Birthday joy

Mary Lou is everyone's favorite person. She believes in God. She believes in prayer. And her most repeated phrase to any of her workers on the dining room staff where she presides is, "You know what? You are absolutely a-m-a-z-ing!!!" Mary Lou loves to be "blown away" by the giftings and insights and maturity of the young people on this ship. Here you can see us all celebrating this uplifting woman's special day. We are so excited about her that we had her birthday party 2 days early!

Blackout day

Saturday we had blackout day onboard the good ship Africa Mercy. It was a time to go in and clean out the water cooling system of the engines after their work-out sailing down here. Here is a picture of the engineers and volunteers who did this messy job. Blessings on them!

Picking up the Landrovers

We had not been in port long before Ollie Peet and his team went to retrieve the Landrovers which have been resting under the trees in Togo since the ship sailed from Benin. Now I see why brooms are a high commodity in Africa!!

The Africa Mercy arrives in Lome, Togo!

We pulled into Lome today, my students wreathed in smiles. Sailing is fun, but after 10 days we were ready for land again.

It was one of the smoothest arrivals and moorings I've ever seen us do. The local churches came out to greet us with a band and song and laughter. It was fun!

I thank God for so many answers to prayer during the sail and in the set-up that my friends Joan and Brenda had to do over the holidays...

The blessed port authority are so caring of us. They brought in containers and blocked off our section of the pier so we could come and go safely. This is a very busy port! Not only that, but they are assigning a port guard for our entrance to the container-sectioned pier to keep things quiet. We are so grateful!

Here is the post that never posted of our arrival...

There was much joy on the dock in Lome as our ship moored today. Several churches came to greet us, with a delightful brass band playing.
It was a smooth entrance to the port, thanks be to the good Lord.

Some onboard were dancing and singing, while others were waving flags of Togo made in class.

Perspective

Here is a thought for you given by Dr. Andrew Clark, who is onboard for the sail to Togo, giving "Lead Like Jesus" seminars.

While others looked at the giant Goliath and felt so small that they could not fight him, David thought Goliath was so big that David could not possibly miss hitting him!
David also refused to be intimidated by this huge man, for compared to God, Goliath was very small!

"Fear of man will prove a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe."
--Proverbs 29:25

Sailing, sailing!

We are sailing, sailing over the ocean blue!
We are riding the waves and the splashes, too!
As the chairs go colliding and textbooks go flying,
we dodge and we weave to the rhythmic kazoo
of the engines that putter and rumble and roar,
and the waves that go slamming our bow and our doors...

We are sailing, sailing over the ocean gray,
and the captain warns of a storm coming our way...
Well, to Togo we go and our hearts are quite full,
and we know we can sleep well, for God's in control!

It's all in the timing...

Today my 13-year-old students had an interesting Bible challenge in their study guide:

Name a recent event in history that you believe demonstrates that God is in complete control of all that happens.

Hmmm. Now there's a question to keep one busy for a while! As I sat pondering the events of the past 100 years, one fellow piped up, "Mrs. Robinson, how recent does it have to be? Is yesterday ok?"

Yesterday?! I laughed out loud. I think I just had one of those culturally relevant moments with the younger generation!!!