St. Lucia

Every year for some time now, our Scandinavian crew members have shared the St. Lucia story with us. Interestingly, she was a martyr from Spain, yet is celebrated with light in Sweden! (You may note some of our teachers volunteering to help out, particularly the bride of the next day, along with a several of our students… including the elves bringing Swedish pastry breads!) Normally, we cannot light any kind of fire or candle on ship, but for this event the captain and fire panel watchers make an exception, and we all love it!

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Christmas Cookie Bake

Every year we turn our dining room into a giant Christmas cookie bake. Everyone who wants to participate gets a lump of dough, and we all share cookie cutters. The results are delightful! Here are a mom and daughter, the Captain and his son, and some of our fun-loving singles.

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White Elephant Christmas

Of course, it would not be Christmas onboard if we did not have the usual White Elephant gift exchange (used and often hilarious items). We live in small spaces, and have limited access to new items, so this is our idea of fun.

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Shipmates and Weddings

Some have referred to the Anastasis (our previous ship) and the Africa Mercy (our current ship) as “the love boat.” Lots of couples meet here and end up getting married, and just yesterday (Dec. 15) we celebrated another multicultural wedding. The bride is one of my fellow teachers, an American, and the groom is a Nigerian who has served with our Reception and Galley. They will be settling in Nigeria next year, when their service on the ship ends.

Here you see the bride led into the church by the school principal and the kids who participated. Finally there is a photo of the bridal party coming in to the reception table. And here’s the groom and bride together!

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Classroom Christmas

Well, of course, we could not stop at the door. Soon Christmas was in the windows, on the walls, and even on the fish tank! We are celebrating the Lord’s coming. Hope you are, too!

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Christmas Door Decorating

One of the traditions on the ship is decorating the doors for Christmas. We actually have a competition. Here are my seventh and eighth grade kids doing ours… Believe it or not, it was Josie, the one from Ghana who has never lived with snow, who came up with all the fun snow ideas!

 

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Dry Dock 3

The final steps in the process had all of us wondering. How would the heavy equipment pull us out onto the lock platform without getting trapped out there themselves? Well, at least one did pull us forward as close to the entrance as possible. Then it disconnected and joined its partners at the back to work us forward. There must have been some complications, as there was an interval of some time while we were parked halfway onto the lock platform. We are bigger than most of the ships they have in this yard… Anyway, we finally made it, and they lowered the platform, and we are now sitting in the lock, afloat, waiting to test our engines, etc. so we can leave the lock and tie up at the outside of the dry dock.

 

This is the ship’s fifth year of service, so we have many tests we have to pass (five-year surveys). The Spanish take a siesta in the afternoons, so no one will come until tomorrow morning to complete our surveys and release us to sail to Tenerife…

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Dry Dock #2

The rails that the heavy equipment drew us out on had big wheels under them. You may be able to see the wheels underneath in the first photo. The ship was gently drawn straight backward onto these movable rails. Then we needed to slide sideways to line the ship up with the exit lock. So our front-end loaders and tractors lined in pairs at either end of the ship, connected this time to the rails we were sitting on. They pulled those rails across the parallel tracks toward the end of the yard, which meant the ship was moving sideways. (This was a bit nerve-wracking, as the ship began to rock a little. If you saw how narrow the support under the ship is, you would know why we land-lubbers were a tad bit anxious. J) Gradually they pulled us to the end, so that the ship was lined up with the lock, which you can see in the second picture beyond the front end loader. The wooden platform with its rails was elevated above the water, so that we could be slid into place.

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Dry Dock #1

Our ship, the Africa Mercy, is currently in dry dock in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, an island off Morocco. You may wonder how that works… The ship enters a narrow, water-filled berth, and a platform is raised underneath it until the ship is resting on supports. Gradually it is raised until it is completely out of water, then pulled forward on movable rails by heavy equipment. Here are photos of our exit from dry dock. First you see us resting in dry dock, as our “gangway” scaffolding is being removed. You can see the rails that have been slid over in place behind us so that we can be pulled forward…

 

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Tsevie Prison gift bags

A number of us (adult crewmembers) have been going to Tsevie, a suburb of Lome, to visit the prison there twice a month. Last Saturday was our last visit. However, the ship shop onboard the ship has been overwhelmed with supplies from Texas, and requested permission to donate some of the soaps and toothpaste to the inmates we have been visiting. As a result we sewed a couple of hundred bags, coupled with a donation of bags someone sent the ship, and Bill Foley stuffed 254 of the bags with 2 items each and a Bible verse for the inmates. We are so pleased to be able to give them this parting gift. We also obtained about 25 French Bibles and some devotional books for the pastor who is imprisoned there to use to lead Bible studies. God’s provision is wonderful!

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5 years already...

One evening a few weeks ago our students led our community meeting with worship, testimonies and words of encouragement. In the middle of that Donovan and Mae Palmer recognized Nikki Aldum (principal) and myself for having given over five years of service to Mercy Ships.

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Brian onboard

It has been fun to have Brian Blackburn back onboard with us for a time. He joined our “Walk to Guinea” team, adding his miles to ours for the fun of it. Brian is our Administrator and works in Texas at the IOC. He often visits colleges and promotes us, drawing in new teacher candidates.

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End of Year Activities

As we finish out the outreach and close out the school year, we have had several delightful presentations. Among those are the Arts Festival and the Karate demonstrations by our students.

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Cultural pauses on retreat

Among other things, we invited Akuna Matata and his crew to come teach the kids how to make a drum. They also did the traditional coming-of-age dance, and got our kids to join in. One day we also visited the slave house (in photos) and crawled into the under-the-floor space where the slaves were forced to stay until they were shipped out. We stopped at a roadside fruit stand to get some mangoes.

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Retreat refreshment

There were several ways to get refreshment on the hot days on retreat. One could always grab the local bagged water, or one could ask the local boy to shinny up the coconut tree and get some fresh juice to drink!

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Lake Togo retreat activities

We focused on cultural activities. There were 2 different boat trips, including one to see early morning fishing activities.

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Grade 6-11 Retreat

We took grades 6 through 11 on a 3-day retreat to a lovely resort on Lake Togo. We played lots of games and had great devos with Henry Gwani.

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