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This time, for Ann Johnson, the destination is Yogyakarta, on a mission to help the victims of Saturday's powerful earthquake in Indonesia.
In March, she was in Sri Lanka, healing lingering wounds from the December 2004 tsunami that blasted the shores of the Indian Ocean. The same disaster took her to Sumatra in 2005. In the last four years, Johnson, a registered nurse, also has provided medical care for hurricane survivors in Mississippi and for war refugees in Afghanistan, Iraq, Liberia and Uganda.
"Whatever needs to be done, we'll find when we get there," Johnson, 67, said Monday from her home in Gig Harbor, during a break in preparations for a flight today to Portland, then on to Los Angeles, Singapore and Jakarta before the final leg to the earthquake zone.
Johnson, who retired in 2000 from her full-time career as an emergency-room nurse, volunteers for disaster-relief missions sponsored by Northwest Medical Teams. That Christian-inspired charity with headquarters near Portland operates in three dozen countries.
She performs examinations, administers shots and other treatment and provides emotional counseling to disaster victims.
Her Yogyakarta team also includes a physician from Florida, a physician's assistant from Montana and a nurse from Illinois. They'll be in Indonesia for a month.
An empty-nester with five grown children, Johnson signed up with Northwest Medical after a television station flashed the organization's phone number on the screen while reporting on an earthquake in India in 2001. Since then, she's gone on nine relief missions.
"If you've had a fairly good life, as most Americans have, you give back," she said. "We all inhabit the same planet. We're all different, but we're all the same."
The work can be physically taxing, as in Uganda, where Johnson treated hundreds of patients a day. And it can take an emotional toll, too.
"Sumatra, last year, after the tsunami, was very tough," she said. "Hearing the stories of people's losses. ... One woman I talked to lost 80 family members."
But the work also delivers rich personal rewards, she said.
"You feel good inside when you can help people," she said. "And you know that you are helping them because even in the most desperate circumstances, people will grab you and hug you with tears in their eyes. And you know that even if in some small, small way, you are giving them something they desperately need."
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