Christmas cookie bake and gingerbread house making aboard the Africa Mercy

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Duets in the Play

Here are our duet singers: Hannah and Zodi, Josie and Deborah, and Elsa and Jessica. I am so proud of them!

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Academy Christmas Pageant 2013

Simply Christmas

 

This play was centered around the story of Jesus, as told by Zachariah (Jordan), the angel Gabriel (Nathaniel) and Matthew (Malachi). Mary (Elsa) and Joseph (Jacob) were star performers as well.

 

There were delightful ballet dances and sheep dances.

 

Everyone loved it! And lots of the students gave solo and duet performances on piano, trumpet, flute, recorder, violin… Amazing! And the hand chimes! I wish you could have heard it!

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New ship contract signed!

The world’s largest civilian hospital ship is contracted! An agreement has been reached with Asian and European shipbuilding firms to purpose-build a new 36,600-GRT hospital ship. Contracts were signed between Mr. Dong Qiang, VP of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) and Donald K. Stephens, President/ Founder of Mercy Ships, together with Jim Paterson, Senior VP of Mercy Ships Marine Operations.

 

MERCY SHIPS TO BUILD WORLD’S LARGEST CIVILIAN HOSPITAL SHIP

Deal Doubles the Capacity to Deliver Free, World-Class Health Care

 

BEIJING, CHINA – December 19, 2013 -- Mercy Ships has announced that it has reached an

agreement with Asian and European shipbuilding firms to purpose-build a new 36,600-GRT hospital

ship for Mercy Ships. Contracts were signed between Mr. Dong Qiang, VP of China Shipbuilding

Industry Corporation (CSIC), and Donald K. Stephens, President/ Founder of Mercy Ships, together

with Jim Paterson, Senior VP of Mercy Ships Marine Operations.

 

The vessel will be built at the group’s Tianjin Xingang Shipyard where the shipyard’s Chairman, Mr.

Gao Xuehu, and President, Mr. Hu Xiang, expressed excitement to be working on this unique project.

“This project will make this vessel the world’s largest civilian hospital ship, and delivery is being

planned for July 2017," stated Mr. Gao Xuehu, Chairman of Tianjin Xingang Shipbuilding Heavy

Industry, Ltd.

 

“We are thrilled to formally secure this important milestone for a project we have worked on quietly

for quite some time,” said Stephens. “Our goal with this second Mercy Ship is to more than double

the hope and healing through life-changing surgeries provided to those with little access to

specialized healthcare and to increase the partnership of training and educational support of health

professionals within the developing nations our ships will continue to serve.”

 

This agreement comes on the heels of the Mercy Ships story, recently highlighted by CBS on “60

Minutes” (http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/africa-mercy-hospital-of-hope-50141230/ )

 

The 174-meter hospital ship will be designed by the Finnish firm Deltamarin. Stena RoRo will

manage the actual project construction under the leadership of Per Westling, Managing Director.

The 157-year-old French ship brokerage company Barry Rogliano Salles (BRS) under the leadership of

its Geneva (Switzerland) office Managing Director, Gilbert Walter, negotiated the successful contract

and sale.

 

CSIC is one of China's largest shipbuilding and ship repair groups and operates directly under the

China state government with authorisation for investment and capital management. The group has a

total asset base of USD 27.54 billion and a workforce of 140,000. The group's 28 R&D institutes

employ more than 30,000 engineers, has eight state-level laboratory centers, seven enterprise

technology centers and 150 large-scale laboratories.

 

The new Mercy Ship will be classed by Lloyd's Register and flagged by Malta.

 

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Sinter Claus visits Mercy Ships!

The children waited in suspense for Sinter Claus to arrive. As you may know, he comes by boat to Holland on 5 December, so he visited us on the sixth! Here you can see him coming up the gangway onto the ship with Black Peter and his helpers…

Sinter Claus gave cookies to children who sang to him and gave him drawings, and then he distributed gifts to all the kids. It was so much fun!

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Community meeting on the dock!

We invite our day crew to join us periodically on the dock for a hot dog roast and community get-together. Here are some photos from that meeting on October 3. You’ll find Leah Ferguson made it over from the Hope Center and Team House (she no longer lives on ship), and the Poreps—Russ and Robyn—were here still. You can also see Roseanne Farinacci with her day worker, before she left the ship and headed back to the States…

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Secondary Field Trip

Grades 6 to 12 took a fun field trip to the gorge at the end of November, working in color teams to meet an array of challenges. It was hugely successful!

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Other school activities...

We’ve been having lots of interesting times lately… The eleventh graders did service projects: Rachel-Elise made coloring books for the patients in the wards, and Nathan made a macramé basketball net for the hoop on the dock. After school on Thursdays, a team of avid chess players meet in my classroom for intense games of—you got it—chess!

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Bunkering!

One of the blessings of being here in Congo-Brazzaville is that it is an oil-rich country. As a result, the president has the funds not only to invite us here to serve his people, but to supply huge fuel needs throughout our stay. Here you can see the procedure underway, in a well-orchestrated effort to keep the dock, ship and water safe as the fuel is transferred.

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Dental Clinic and Hope Center

We have been given space at a local hospital for our Hope Center (outpatient care for out-of-the-area patients to stay) and our Dental Clinic. Our land-based team has worked hard to clean, paint, and repair the facilities so they will be ready to go. The Dental Clinic has already served hundreds of patients, and we have 3 post-surgery patients already settled in the Hope Center. It will hold 150 people, I believe, including care-givers.

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The Africa Mercy is in Congo-Brazzaville!

After a fire drill on the dock (I took my class up to deck seven out of at-sea-drill habit!) we all gathered together for a group shot. Here we are! Here’s the team! Although, within a week another hundred plus crew members had joined us, and now over two hundred day crew from Congo have joined us as well.

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We were visited by Fox Newswoman Dana Perino

Dana Perino came and visited us, and spoke to our crew in a community meeting. What an interesting woman! She then had a live talk from our café! Now that was a novelty for us. In the solo shot you can see here as she looked on the air. There is also a shot with our technical guys from IS and Communications.

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End of Year Celebration Friday May 24

After the ceremony in the International Lounge, we all headed back to school for a bit of fun. There were several stations: In one classroom they watched the yearbook DVD, in another they built things with blocks, in the Big Room we had a variety of games, in another room there were crafts, and in the Crew Galley we had a pizza making mess. The kids loved it. They roamed from center to center, and when their individual pizzas were done, they came into the Big Room and sat at the guitar-pick table there to chow down. We ended the fun with an hour in the pool on deck 9. We divided the kids into “families” this year, and so before we went up to the pool, each family had to build their dream school out of Legos.

It was a delightful closing to a great year.

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Last Day of School

The kids and teachers began to assemble in Mid-Ships for our final day. The families and some friends and crew members attended as we walked them class by class into the International Lounge, where we presented each student with his or her character trait award, and several students performed. Marty had taken over the elementary choir, and they led us in worship. We all loved it! They were great! Then Miss Dunn pulled out the ukuleles and got the 7^th and 8^th graders up to play “I’ll Fly Away” with everyone robustly singing along.

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Mercy Ships Academy Graduation 2013

May 23^rd our three graduates walked down the aisle of the International Lounge for their formal ceremony. The ship turned out, for we did this during community meeting time. Ben Calvert, our principal, officiated. It was a wonderful ceremony, and each of the girls gave a heart-loaded speech. These three are young women of faith and integrity and shall go far in God’s Kingdom. It has been an honor to teach them, and I shall miss them.

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