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].