Mercy Ministries

When Mercy Ships arrives at each new port they get in contact with various organizations to visit. Orphanages, hospitals, prisons and other places that could use visitors. Also in each country they set up the Hope Center. Here in Guinea it is set up at one of the local hospitals. It is where we send patients before surgeries who need to gain the strength necessary to undergo surgery, or where we send some patients after surgery to recover. The Mercy Ministries are a blessing both to us being able to visit and to those being visited.





 The first Mercy Ministry site that I visited was Lazare's Orphanage. I mentioned this visit in a previous post. The children rushed to you as soon as you walked through the doors, arms outstretched to be picked up, held and loved. There is just something about their wide grins and big brown eyes that steals a piece of your heart. And though we couldn't use words to understand each other smiles, funny faces and sound effects work just as well.
I also mentioned in a previous post about going to the pediatric wing of the Ingace Dean hospital to deliver Christmas presents to the children and their families. Now when I say hospital the image that pops into your head is probably far from the reality of the hospitals here. Three metal beds with thin mattresses to a hot dirty room where patients and their families are expected to bring their own bedding, food, water, medicine and anything else they may need. Yet they still greeted us with smiles. And again there were some more baby cuddles from those well enough to be out of bed.
To get to most of the Mercy Ministries you need to sign up and go at certain appointed times. The Hope Center however you can go pretty much any time and unlike the other sites take as many pictures as you want, with the consent of the patients. One of the little boys there is a budding photographer and likes to wander around taking pictures. So I have a lot of pictures from the Hope Center, a fair number of which are of people's torsos and feet.

 The picture on the left is of a boy whose legs where very crooked when they found him on the street. They have since been straightened, are still in casts and he is learning how to walk. He became a bit of a ward favourite, always riding around on his tricycle smiling and chatting with everyone.
The boy on the right is my little photographer.

 

Some of the girls attempting to braid my hair.

 While I mostly hung out and played with the kids and held the little babies, the adults enjoy having us there and asked me to take a couple of pictures with them. It's touching to see just how much they appreciate us being here. I was having a hard time with being in the lab and not really seeing any of the patients. I felt a little bit disconnected from the work being done on the ship. But being able to see them and hang out with them was really quite special.





Another Mercy Ministry site that I have visited (or attempted to visit) was the baby rescue center. A local woman has rented a house and takes in orphaned children who need somewhere to live. When we went to deliver Christmas presents we found the house empty. The children had gone to lunch with the president's wife, a good reason I suppose to not see us. We decided instead to bless some of the locals with some extra presents we had with us in the car. Toys, toiletries and bread were handed out to children and their parents who crowded around us.

A proud papa holding his little twins.

I got to hold one of the little twins. His name was Bienvenue (which means welcome in French).

   I leave you with yet another glorious sunset. Its so clouded over because of the sands of the Sahara desert blowing through. This is called Harmattan and occurs between the end of November and the middle of March (conveniently this also happens to be the exact time I'm here). It makes for some cloudy days.