On Changes and Contentment

A small part of my job as a lab tech was taking blood.

   Approaching the half point of my commitment to serve onboard the Africa Mercy means a bit of a change for me here. As some of you know I was only able to sign on to serve as a lab tech for about 2.5 months due to some mis-communication. I did not feel like that was enough time to spend over here so I agreed to switch into housekeeping as that was were an opening was. On this coming Monday, April 14 I was scheduled to switch jobs.
   I thought about trying to apply for a something else for that time. I thought about inquiring when I was here if there was another department that I could switch into, because to be honest cleaning the ship every day did not sound that appealing to me. I prayed about it and came to the conclusion that, no I was to be content with the position that God had placed me in and if I were supposed to be in a different role then God would make that happen.

My lovely friend from house keeping.

   So I started trying to have a positive attitude about switching into housekeeping. At first, finding the positives in going from a job in the hospital where I had some what direct contact with the work being done to change people's live to a job where I had to clean toilets and empty rubbish around the whole ship proved a little difficult. But I had started to come around. The cheerfulness with which one of my new friends who happened to be one of the housekeeping staff did her work was a little inspiring to me. I began to see that this too was an important job on the ship. I was even starting to get a little excited about my future job change, where I could work with different people, get to know some of the Congo day crew and find my way about the ship having conversations with people passing by as I cleaned. "I could really learn something from this," I thought, "maybe it will teach me some humility."
But God had different plans. At one of the morning devotions for the miscellaneous hospital crew (aka not nurses or doctors) it was mentioned that the crew clinic was in desperate need of some assistance as the current admin assistant had needed to leave suddenly and the crew nurse was falling behind in a lot of the paper work involved with the clinic. Prayer was asked on the matter to find someone to take up the crew clinic admin assistant job as the higher ups had told her there was no one they could find to help for the forseable future. I happened to not be at the meeting but later that day the senior lab tech mentioned it to me and that she thought I would be a good fit for the role, instead of switching into housekeeping. That same day the wheels were put into motion for me to take up that job.
A couple of days later the crew nurse said that was one of the fastest she'd ever had a prayer answered and how grateful she was to me for coming to help her. I could really see the hand of God throughout this whole thing and it reminded me how even when things don't go according to our plan God has his plan that will be for our good. I know at the beginning of this whole process, when I was told I couldn't be a lab tech for the whole 5 months I was frustrated, angry even. It did not seem fair to me that this would mess with the plans that I had for this year. But now I see, almost a year later that this is exactly how it was meant to be. In hind-sight I see how God orchestrated all of these actions to fit together and enable different people to benefit from it.
So as a take away from this, don't get frustrated when things don't go according to your plan. God knows what is best for us, God has his timing for us and God will make what needs to happen in each circumstance happen, whether or not we can see it at the time. All we need to do is have complete trust.