The Strength of This Community

It takes a whole village...down in the wards, everyone becomes
family - our nurses, local translators and patients.

There are some weeks onboard the ship that feel like an eternity, and this was one of them. As I was listing all the noteworthy stories that I wanted to share, I couldn’t believe that all these things happened in 7 days! I think part of it has to do with engaging more with the community and investing in people and not being a hermit. But I think this week I also was reminded of the beauty and strength of this community and why I love each and every person so much. On Monday, we had a community of Faith party, where all the long termers come together to celebrate the newest group of onboarders who have arrived. That’s right, we’re no longer the new kids! Our senior chaplain talked about the triangle part of this community – the hierarchical, job side of our community – sometimes being at odds with the circle part of our community – the faith based, loving, equal side of our community. It was good to hear that acknowledged, because sometimes I am really torn between Renée, the person and community member, and Renée, the media liaison, and that was especially true this week. After the meeting, I decided to go for a swim and several of the other girls from onboarding arrived as well (unplanned) and we had a riot, laughing and telling stories.

Our nurses learn some new skills while
they take care of the patients!

That was one of my big takeaways from being in Grand Popo – that sunshine and water bring me great joy. So I made a big effort this week to go for a swim every day or so, even if it was a night swim, and to start the day with a run outside, to make sure I got a good dose of fresh air, instead of waking up and heading straight into my office. On Saturday, after walking to go get pizza, a group of us found ourselves in the pool once again and we had an impromptu pool ‘olympics’, just being generally loud and ridiculous. Although lots of spontaneous fun happens, there is quite a bit of planned madness as well! On both Saturday and Sunday, the kids (and some adults) had a nerf gun fight on the dock. This was serious business, with pallets stacked and put together as barriers, and plenty of obstacles. There was even someone timing the ‘dead’ people to let them know when they could get back in. It was great fun to watch from the top deck of the ship.

This week, I also finally received my first package on the container from my family! It was a bit delayed because of Hurricane Matthew, but it was well worth the wait. My sister sent me a minion that she made at a build-a-bear workshop, complete with his birth certificate. There was Tim Hortons French Vanilla mix (a delicious taste of home!) and all the ingredients to make magic cookie bars, which led to a fun baking session and then walking around sharing the goodness.

Minion Bob, lovingly made by
Jessica.

This week I got to participate in my first fire drill as part of the fire team and boy, was it intense! I feel very confident that if there was a real fire, our teams could handle it. During the drill, they turned the power off in the middle of the ship and used a smoke machine that spread smoke to several decks (so that the teams had to figure out where the fire was). They had one girl play ‘dead’ or at least unconscious, where they had to carry her out, and they had several ‘actors’ who refused to leave their cabins and gave the fire teams a hard time, to see how they would handle it. They did an amazing job. Thankfully my job is pretty simple – keep track of how much air they have left and let the team leader know when they are at the 10 minute warning. However I did mess up one thing! It’s my job to call in and say that Fire Team 1 is all accounted for and I didn’t do that, so now I know for next time. I guess that’s kind of important eh?

I also had an interesting rehab experience this week… not sure what else to call it! A young boy from the orphanage that we visit up north had broken his leg a few week ago (jumping off a swing) and it was time for his cast change. His caregiver wasn’t feeling great so they asked me to take him down to the tent for his appointment. He was fine until we entered the tent, but once we did, he started screaming and crying (I’m pretty sure he knew what was about to happen), and he didn’t stop for about an hour. I was walking around with him and everyone was looking at me like, what are you doing to that poor child?! When they were cutting his cast off and putting a new one on, I had to lean over him and hold him down. The therapist asked me how long he had the other cast on and I was like…..no idea…I’m just the messenger! The whole time I had to remind myself, you can’t just love them when their cute, you have to love them all the time. Kind of how God loves us all the time, even when we’re screaming or crying or pulling away or being ridiculous. It’s definitely a unique and special type of love to love someone when they are driving you crazy. Anyway, it was quite the experience. I have so much more respect for the physios who deal with lots of scared and screaming children, and also for moms, who do this all the time!

Crazy things go on down in the rehab tent...anything to distract
the kids.

Friday, a whole group of us went to an actual field (well it was mostly sand, but it had some grass!) and had an awesome game of rugby, 7 on 7. It was so much fun. The captain of the ship is basically our rugby coach – he’s so good and patient and really helps us work on making plays instead of just running around. On Sunday, a group of us spent a few hours taking apart pallets (carefully) and sanding them down, to bring to the orphanage, because they use them to make art and sell it to make money. We figured we could get a lot more done here and bring far more if it was taken apart. This means that when we go on Friday, we can spend more time focused on the kids :)

This has mostly been a disjointed set of stories, but I want to share one more that really touched my heart. One of the members of our onboarding team had to go home to deal with a family medical emergency and our senior chaplain called her up front on Thursday night so that we could pray for her. He asked if anyone who was close to her would come and up and lay hands on her and pray with him. I tell you, he hadn’t even finished his sentence and almost every member of our onboarding team was standing up and crowding around her. It was beautiful to see the level of love and support poured out. It made me realize how incredibly grateful I am for our onboarding family. Even though we have all spread out quite a bit, making our own paths and our own friends, we still share that deep connection and bond of having done something very special together. We will always pull back together to support a team member in need. I can’t help but marvel at how quickly they all became an integral part of the community. Everywhere I look, some of them are leading worship, teaching kids Sunday school, getting promoted into leadership positions, serving the crew and the patients. It’s remarkable. I’m so thankful that God brought me to the ship with each of these compassionate, loving people. 

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. ~ Genesis 2:7

God's Abundant Graciousness

Israel had his cleft lip repaired and then our Comms team
visited him and his family at home.

This past week has really shown me what a life giving thing it is (at least for me) to spend time with others. It’s been an absolutely amazing week, filled with awe at the graciousness of God and being grateful for all the people He has put in my life. It’s almost like this week was meant to be the opposite or reverse of all my weeks as a hermit. The entirety of one night was spent playing cards and laughing. Another night was spent baking cookies, talking out frustration and birthday planning. One night was spent watching Lord of the Rings and including our own hilarious commentary. I forgot how much I love watching movies with other people, especially people who are okay with you laughing and talking the whole time. Other nights were filled with worship, small group and our Hebrews Bible study, which are all incredibly life giving. I am learning so much from the people here, from all the different experiences, stories and wisdom that they have. It brings me to tears when I hear the amazing ways that God has called His children, called us out of despair, out of hopeless situations, out of self-destructive cycles. He meets each of us where we are.

This weekend was filled with sunshine and laughter.

This weekend a few of us rented a house on the beach, around 2 hours from Cotonou and I think it was exactly what we needed. It was my first night spent off ship since we got here, my first swim in the ocean since we got here. We spent the weekend alternating between swimming in the ocean, swimming in the pool, eating and laughing. I got a little taste of the American Midwest when we went for a late night drive down a dirt road along the beach and blasted country music. We had a morning workout in the sand and did Navy Seal style situps in the surf with our arms linked (I mean why not right?). We played cards and napped and read and laughed. There was so much laughter and ridiculousness. It was perfect.

Amongst all of this fun, I promise that I did do some work. Thankfully we had a week with no guests so Tiff and I were able to focus on planning and fixing processes. Some stuff had been getting missed because we were so busy, and we were able to catch up on all that stuff and start thinking about ways to make things easier for the crew. We have 4 teams coming back to back (starting tomorrow night), so we were able to start nailing down various moving pieces. It was nice to have a slower week, where I could have coffee with people, wander around and see how everyone was doing and put some plans in place.

I have also been added to one of the fire teams on the ship – BA control for Fire Team 1. My first question was, what’s BA control? BA stands for breathing apparatus, so basically I’m in charge of keeping track of how much air the fire team has left in their tanks. Being on a fire team means that you have to attend training on the weeks that there isn’t a fire drill and we had our first training last week. I was definitely outnumbered considering I was the only girl there, but it was really interesting. Rodrigo filled a room with smoke and turned the lights off and we got to go in and look around using a thermal detector. It’s interesting all the things you have to think about when putting out a fire on a ship. You don’t want to continuously spray water because all that water has to go somewhere after. You definitely don’t want to sink the ship by filling it up with water.

A few weeks ago, when Don was here, we participated in a
very official signing ceremony at the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs to set up a regional office here in Benin.

As I’m sure most of you know, this week was the U.S. presidential election. Some of the crew stayed up all night to watch the results. I woke up at around 4am, from a great dream where Hillary was elected and we were celebrating the election of the first female president, checked my phone and couldn’t believe it. Hard to sleep after seeing that Trump is leading and looks like he will win all of the swing states. I had such high hopes. It’s a little heart breaking considering she won the popular vote, and now it’s looking like she won it by almost 2 million votes. The Electoral College math just didn’t work out for her. As more and more people gathered around the TV in the morning and listened to Trump give his acceptance speech, one of the crew members came and asked if anyone wanted a commitment extension form. That was hilarious. We joked that this was the plan for recruiting more people for the new ship. It’s always so interesting to experience international events with such a diverse crew. People from many different countries were watching and discussing the results. Some people were content with the results, others were devastated, with everyone else falling somewhere in between that spectrum of emotions. I won’t say too much more on that, because we will just have to see what happens, but I wanted to share a little of what it was like to experience that in a community that includes many nations.

Two of the very best maxfax surgeons, hard at work - Dr.Gary
Parker and Dr.Mark Shrime.

This week also brought a really interesting and unexpected blessing that helped get rid of the election day blues. That morning I had no plans to go anywhere and by the end of the day I was headed to France, flights booked and everything. It’s a bit of a long story, but short version is that I started the process of applying to work for the Canadian Foreign Service, because it’s a really long process and mostly just to see how far I would get. Well, I’ve gotten further than I thought, and the next step is to write an in person test and the closest/most direct place that they are offering the test is in Paris, France. I mentioned it to my mom, and she was like, okay, we will pay for you to go and grandma and I will meet you there! I was astonished. What a blessing it is to have parents who believe in you that much, who help you chase your crazy dreams. So in less than three weeks I will be meeting my mom and my grandma in Paris, France. This has special significance for us because our family is French and I know they have long wanted to visit France. The whole thing is a special God blessing – the one test date falls on a week where I happen to be able to leave the ship because I’m not hosting a team, no one else on our team is gone and I’m generally not needed. By the end of the day we had flights and an airbnb booked. My mom told me that I keep life exciting. This made me think back on this year and I can’t help but marvel at what God has done in my life in one year. In terms of countries, this year I have been to Jamaica, Madagascar, Canada, USA (Texas), London (a few hours), South Africa, Benin and am now going to France. I know I say this often, but God has such big dreams for us – I would never have dreamed up something like this on my own.

I want to end with a thought that a friend shared with me a few weeks ago, when I was struggling with the question of why be excellent? He said the reason to be excellent is to be the shining light in a crowd of shadows. That has really stuck with me. What a beautiful image. That is my prayer for us: to be able to put aside ourselves and shine bright with God's light. To be so overflowing with God's love and joy and grace and peace that it pours out onto others. 

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. ~ Philippians 1:9-11

Last week our orthopedic screening got under way and this week surgeries start! These kids are warriors and they are ready
for surgery, months of rehab and then finally, straight legs.

Starting With a Spirit of Gratitude

At some point this week when I was in line for lunch, I noticed that someone had put a new sign on the community whiteboard. It said something along these lines: It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful. That really stopped me in my tracks. I think I’ve been mixing up the cause and effect, waiting for joyful events to be grateful about, when really I need to approach things with a grateful attitude and that in turn will bring me joy. Last week was a frustrating week – not necessarily because things were harder or worse than any previous weeks but because my attitude was worse, my heart position was worse and that made everything seem negative. My reaction to everything and everyone was immense frustration, and then I became frustrated that I was so frustrated because I didn’t want to feel this way. And yet, God was using this time to teach me many things.

A patient having his eyes checked during eye screening.

One big lesson that I have been continuously learning, is how much God uses other people to bless us, to encourage us, to show us His love. He surrounds us with people who pray for us, who listen to us vent, who empathize with us, who laugh and act silly with us. There are times when I feel immensely lonely on this ship, which seems crazy on a ship with 400 other people, but it’s true and I know others feel this way too sometimes. But I realize that in those times when I feel so alone, it's because my vision is clouded; my gaze has shifted away from God and I’m focused on myself or other things. When I have a moment of clarity, I realize that I am not alone at all – I am surrounded by a loving community, one that is striving to be more like Him, one that has the same struggles.

One thing I really need to work on is sharing my burdens with others. That’s the advice someone gave me after I said I only knew how to be happy Renée and that I wasn’t very good at being sad Renée. I had so many people speak into my life this week, without even knowing what I was struggling with. One person told me that they can tell when I’ve pulled back and become frustrated Renée because I walk around with a closed off look. They can tell I’ve shut others out – I don’t greet people, or share random things or light up and laugh. One wise lady gave me some amazing advice, she told me that instead of focusing on the things that sucked or were frustrating, to focus on the things that were done well, those things that I appreciated, and to tell people that, to tell them the things they did well. It seems simple, but when you’re caught in that fog of frustration or anger, it’s so easy to forget these things. This goes back to my quote at the beginning, about starting with a spirit of gratitude. 

Out dental team taking care of a patient.

In terms of what was happening this week, I was able to go and help with dental screening where our dental team supervisor does an amazing job of screening patients for the whole week, which is around 250 people. He runs up and down the lines examining people, and has separate numbers of wristbands for men, women and children. There are always far more women than men. They have also put a lot of thought into what they do – they don’t go down the line in order because often people will try and sell their spots to others if they understand the method. Instead, he randomly selects people, starting with those that he can see need immediate attention because their faces are swollen. The ship also hosted the entire national assembly of Benin (the Senate) and they had a lot of questions for us. Many people want to come and visit the ship. In terms of media, I went down to the hospital at one point and we had Nat Geo filming, a visiting Belgian media team that Tiff was hosting and our Comms team, all working down there. The hospital has been doing an amazing job of being patient and flexible with all the media that has been around, showing them so much love and compassion. 

David, with his family, at home after his surgery.

As for patients, the patients that I mentioned last week are all doing very well. God has worked many miracles. During worship last night, our worship leader said something really powerful. He said that whether the patient who was in critical condition had lived or died, we would still praise God. I am so grateful for leaders who always point back to God and His truth, who draw us closer to Him. Last night we had an amazing night of extended worship, which was such a blessing to the community. God always knows what we need and I think that He knew we needed an extra measure of His Spirit last night. It is so powerful and encouraging to stand with this community and approach the throne room of God. I am infinitely grateful for moments like last night and can’t help but be excited for an eternity spent worshiping our wonderful Creator. One of the songs had a chorus that said God with us, God for us. I needed that reminder, that not only is God with us but He is FOR us, He is fighting battles for us, He’s our rock, our refuge, our defender. 

Michele going above and beyond, taking on the role of photographer.

As for the creatives, they’ve been incredibly busy as well, and went on 2 home visits last week, with David and baby Israel. They’ve actually been so busy, that there has been a lot of load sharing happening. One great example is when they were unable to send a photographer to the opening of the agricultural site so our boss, Michele, took a camera with her when she went and captured some pictures. The HR director also took some pictures for us and he took this great shot of Michele getting right into it. For another project, not only did our videographer have to pass it off to a photographer, but they asked me to help - they must be getting really desperate (kidding!). The videos were for the Canadian office and it was fun because we got to run around the ship, gathering crew members and making them say stuff. If you follow Mercy Ships Canada on Facebook, you should see the videos eventually. And the beauty of helping to organize videos is that you don’t have to be in them (*insert evil laugh*).

And so a frustrating week came to an end and God gave me the strength to finally stop being a hermit. I had been slowly receding from the community (to my own detriment) and I was paying the price for it. I finally forced myself to go out and do things and I am so thankful for that because it filled me up so much. On Friday night, some of us went into town; on Saturday a group of us went up north again to the orphanage and worked hard taking apart pallets and sanding down the wood; and on Sunday, myself and a group of Brazilians went to what I call a ‘bush church’ for the second time. One of my friends, Rodrigo, was asked to preach last minute and he did an awesome job. It reminded me of when Peter says to always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have (1 Peter 3:15).  It really makes me think because I don’t think I could go up there and do that! The pastor of the church speaks 11 languages and translated from Portuguese to French, someone else translated that into Fon (the local language) and last time we were there I also translated the French into English for my friend. So many different cultures and languages, all worshipping the same amazing God. I leave you with the words of this song, a song that has so much truth in it, one that I haven’t been able to stop humming to myself today:

I will sing, sing, sing

To my God, my King

For all else fades away

And I will love, love, love

With this heart You’ve made

For You’ve been good always