A Virtual Reality Project

This basically summarizes the last three weeks!
Model: Ruben Plomp; PC: Ryan Kunkleman

One of the best parts of my job is getting to listen to our crew members be interviewed. People tend to be far more candid with strangers about some things, and interviewers tend to ask questions that wouldn’t come up in a normal conversation. Last week, I got to be present while the Oculus team interviewed Dr.Gary. It is always so encouraging to listen to him, but this time, something he said off camera is what stuck with me. They were discussing the pros and cons of our community on the Ship, and Dr.Gary said that one of the benefits of this community is that we are able to support each other, and that having this community allows us to stay in places longer without getting burnt out. He used the example of the Ship visiting Liberia after the civil war, and how aid workers would come in and only stay for a month because they couldn’t handle anything more. But the Ship was able to come in and stay for longer because the crew could retreat to the Ship, instead of being constantly immersed in it, and find support from a community who was all experiencing the same thing. I’ve often struggled with the fact that at the end of each day, we get to go back to our Western Ship and wondered if we would be better off living in the community. I think inherently I could see the value of having the Ship to retreat to, but I had never heard it explained it so well. Not to say that this is the only way to do missions, but it’s good to be reminded of the value of the Ship and why this continues to work so well and impact thousands of lives.

Part of the path to our patient's village.

The last two weeks has been full on filming for the Oculus Virtual Reality project. Last week, I explained the difficult and crazy process of locating our patient, and how amazing it was to finally meet her. Once she was approved for surgery, it was time for a home visit! It was an 8 hour drive to the village and once we arrived, we had to grab all our gear and trek up and down a small beaten path for 15-20 minutes. I was part of the second half of the team that drove up a day later and we were tasked with bringing food for the first half of the team because they had gotten up super early and didn’t have a chance to eat. Once we arrived, we weren’t exactly sure how we were going to get the food to the team, since we didn’t have enough food for the whole village and culturally it’s expected that you will share what you have. So we decided to go get the team and get them to come back to the car to eat the food. Well, when we got back to the car, a whole crowd had gathered and they told us they were hungry. Clearly, they had peeked into the car! It was a good thing we had bought lots of food because we ended up sharing half of it with the villagers. In the end, the team was fed and everyone was happy. 

It was really special to visit our patient’s village (really a small plot of land, with three structures on it), to meet all her siblings and play with them. Because the VR camera is filming 360 degrees, there was a lot of setting up the camera and then going to hide somewhere. Every time I would start to play soccer with the kids or try to learn their stepping game, the team would call me over to hide from the camera. At one point, they were conducting a long interview, so everyone gathered to watch and we had to make sure everyone stayed silent. This meant letting some of the girls play with my hair, shushing babies, and patiently waiting for the drunk uncle to wander off. The next morning, we got up at 4:30am to make sure that we would be in the perfect spot when the light was good (we were constantly chasing the good light on this trip). Ryan was getting ready to fly the drone and the director, Armando, said, okay now I want you to find one tree standing alone and shoot that. I laughed because we were filming in a forest and I didn’t think it would happen. He was basically looking for the tree from Lion King. Well, turns out Ryan found the perfect tree. I think the lesson was that it’s okay to shoot for the best, most ideal scenario.

We got to play with the chimps until
they tired us out!

Filming in VR is a whole new adventure because you have to place the camera and walk away. This can be nerve wracking when you’re in the middle of a busy market in Douala, but the team just did it anyway and had no problems. People tended to gather around us rather than the camera. We brought the team to see the chimpanzees and they used the drone to film some of the chimps who were on the island. They didn’t seem too happy with the drone, trying to throw rocks at it. They also wanted to place the camera itself on the island, but thankfully got talked out that, since there is no way that would have ended well – those chimps are aggressive! A few days after we returned from the home visit, our patient successfully had surgery (which the team captured with the VR camera). She is healing well and has been discharged to the HOPE Center! I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous for a surgery. It’s been amazing to walk this journey with our patient and to have an idea of what it’s like to be in her shoes. I’ve been pretty vague on the details because I don’t want to ‘scoop’ the project, but I’ll be sure to share more once they’ve released the VR film.

Some other note-worthy things this last few weeks: being part a high speed convoy with the governor on the way to the OBF Dress ceremony (they literally shut down the highway for us); being interviewed by the Oculus team as part of their extensive Behind The Scenes footage (as you can imagine, having three men tell me how I needed to look was my favourite part); getting to hear firsthand about the ripple effect of all the sexual assault allegations that are happening in Hollywood (most of the team is from L.A.); our chimp guide sitting on top of the car smoking while we driving over incredibly rough roads (pretty sure he is part chimp); getting scrubbed up and going into the OR to get some footage from the perspective of the patient (it’s going to be so cool to watch!); watching all the HOPE Center kids run after the drone, chanting ‘avion, avion’ (I didn’t know how to explain what a drone was so I told them it was a small plane & even had one of the caregivers ask me if there was a small man inside flying it).

Every day is a new adventure and I am so thankful for the things I get to experience while serving on this Ship. One of our wise leaders from onboarding was visiting the Ship for a few days and he reminded me that this is a place that wrecks us for the ordinary. I am challenged and pushed every day, and lately instead of being pushed to change or grow more, I’ve been challenged to just come before God and say this is who I am, with all my strengths and flaws, and to allow Him to work in me rather than constantly striving, always saying ‘I’ll do better’. As Michele likes to remind me, we are human beings not human doings. Not that striving is bad, but that I do need to check my motivations, just like with everything else. I’m thankful for the strength God has given me in the past three weeks, being energized when I should be exhausted. 20 more days until I'm home - but before then, three more Vision Trips and a long weekend in Limbe!

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. ~ Acts 4:32

Armando and Ryan with the VR camera
PC: Ruben Plomp

A Happy Heart

I’m sitting here writing this with a cold and a happy heart. I mention the cold because it’s possible none of this will make sense, and that would be why. The happy heart comes from having an old friend come back to the Ship for a few weeks. God always knows exactly what we need, even if we don’t. Some outside perspective, some laughter and reminiscing, some amazing teamwork, some new experiences and even some Dutch chocolate! 

Hanging out & trying out VR for the first time.
[Model: Ally Jones - PC: Jared Chacon]

Last week, there was one particularly memorable evening where a whole mixed group of us sat in a cabin laughing and talking. We had people visiting from the head office in Texas, from the UK, from the Netherlands, just a whole bunch of old friends coming back to the Ship, or people coming to the Ship for the first time. I got to try virtual reality technology for the first time – Ruben is here shooting a project for Facebook – Oculus Virtual Reality for Good. We are one of the ten NGO’s who get to make a virtual reality video. Let me tell you, it’s AMAZING! I honestly can’t say that I’ve ever seen technology used in such an incredible way. The first thing I watched was about a young Syrian refugee living in a refugee camp in Jordan. It’s as if you are there. You can look all around you. It’s incredibly powerful and touching. After everyone else got a turn, I proceeded to watch the rest of the videos that were loaded on the phone. I can see where this could potentially get dangerous. You forget where you are. You get lost in the new world. But you can also visit places that you would never get to see in person. You can see the world from someone else’s viewpoint. It’s an immersive experience, and I can’t wait for people to be able to experience the Ship from wherever they are. 

This project has just started and I’ve already seen God work in so many amazing ways. The team had their heart set on a specific patient that they found by working with the screening team. Except when the government called two weeks in advance to tell them when/where to be, the call wouldn’t go through. This patient couldn’t be found. So I decided I would go find them myself. I found someone who would take me to the village where she was screened. The screening team told me this wasn’t a good idea, for a variety of reasons, they asked me to let them try to get their contacts to find the patient. Looking back, I’m glad they stepped in because it turns out the village listed in their file, isn’t actually where they live. So I would have gone on a wild goose chase, all because I was too impatient to do the one thing I needed to do – pray. I thought I could take care of this myself. So on that day, that I had been planning on going driving through Cameroon, I had lunch with Michele (my boss) & Kate, and Michele wisely suggested that we go into the office and pray for this patient. A few minutes after everyone had gone back to work, I happened to be scrolling through the recent pictures that our photographers had put up, and I saw some from the home visit the Comms team had done last week, to visit a patient who had just had a large tumour removed.

The Oculus team all ready to go into the OR. 

In one of the pictures, she is with a young girl who also has a facial tumour. I asked our writer, who is this?? It was the patients’ daughter. She was also scheduled to come the same day as this patient I was looking for. Why don’t we follow this patient?! I ran down to screening and they looked through the whole database and could not find this patient. So I went up and had our translator call the patient they had visited to find out more information on her daughter. Turns out we had her name and age wrong. This was the same patient we had been looking for all this time. Here she was! I ran down to screening and they had figured it out at about the same time, realizing that one of the phone numbers on the forms was a match. I can’t tell you how excited I was. The media team had planned their whole trip around this patient and I honestly didn’t know how we were going to make this happen, I had exhausted all my human options, and then I finally (with some prodding) was able to step back and lay it at God’s feet. And now it’s turned into an even better story than we could have ever planned. I’m pretty sure God has been in it all along, from the moment this patient was first selected this summer. 

I got to meet our lovely patient for the first time last week and it was such a surreal moment. She’s had so many people praying for her and thinking about her. So far the tests have gone well, and if everything is good at tomorrow’s surgeon screening then she will get her surgery date. I am so excited for her! [Note: Our patient has now successfully had surgery! I'll give a further update next week].

Since I never take pictures of myself, here's a
picture I took of Ruben & Coach Hugo Broos.

Other than all that excitement, we got to host the coach of the Cameroonian national football team, which was pretty amusing because everyone recognized him and wanted pictures with him everywhere we went. For the most part the Crew had no idea who he was, but the Day Crew all knew him and wanted pictures. He seemed really moved by what he saw on board, and he really blessed us by talking to the Day Crew and answering questions about how to achieve your dreams, and doing a press conference to tell the media about the amazing work that Mercy Ships is doing. It’s great to know that people from all different walks of life are invested and touched by what we do. 

In terms of fun, we had our first volleyball tournament of the field service which was great (we were 2/4), but also made me realized how many people I don’t know on the Ship! There were whole teams out there who I had never seen before. At the same time, I feel like I have been developing some stronger friendships, being more open with people about what I need in a friendship, but also making more of an effort to spend time with a wide group of people. We had another fun Karaoke night and a one day trip to the beach with lots of driving in traffic. Cameroon is a beautiful country and I’m thankful that we are able to see lots of different parts of it. I’ve recently realized that I need to do a better job of loving people well, all the time, not expecting certain things or reactions from others, not hoping that the outcome will be that they change their behaviour. I can only control myself and how I respond to things, not how others respond. That I need to make my response love every time, that I need to take the focus off myself and put the focus on Him.  

One of chaplains, Andrea, shared a video with us last week about a man who has planted a tree EVERY SINGLE DAY for forty years, in this one area in India, to help preserve the land, and it has grown into a huge forest. The point was that we can achieve great things by being consistent, by loving people well, every single day. When we look back in 10 + years, will we see the fruit of what we’ve done over that time. That most times, it isn’t about the few big things we do well but rather the daily, little things that we do well. I’m still figuring out what that looks like in my life. 

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. ~ 1 Corinthians 15:58