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

Faith and Patience

Tom & his daughter Kaitlyn, were two of the guests I hosted a
few weeks ago. They are both remarkable people and it was
amazing to see how much this place touched their hearts. I love
the look of wonder on Kaitlyn's face as Dr.Gary explains
something to them.

In my Bible study group, we’ve been going through Hebrews and verse 6:12 has really stuck with me. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised. What is the author saying is necessary to inherit the promises of God? Faith and patience. I think we could always use more of those. And this last week, I feel like God has been growing my measure of both faith and patience, through some remarkable encounters with patients and crew. Early in the week we learned about a delicate situation with one of the patients that the Comms team was following (I don’t want to give more details because it’s still in progress) and various members of the team came together to pray for the patient. We were all a little shaken by the situation and lifted the patient up to God, praying for healing and for wisdom and discernment for those who would make the tough decisions.

During our visit to the village with Don Stephens, Dr.Seraphine
brought us to visit his clinic where he does surgeries. This is the
inside of one of his OR's and Dr.Gary is examing his equipment
- all of which came from the previous Mercy Ship, the Anastasis.

The next day, I went on a palliative home care visit to accompany Nat Geo, who was filming the visit. As you can imagine, palliative (end of life) care visits are very difficult, but I found this especially so because the patient was a 14 month old baby. As we were welcomed into their home, and I understood the situation, I became overwhelmed with the hopelessness of it. I sat down and started to pray – I told God that I knew there was nothing else we could do to help this baby but I that if it was His will, could He please provide a miracle and save this baby. As the conversation with the family continued on, the grandma went and brought out documents that said that the tumour was benign. The team set up an appointment for the baby to come and have a CT scan and if it was indeed benign, to go straight into surgery. I was amazed. God had indeed produced a miracle. I just pray that the tumour is indeed benign and that everything would go well.

The line for the Eye Screening.

Later that week, I went and helped with the Eye screening that was taking place at the local hospital, to select the patients for cataract surgery in January. There were around 300 people in line and this was the 8^th day of screening. It was amazing to see how many people were brought by family members, people who helped them stand in line, explain what was happening and helped them shuffle inside. My grandma will be having cataract surgery in January (in Canada) and I couldn’t help but draw parallels between the two processes. Because of our health care system in Canada, the surgery is free for her, however she did had to wait almost a year. Instead of standing in a physical line, she essentially had to stand in a digital line. The big difference is that our government is taking care of her, while the people of Benin are being taken care of by an NGO, that is funded by people all over the world, and once we leave, that service will no longer be available to the people of Benin.

On Friday, just as we were ending the first session of our on ship ladies retreat, there was an overhead page that said Emergency Medical Team to OR3. In my time with Mercy Ships, I’ve never heard that announcement made. We all stopped immediately and began to pray (except for the emergency medical team, who sprinted down to OR3). Shortly afterwards there was a page for people with a specific blood type to go down to the lab. As time went on, we began to put the pieces together. It was one of the patient’s Nat Geo had been following, he was a few weeks post op and he was losing a lot of blood. Then they made an announcement asking everyone to stop and pray for the patient. A few of us were gathered in the Comms office and that’s what we did. It’s a pretty helpless feeling to be on a hospital ship in the middle of a medical emergency with absolutely no medical skills. But how we could help, was to pray, to petition God. All our national offices were also praying with us. We held a mini vigil in our office, praying and worshipping until we heard the last announcement for the night – the patient is in stable but critical condition. He has spent the last two nights in the ICU and is still being monitored closely, but from my understanding, it’s a miracle that he is alive and conscious after losing so much blood. One of our doctors wrote a really moving blog about what happened: https://carroninbenin.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/emt-to-or3/.

On our trip to the stilt village, one of our gurkhas accompanied
us - basically our very own James Bond.

All of these experiences really stretched and grew my faith. I saw God show up in amazing, miraculous ways. I was put in situations where all I could do was stop and pray. Some weeks, like when we’re sailing, bring home the fact that we live on a SHIP, but this was a week that really exemplified what it means to live in a HOSPITAL. What an insanely unique place to live, where work and life and community and love and professionalism and laughing are all brought together. And this brings me to where God was teaching me patience this week – although I know I’ll be working on this one until my last breath. In situations where you get drawn into an awkward power struggle or receive rude emails, I’m learning to do something other than respond immediately. I’m learning the power of waiting, consulting others and praying. And then, the problems seem to just solve themselves! People walk into my office as I’m about to finally respond and have already dealt with it or eliminated my dilemma. Waiting gives God an opportunity to work through the situation rather than me taking it into my own hands and dealing with it. At our retreat this weekend, we watched a Priscilla Shirer study and she talks about how we need to be still to hear God. Often He’s just waiting for us to stop for a moment and He will work in a situation (she explained it much better than that). I think God is teaching me to be still in various situations, at least long enough to see Him move in it. 

I’ve often struggled these past few months, filled with highs and lows, but the one thing I can’t deny is that God is working in this place. He is working in me. I think that’s a big part of my struggle – that He is constantly breaking me down and re-molding me. I learn new things every day, about leading and coaching, about loving on others, about forgiving myself, about nuance and empathy. I grow more competent in my job, yet less sure of my role. I grow more confident in Him, yet more lost in who I am and who He intends me to be. I read scripture like it’s the first time, that’s how much He is revealing, yet I am less certain of where I stand on controversial issues. But I know God is here and so that is where I want to be. 

Better is one day in your courts

than a thousand elsewhere;

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God

than dwell in the tents of the wicked.

For the Lord God is a sun and shield;

the Lord bestows favour and honour;

no good thing does He withhold

from those whose walk is blameless.

Lord Almighty,

blessed is the one who trusts in You.

~Psalm 84:10-12

Mary looks into the mirror for the first time after having surgery. What bravery that must take! A powerful moment, and a tangible example of how God is working to transform her life.

What Have We Been Doing Aboard the Africa Mercy?

So much has been happening that I haven’t been able to talk about, so let me give you an update on where things are at, aboard the ship! In the first 5 weeks of surgery we have provided 204 surgeries to 193 people. I did the math and that means that each surgeon does, on average, 2-3 surgeries a day. However, the number of surgeries per surgeon usually varies day to day, for example, when Dr.Gary performs a 12 hour surgery. Surgery times vary drastically based on the case and specialty. Of those 204 surgeries, 50 were maxillofacial surgeries, 69 were reconstructive plastic surgeries, 81 were general surgeries and 4 were ambulatory surgeries. Ambulatory surgeries are same day surgeries, or surgeries that don’t require an overnight hospital stay, and typically no anesthesia (I had to look that up). Our amazing statistician (one of his many roles) keeps such good stats that we know how many children vs. adults had surgery (79 children, 114 adults), how many men vs. women had surgery (130 men, 63 women) and how many came from Cotonou vs. elsewhere (104 from Cotonou, 89 elsewhere). I find this last number pretty amazing because so far we’ve only done screening in Cotonou, so that means those 89 people came here from other places, with the hope that we could help them.

Of the 50 maxfax surgeries that we have done so far, 10 of those have been cleft lip/palate repairs. One of these surgeries has been on Israel, an adorable 8 month old with a beautiful smile. Him and his mom have been discharged after his successful surgery and are back in their village now – about 2 hours away. Israel’s stay with us was rather short, only spending 5 days on the ward. Our plastics patients on the other hand, spend much longer with us. They go through many bandage changes, followed by extensive rehabilitation. Our first round of plastic surgeries will finish this week, with the second round beginning in January. In the meantime, we have lots of adorable children in various casts, running around the wards, dancing and playing. One of these cuties is Faith, a beautiful 3 year old girl with burns on her feet. She’s been with us for almost a month now and still has a ways to go before she is discharged.

When explaining general surgeries to guests, I typically only mention goiters and hernias, but general surgery also includes non facial tumours. An example of this is Wassiale, who had a lipoma, which is a benign tumour made of fatty tissue, on her neck. This beautiful mom of 4 kids was admitted, had surgery, and was discharged in a span of two weeks. She was able to go home to her family, noticeably transformed on the inside and the outside.

The path that our screening team will take this week.

Our Dental team has already seen over 1000 patients in the first 5 weeks that they’ve been at work, with around 400 people lining up every day Monday to be screened. Our Eye team started screening last Tuesday, and I haven’t yet heard how that’s going but I’m hoping to go this week and find out! They are finding patients for when they begin to operate in January. Our screening team is gone up country this week, holding screenings in three different cities further north in Benin: Kandi, Bembèrèké and Parakou. One of the National Geographic teams has gone with them to capture all the excitement. This year, they tested a new method for finding patients. They sent trained local crew throughout the country to make contacts with local leaders such as church leaders, imams, government officials, etc. and let them know that patients could come register with them to be seen at screening. Using a specially designed app, the local crew is able to get all the necessary information, take a picture, and send it to a member of the screening team on the ship who could immediately access and let them know whether or not they could be seen at the surgeon screening. It’s an interesting way of screening and I’m curious to hear feedback on how the processed worked.

Our very own Kat Sotolongo made this beautiful graphic!

Our Medical Capacity Building team has also been hard at work, putting on various courses. In the first 5 weeks of service, they have taught a SAFE Obstetric Anesthesia course, a Primary Trauma Care course and run a few sterile processing courses (how to properly clean surgical instruments after surgery – very important). The training courses also include a ‘Train the Trainers’ day, where some of the participants are taught how to teach the course to others, so that the knowledge can be passed on. So far 142 people have participated in these courses. The MCB team has also started their WHO Checklist project, which is a small team of people that travel to different hospitals throughout the country and teach them the WHO Checklist for safe surgery, which is proven to decrease operating room mortality by nearly 50%. Over the course of the field service our team plans to teach the checklist to representatives from 35 different hospitals in Benin. On top of this, the MCB has worked with the Ministry of Health to set up one on one mentoring onboard the ship with our surgeons and Beninois surgeons. Between vision trip guests, Nat Geo, Comms and surgeons being mentored, the OR sure has its hands full of visitors!

Add to this our Agricultural training course that will be starting in a few weeks, the 18 patients that our palliative care team has taken on, and the 13 Ponseti patients that are currently being seen, and you get an idea of how busy the last month or so has been! I know I mostly focus on the media/official visitors part (because that’s mostly what I see!) but hopefully this gives you a better idea of what the rest of this amazing hospital ship has been up to. And this doesn’t even include all the behind the scenes stuff, like cleaning engines, building guard shacks and staircases, fixing electrical systems, running fire drills, etc. but maybe I’ll get to that another day.

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

When the Founder Meets the President

The chairman of MSGA with Mary and her mother.

This place is wonderful and crazy and every week I do things that I would never have imagined. Let me preface this by saying that I worked 70 hours this week, so there wasn’t much room for anything else! These hours were a strange mix of high level discussions, detailed planning and constant change. This week was the culmination of all the planning that has been going on for the last few weeks – our founder, Don Stephens, came to visit, along with several other members of our international board of directors. They are all remarkable people, and as they shared their hearts with the crew on Thursday night, we got to see their passion and heart for this place and the work that Mercy Ships does. The guests included the previous Vice President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, who stayed for less than 24 hours because he had to fly back to help with peace talks in his country as they try to avoid a civil war; a woman who served as the first ever Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Africa during the Bush and Clinton administrations, and now runs a consultancy group specializing in the same field; a woman who is a doctor and started her own practice in Ghana and lends her time and expertise to several NGOs; a man described himself as the least educated McKinsey senior partner in the whole world (he doesn’t have an MBA); a man who worked for many years as the head of Nestle in China; a man who was the Vice President of Marketing and Sales for Daimler in Japan; and a woman who self-professed as not being ‘anything’, not having any specific role or title or qualifications but having been involved in Mercy Ships from the time it was just an idea being discussed around the dinner table. This is just to give you a taste of the depth and breadth of experience that is contained on the board of Mercy Ships – and this is only a small taste of the over 30 people who make up our board!

There was a contest to see who could get the
best selfie with Don - this was definitely the
one with the most people in it!

Each person had their own goals for their time onboard but there were some common activities. One of these was the signing of a Siege D’accord at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday. This was signed to establish a regional West African office for Mercy Ships here in Benin. From my understanding, this gives us diplomatic status similar to what another country’s ambassador would receive (I could be wrong about this). It was a bit of a funny event, because we were all set up in this nice large room, including having lots of local media, our Comms team and Nat Geo all there, when the head of protocol came in and said we were moving rooms. He proceeded to bring us into a much smaller (and less well lit) room, where everyone had to cram in. However both the Minister and Don gave lovely speeches, both talking about how important it is to take action and help others. From everything I have heard and seen, the government seems to be very invested in helping their people and improving the health care system in Benin. Our leadership team has been meeting with the government often and I believe they are working on developing a national surgical plan, which is one of the recommendations of the Lancet report. This was followed by a Town Hall aboard the ship, where Don and our Group Managing Director, Donovan, answered questions submitted by the crew and shared a bit of the vision moving forward with two ships. Donovan talked about being pioneers, and also the importance of scaling up all our processes to be able to function with two ships. It’s always wonderful to hear them speak so candidly about various topics, whether it is money, conflict, changes, etc. Later I thanked Don for his answers and he told me that he very strongly believed in being open and vulnerable. Working on vulnerability myself at the moment, this meant a lot.

President Talon talks to one of the patients as Don Stephens
and the Minister of Foreign Affairs look on.

Wednesday, the President of Benin came to visit the ship for the first time. It was a short one hour visit, but parts of it seemed pretty surreal. The day before the visit, the head of the President’s security came to examine the ship and speak to us. He was armed with a concealed weapon and said all his guards would be as well; he asked about possible contamination from the patients; he said the navy would be patrolling the water very close to the ship so we didn’t need to worry about closing all the curtains; he requested that we turn off the internet network for the duration of the visit and requested that they be allowed to bring on a device that would also shut down mobile networks; he had us shut all open doors along the route. It was all very intense but they are doing their job, the same way we are doing ours. The President’s visit was very special; he spoke with many of the patients and showed as much compassion as his wife had when she visited. The amount of media was insane – even though we limited the number who could come down to the hospital, between Nat Geo, Comms and local media, it was a whole scrum. At one point, we had people filming all the people who were filming the President. It was like inception. The President finished his tour of the hospital, signed our guest book and spent some time talking with our founder. Once he headed for the gangway, everyone followed, including the Minister of Health and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and we thought we were finished. The hospitality team started to clear things away, and our crew started to eat some of the leftover food. It turned out they weren’t done yet – the President asked that the ministers be allowed to stay and visit. I rushed upstairs to tell the team and basically shouted “Stop! They’re coming back!” Everyone froze mid bite and stared at me. It was hilarious – our crew was devouring the food. We managed to set everything back quickly and no one was the wiser.

This is another one of our board members - the kids were
teaching her how to play the drums.

This week also provided the opportunity to hear some really interesting conversations, both formal and informal. During one meeting, there was a whole discussion about the best way to handle development, whether we should hand over infrastructure projects to other NGOs or to governments. There were discussions on the ideal length of time to stay in a country, on how often we should return to a country, on what our medical capacity building focuses should be. Being a chauffeur has its perks when you get to listen to the founder and chief medical officer reminisce about Mercy Ships back in the day when they didn’t have air conditioning or internet. You get to have debates about politics, aid, democracy, and economics with passionate people who do this for a living (and who tell you that your Canadian accent gets stronger when you are arguing). You get to hear people’s stories of how they came to Christ, and how they came to Mercy Ships. You hear remarkable stories about how God uses surgeons to perform miracles, and the number of miracles seen in a lifetime of service to God.

This is off the internet, but this is basically what the dancing
hay spirit things looked like.

On Saturday, we went to visit a village that had a long history with Mercy Ships from back in the Anastasis days. Our host was a surgeon who had previously been mentored by Dr.Gary and who had grown up in this village before being chosen to go study medicine in Ukraine back when it was part of the USSR. He has his own practice now, which he showed us – the majority of the equipment in his OR had been donated by Mercy Ships many years ago and still worked well for his purposes. He took us to this village which is on the water (a stilt village), where around 25,000 people live and get around by small boats. As we approached in boats, we were greeted by this amazing performance of water dancing (I don’t really know what else to call it). It was a group who combined tribal dancing and paddling and put on quite a show. Once we arrived in their town hall area we were treated to a very…interesting performance. It was very strange, voodoo like, and hard to describe. There are these giant hay things which dance and move and I think the idea is that they are filled with a spirit. We didn’t really know what to think, but when they gave Don a chance to speak he shared that we were here because we follow the 2000 year old model of Jesus and I appreciated that.

Many things happened this week, not all of which I have had time to process. One thing that I am incredibly grateful for is having a boss who always has my back. Rather than giving me more work and pushing me to burnout (as many bosses would do) she has done an amazing job of supporting me and has insisted that I take some time off. Today I had a wonderful (and very much needed) day of rest and reading. I can’t fully explain how much it means to be supported by someone who is incredibly wise and supports you, fights battles for you, encourages you, and ensures you are well taken care of physically, emotionally and spiritually. Truly, I am grateful for my whole team – an amazing group of people who write me encouraging notes and provide hugs, candy and love. A group who empathizes, listens and insists that I stay out of the office on my rest day (which is why I am in here writing this now that they are all gone….hehe). I also discovered how much joy I get from having my own private dance parties – we all need those from time to time! All that said, I have to work on keeping my eyes focused on God through everything. His ways are good! There are so many things that worked out this week solely by the grace of God – it’s amazing to be in a place where we can see Him so tangibly at work. May you witness God’s endless love and grace in your life this week!

You make known to me the path of life;

    you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
~ Psalm 16:11

I have twice been able to visit the Gate of No Return, built to show where over 10 million slaves were shipped off to Europe. It is very sobering and powerful to stand there and hear about all that they endured.
 [On a side note, I broke the camera on my phone so I won't have any personal pictures to share for a while].