One person can make a difference!

Betty Hunter was my roommate aboard the Anastasis in 2004.

A Life Devoted To Helping Others
Written by Melissa Mason

Mercy Ships volunteer Elizabeth Hunter, who comes from Yorkshire, England, stopped into the Australian national office recently with fellow volunteer Mike Hughes. Elizabeth was holidaying in Melbourne, where she met up with fellow Mercy Ships alum Fiona Lanting,before making the trip north to the Sunshine Coast for a reunion with Mike. The two served onboard the Anastasis at the same time while it was docked in Sierra Leone. 71-year-old Elizabeth began her service with Mercy Ships in 2003, when she served on the Anastasis for three months in Togo. As a traditional birthing
attendant, she trained others in how to deliver babies. She also served in Benin and visited the Africa Mercy several times as it was being refurbished from a rail ferry in Newcastle, UK, and again after completion.
“Everybody’s nice onboard”, Elizabeth said. “It changes your whole life; not only [the lives] of the patients, but the people on board”.
Elizabeth has devoted her life to serving as a missionary. After becoming a newly qualified midwife she served in Israel for a year and later in India,
where she adopted a young Indian girl who now works as a lawyer in London.
During her time with Mercy Ships in Liberia, Elizabeth became involved with the Alfred and Agnes Memorial Orphanage. After the civil war the orphanage was left severely damaged – rebels had stolen the orphanage’s pigs and the building’s doors and any other pieces of wood they could sell. “They deliberately ruined things, just because they could”, she retold.
Elizabeth raised enough funds to buy the orphanage four new lots of breeding pigs.
It was at Alfred and Agnes where Elizabeth met a young boy, Mohammed, and his
sister. Since being discovered in a displaced persons refugee camp after their
parents’ death, Mohammed would not smile. Elizabeth and others at the
orphanage would try to encourage him by enthusiastically saying “smile Mohammed,
smile!”. He did not, until one day the orphanage was given a drum for the
children to play with. Mohammed began beating on the drum, playing rhythms that
seemed to come from nowhere, with a giant smile on his face. Upon returning
home, Elizabeth wrote a story about the young boy, titled Smile Mohammed, Smile,
which she published herself and sold, raising £2,000 for Mercy Ships.
While in Liberia, Elizabeth was also involved in building six new buildings for child birthing, where women could be cared for before giving birth, give birth and recover afterwards. The buildings were stocked with all the necessary equipment, some of which was surplus from the Anastasis and given as a donation.
“I’m totally amazed by how He’s using me”, Elizabeth says of God’s will. She recalls that she was unsure if her application to Mercy Ships would be accepted, but “I applied just after Christmas and by March 4th I was on the ship”. “I wanted Him to use me in whatever way He could, over and above what I was already doing”.