By Michael Berbin

The Clinic Generator’s Death

March 25, 2026, was the one-year anniversary of the clinic generator’s death. Many of you have been praying about this problem impacting the clinic ministry, so put your seatbelt on. It was on March 25, 2025, that my coworker Josh Perkins was talking to the Cummins dealer in Lae on the coast. The generator was putting out low voltage and, therefore, shutting down. While Josh was following the technician’s instructions to make adjustments, the control board literally blew up—most likely power diodes. Game over!

Because Cummins PNG was charging five times the price for the same board in the US, I decided to have the board purchased there, only to find that Cummins locks the boards, requiring its proprietary software/cable system to unlock and adjust them. The only other option was to transport the 2,000-pound generator 10.5 hours away to the Cummins dealer. It was rainy season when I attempted this, and so a Christian brother, Vitus, and I had quite a muddy adventure on the bush road beginning at 4 a.m. After about an hour, we came upon a line of six or so PMVs (public motor vehicles—in the bush, usually pickup trucks) lined up because a clan had a car chassis across the road due to a reimbursement they had not received from a man in our area. I squelched to the head of the line and told them that this was the generator for the clinic where they received medical treatment, and there were two options. I could close down the clinic completely, or they could let me through. The direct method is usually best in PNG. They saw the wisdom of letting me go, but that involved moving the PMVs. Moving them required a lot of ingenuity since many of them had to be pushed to start or needed some wires connected under the hood. After about 15 or 20 minutes of creative mechanic work, we were on our way again.

Another issue we had asked prayer for was the likelihood of armed robbery. The trip to Lae always involves the potential for holdups, but there was one site which is notorious for armed robbery nicknamed “rascal mountain.” (Rascal is the pidgin word for heavy-duty felon type criminals.) However, some enterprising men had recently established another hot spot for crime in an area called the Kassam pass. This is a portion of the Highlands Highway, which is nearly all sharp switchbacks dropping from a little over 3500 feet in elevation to about 600 feet in just a few kilometers. Obviously, this is not a section conducive to a high rate of travel and, therefore, conducive to a high rate of holdups. Two weeks before I took the generator to Lae, rascals had held up six 25-passenger buses in a violent mass robbery which sent many passengers to the hospital in serious condition. But the Lord is our shield, and Vitus and I made it to Lae safely, dropped off the generator, and drove the 11 hours back home without holdups or breakdowns except for one tire self-destructing.

After many discussions with Cummins over the next weeks, they finally informed me that the generator was repaired and ready for pickup. They did mention the fact that they had not tested it as their load tester was for 50 Hz and our generator was 60 Hz, as most of our medical equipment has come out of the US. Their solution was for me to pick up the generator and take it back to the bush and connect it to see if it worked!

I thought that was a very bad plan. So, after Jan and I returned from our supply trip for the team on a Friday, I began a frantic attempt to construct a bush generator load tester using a 200-liter drum, three heating elements, and three electric hot plates. As it turned out, it was a wonderful idea because when we got to Lae and applied electrical load to the generator, it was reading twice the actual power being consumed. In other words when I turned on 30 amps of load, it was reading and sensing 60 amps. The generator is rated at 32 amps continuous power, but the generator was saying this was almost twice the rated power and shutting the generator off. Praise God I brought my bush load tester! However, the technician was having fits trying to figure out how to adjust it so that it read the correct power and allowed full usage of the generator’s capacity. He worked all day Tuesday and half of Wednesday with no success. After I gave some pointers, he was able to make the adjustment so that it showed the correct output. We loaded the generator about 3:00 p.m. Wednesday, and Vitus and I started the long trip home early the next morning.

But wait, the fun was not over. When near the same area at which the folks were blocking the road, a tree had been felled across the road by another disgruntled individual—and this within an hour of home. After being delayed two hours, I finally pulled the tree out of the way so I could get through and then traveled about 15 minutes more to the chassis clan. They had been very active in digging a ditch across the bush road two feet wide and about three feet deep. But again, since it was for “their” clinic, they very obligingly placed a piece of steel culvert across the ditch on one side. It was still sloppy, so with one wheel in the ditch, one on top of the steel, and the one-ton generator on the back, I slid further out of the road and broke a woman’s betel nut stand.

About a week later I was able to transport the generator from the pickup across the school field and into its happy home in the clinic generator shed. Thank you for all your prayers. The Lord answered many, many of those. There are usually 40+ patients each clinic day who hear the Gospel in addition to having their physical needs met. Pray for that Gospel to do an eternal work in these patients’ lives.