitalisation. Therapy and rehabilitation may begin while a child is still on a ventilator, in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit. She often works together with Steve, to prevent sick children developing stiff joints whilst they are unable to move normally.

--------

*Orthotist/Prothetist descriptions:
            - Wikipedia Definitions - Orthotics, Orthotist,
                                                        Prosthetics, Prosthetist
            - NHS website;
            - JobGuide.com.au;