Mr. Boon’s first mission was in 2016, in South Sudan, where he was dropped into a hospital and asked to manage 70 people who were supporting a smaller hospital 80km away on the front line of fighting.
“It didn’t daunt me because of my station experience,” he said. “That was a six-month mission, and we did great work providing a very needed service to people who had been persecuted and beaten by rebels and government alike.
“Someone will come through and just burn a town down because they’re of a different ethnic group. I didn’t find it scary; it was interesting and heartbreaking," he continues. “In Syria, for example, my heart would sink at the destruction. A woman looking out her window across to her neighbour one day, would be staring out at a pile of rubble the next.”
There is also work Mr. Boon has done from his Swanbourne home helping people on the other side of the world. He was allocated to begin a mission on a group of islands northwest of Fiji affected by rising sea levels.
“It’s causing a lot of trouble with growing their traditional foods,” Mr. Boon said. “The government is supplying rice and white flour, but their bodies aren’t used to eating that and it’s causing a lot of problems with things like blood pressure and maternal health. To open the mission there I was doing the logistics, sitting in front of a computer wishing I was at the beach - I’m more of a hit it with a big hammer kind of man.”
He said spending his third Christmas away from his family brought on a few pangs, but it was easier knowing they were proud of him.
“I thought I was finished when COVID came along,” he said. “But it’s wonderful, it really keeps the brain ticking along, you know.”
