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.

Christmas in Africa!

"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas..." So dreaming was as much of a white Christmas as I got. My first Christmas in warm weather. I was afraid it wouldn't feel very Christmassy but it certainly did. I had an amazing Christmas this year. It felt like a three day long party.

Our beautiful creation

The remains...

 On Christmas Eve Eve (aka December 23), we had a ginger bread house competition. We built a lovely lopsided little cabin. Let's just say it didn't get too many votes. But the ladies on the VVF ward loved it. They tore it apart in a minute flat. A lot of them have been on liquid only diets the last couple of weeks so the candy was a welcome change.
Then we celebrated another tradition from yet another country. A BBQ and carols by candlelight (thanks Australia for the awesome tradition!) on the dock with the last of our Sunday advent services. Food, singing, fire and friends. Makes for a great evening.

Picture by Bethany Salmonson

Let your light shine...

The "Wiggles" showed up to our party!

Picture with Santa Claus!

Christmas Eve was a nice relaxing day. Movies, games with friends, yoga, Christmas Eve service complete with singing in a little choir we put together for Christmas and as usual lots of food.

Cooked pears!!!!

Presents!

And then, it was Christmas! We woke up to our shoes outside our door stuffed with goodies. We also got to sleep in since they didn't serve brunch until 1030 (usually holiday breakfasts end at 9). And what a brunch it was. Breakfast and lunch all served at the same time. Pastries and fruit and cookies. But the thing that made my day was the pears. Always a tradition at my home to have cooked pears for Christmas and here they were all the way in Africa (not as good as Oma's of course but still delicious). We had a lovely little get together opening our shoe presents and then we all went and played games and there was more food involved in there somewhere. Then we watched White Christmas! I love that movie and was so excited that they were playing it on the big screen for us. Then there was more tea and food and games and shenanigans and staying up until wee hours of the morning in an effort to keep Christmas going for as long as possible.

Half of our Christmas morning feast. Thanks dining room staff!

Femi and me in our awesome Christmas sweaters.

Taking a break after decorating the dining room all morning.

Brunch with the girls

Opening presents in one of our little cabins.

Karin rocking around the Christmas tree, Swedish style.

 I have been thanking God for blessing me so richly with friends to spend Christmas with on the other side of the world away from loved ones. And with all these festivities going on it is easy to forget why we celebrate Christmas. Thank you Lord for sending your Son. And thank you everyone who sent emails and well wishes to me over Christmas. I pray you all had a blessed Christmas time.

A compact guide to preparing for Christmas in 30+ weather.

It's hard to believe that Christmas is just around the corner. And not just in an "oh time is going fast" way but more in a "why is there no snow, family, winter village and all manner of things I hold dear at Christmas time" way. With that said they have done an amazing job at making the ship feel as Christmasy as possible. Here is a quick guide on how to prepare for Christmas in Africa:

Step 1: Decorate the ship with as much garland, sparkly things, lights, Christmas trees, nativity scenes, wreaths and all manner of Christmas decorations with a bit of African flavour mixed in for good measure.











Step 2: Decorate yourself with as much garland and sparkly things as possible with the leftovers.

Winter wonderland in full swing!

 
Step 3: Have Christmas bazaars, Christmas craft nights, Christmas movie nights, white elephant gift exchanges, caroling... you get the idea.










   

Santa Lucia - Swedish tradition

 Step 4: Celebrate various traditions from different countries around the world. 

Sinterklaas

Step 5: Pack presents for various Mercy Ministries sites and patients on the ward and deliver them.


 










Step 6: Attend each Sunday service in December to see the lighting of the advent candles to remind us what exactly it is we are celebrating.

Step 7: Sign up for everything in the Christmas book since there is still one week to go before Christmas!

There are a lot more festivities to come and of course the actual day itself! So I'm sure there will be another post about that. While I'm going to miss celebrating Christmas at home with the fam jam, I'm really excited about the new experiences I get to enjoy here. 
Thanks everyone for the prayers and emails! It's really nice to hear from people back home! I pray you are all having a lovely Christmas season in the cold.

Living on a ship

So when you live on a ship with about 400 people from about 35 different countries you are bound to meet all sorts of interesting people. I was blessed to meet some really great people before I even got to the ship, while waiting in Brussels.

Most of the gang.

It was great to be able to form almost instant friendships with them and really helped me feel settled my first week here. Since then I have constantly been meeting new people.  On-board Mercy Ships you are always meeting new people. People come and go, staying a week to years.
The ship is kind of like our own little city, and there is really a lot of stuff to do. Dance parties on the dock, amazing sunsets nearly every evening, drum lessons, bible studies, church, our very own Starbucks (the only one in Africa, or so I'm told), games, movie nights, ballets (the school kids performed the Nutcracker for us last night. So cute!), the Ship Shop where I can stock up on junk food and the list just goes on!

African dancing to worship songs

Beautiful sunset over the ocean

Bethany and I decorating for Christmas

Kevin and I hanging out at Starbucks

Melina always has the best scarves!

An exciting game of spoons.

There is a pretty good group of Canadians on the ship, so we got a picture the other evening for the Mercy Ships Canada Christmas Newsletter. And yes I took a Canadian wintery sweater with me to Africa. It can get chilly on the ship! I thought it was kinda funny how a lot of us had a shirt that said something about being Canadian on it. Canadian pride!

The bearded guard.

As exciting as living on a ship full of people can be it is nice to get some quiet time in. Surprisingly easier then you would think. They have a prayer room to use (not always quite as the walls are paper thin and someone next door likes practicing their recorder :S), my cabin can be empty sometimes and its always nice to go up to deck 7 or 8 and get some fresh air (well sometimes fresh. Sometimes it just smells like a stinky port). And on deck 8 we have our two trusty guards, making sure we are always safe (actually though. When they are sailing its to keep the pirates away thinking there is someone on deck).