Moving Mountains

Suzanne took this beauty during our trip to Limbe - what faith
this team has, such an inspiration!

I think this is the first time I knew what the title of my post would be before I wrote it. The last couple of weeks have been such an amazing testimony to the greatness and faithfulness of God. The lyrics of this song have been running over and over in my head, I’ve seen you move, You move the mountains, and I believe, I’ll see You do it again. I don’t think I had ever seen such tangible examples of God moving mountains until I came to Advance. Months of meetings about a particular issue, lots of paperwork and red tape, one persons' belief that God would move this mountain, intense frustration when it seemed like this is an insurmountable obstacle, going through the necessary motions but hoping it won’t be needed, a whole teams' prayer, one critical meeting – and the mountain has been thrown into the sea. I had a discussion with someone recently about how sometimes the Advance team gets put on a pedestal but in all honesty, we have no idea what we’re doing, God is doing every single thing. It’s an incredibly humbling experience. For every task on your list, it’s the first time you’ve ever done such a thing, there is an intense learning curve, by the time you finally master it or figure it out, it’s done and onto the next task and you most likely will never have to do that task ever again. 

Trying to sort out TB tests...

That’s what HR has felt like at least. When I felt like we finally had a grasp on interviews and the flow of things, they were over and we moved onto training. Training was quite an experience. First we had our Day Crew call everyone and tell them we would like to offer them a job, could they please come to training on such and such date at 8:00am. Please do not be late. Well guess what? Day 1, 8:00am, less than 1/3 of the people are there. 8:15am, it’s starting to fill up, about 2/3. 8:30am, I’m starting, most people are there but we’re still missing 5-6 people. In the end, all those people made their way to the interview site (some at 11:00am), and we told them we would call them later that day. We must have really scared them because they were so relieved when we actually called and asked if they would like to come to the training the next day at 8:00am SHARP. None of those people were late the next day. This happened almost every day. It would be 8:20am and people were just strolling along, make their way over. The best image was when Joan would stand outside waiting for people and at 8:01am, she saw someone coming and said, let’s go, hurry up, everyone is waiting for you! The person started running until she smiled and said, I’m just kidding, you’re okay. Once I explained that the ship uses a Western idea of time and that if your shift starts at 8:00am, you should probably be there at 7:45am, I think they all understood. It’s just a culturally different idea of time.

Manda took this awesome panorama of all our Day Crew gathered on Friday. Get excited, these people are amazing!

We asked them all to come back on Friday afternoon at 1:00pm for a special presentation from the Ministry of Youth and Civic Education about Volunteerism, and I would say 3/4 of them were there by 1:00pm, which made me smile. It was at this meeting that I realized how in over my head I was. After the Ministry representative had spoken, I had some final housekeeping/paperwork things to take care of with everyone. I got up and essentially set up stations, saying if you still needed this, go see Joan, if you needed this thing, go see Jacquino, etc. Well, let me tell you, it was pure pandemonium. I honestly didn’t realize how many people we’d hired until they were all in one room together. And they were all rushing towards me, asking for further clarifications, or having questions, or needing a special exemption, etc. In my head, time is precious, and I didn’t want to keep them waiting longer than they needed to be. That is not how things are here. My day crew explained this to me afterwards. People are fine to wait, they are used to waiting. What they need is very clear instructions, repeated several times. What I should have done was pick one thing that needed to be done, read out each name, have them complete the task and then move onto the next task. But my cultural bias towards speed and efficiency made me blind towards all of this. I hope I’ve learned my lesson for next time. 

I'll have to get the boys to teach me the art of remaining clean
while working.

It’s interesting because you think it would get easier over time, but I think I’ve actually found it more difficult this last two weeks. At first, everything is new and interesting, but I reached a point where being constantly confronted with different cultural and societal norms really got to me. At home, I’m not forced to wrestle with these things multiple times a day. One example: when we went to pick up the chairs we were renting for training, we went with two cars and all six of us on the HR team. Getting the bill was taking a while so I went in to check in on the boys, and was offered a chair by every single man in that room. I politely declined multiple times, I was happy standing. Finally the oldest gentleman looked at me and told me that it was unacceptable that I was standing. I just smiled at him and walked away. Then we went outside to load the chairs onto the cars. I went to reach for some chairs to help and one man stopped me and said absolutely not, this is not for women (or something along those lines). At this point, I had to walk far, far away and give myself a long time out before I said something I would regret. I understand that most of it comes from a place of being gentleman, and taking care of women, etc. but that fact that what I want, my preference to stand or help, doesn’t matter at all, is infuriating. I know I don’t have to help, I wouldn’t if I didn’t want to – I want to help, doing work together builds team morale and camaraderie. I think the reason this particular incident got to me so much was that it was a build up of weeks of being treated like this and I really couldn’t handle one more thing. Jacquino and Nicolas are amazing though because they could tell I was upset, even if they didn’t know exactly why, and when we got to the interview site to unload the chairs, they said, hey boss, want to climb up and pass the chairs down to us? So I did. [As a side note, when we had to return to get more chairs, I hopped up before anyone could stop me and loaded all the chairs up, and when one man protested, I just smiled and continued working, and heard his friend say, les femmes sont fortes! Women are strong. That’s all I have to say about that]. 

I think Manda would have loved to double the chair stack...

Over the last few weeks we’ve had more and more people arriving, to the point where I am working downstairs some mornings and then new people come down the stairs! We now have 13 people in the house and I think it will be 17 by the end of the week. It’s really getting to crunch time (the joke is that the Ship arriving is like a baby being born), and most of the non-work time is spent going to our weekly team dinner or going to the gym (but lately not even time for that…). It was a nice feeling last week when a few of us went to the gym on the weekend and afterwards KJ remarked, Renee, everyone knows you there. You walk in and they all come greet you, it’s like your little community! I loved that observation. Lifting crosses all cultural barriers apparently. Beyond that, most time is spent staying in touch with people at home and on the Ship. I’m glad I’ve been able to spend time talking with the new Comms team because it makes me really excited for the Ship to come and helps me get ready to do this for a whole new field service. I’m so excited for the Crew to meet the Day Crew – I feel privileged to have been given all this responsibility and I feel really invested in the Day Crew and their success. I can’t wait to see all the ways that they will impact and change the Crew and patients, and all the ways we will transform them. God is ready to do a big thing here in Cameroon and to use every person who is ready to be used. So thankful to be a small part of that!

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ~Romans 3:23-24

A late night picture taken in memory of an amazing man who loved deeply and impacted everyone around him.

Finishing Interviews & Exploring Cameroon

Team dinner for July 4th.

The last three weeks saw us finally settle into a routine, only to reach the end of interviews, and now have to prepare for a whole next task. But let’s be honest, I’m not really a routine person. I love to have new challenges everyday, and can always find something to do with my time. I’m realizing it’s slightly more difficult when you are responsible for 5 other people’s time and need to spend time thinking about what you would like them to do each day. I haven’t quite mastered this yet! This is just one of the many skills I have been learning this summer. Being responsible for when people start/finish work, when they eat, what they do on a given day, managing tensions and problems, making sure people don’t get discouraged – these are just a few of the things that I’m not used to handling each day. I’m a pretty laid back person so my tendency is to just tell people to do whatever they think is best, but I quickly learned that doesn’t work so well in this culture. My day crew approach me to ask if they can answer their phones, if they can go to the bathroom, to explain why they were speaking to someone, they stand the second I enter the room, they always very respectfully call me boss, they sometimes ask permission to speak, they always knock on the door before entering. My tendency is always to say, yes, yes, go ahead, I trust you. 

Celebrating Canada Day! :)

And maybe after over a month, they are starting to believe me. But I’ve also come to understand how hard it is for them to break away from how they’ve been taught to behave, especially in a work environment. When my predecessor, Ben, was training me, he started to open doors and half bow, and say bonjour Patron, every time he saw me. He said he was preparing me for how it would be when I got back on the ship after having hired all the day crew, how they would treat me. I haven’t gotten back on the ship, but I no longer think he was exaggerating. So instead of getting frustrated by the cultural differences, I’ve tried my best to be patient, to encourage them to be more independent, to think critically, to make decisions on their own, and while I may not always love it, ultimately, I’ve learned to appreciate the differences. I think I could learn many lessons from the level of respect they show for their superiors, from the way they think before they act, from the way they put the needs of others before their own. I continue to learn from them every single day.

In the last four weeks, we’ve conducted over 450 interviews and more than 100 driving tests (mostly Manda). This meant working some weekends and many nights to ensure that we would be able to interview and TB test everyone before we begin training. I’m glad we gave ourselves some buffer time because we’ve encountered many challenges: people who went through the whole process, only to tell us they were no longer interested when we called to offer them the job; ladies who we loved and then found out they were pregnant and couldn’t be hired; great applicants who had TB results come back positive; great drivers who couldn’t speak any English (and in one case, didn’t speak French either, just Arabic); requests from the ship for more people in a specific department or for a change in the job description; people who said they had good computer skills yet when we tested them, struggled with basic tasks. One particularly difficult task has been finding D class drivers, but slowly, slowly, it is coming together. The whole Advance team has helped us and asked all their contacts if they know any D class drivers, and every week or so, we test another 15-20 drivers, gathered from church contacts, the security guard down the road, soccer team contacts, ministry contacts, random people in the street that come up to our Mercy Ships cars, friends of applicants, people who see us doing driving tests and ask if they can be tested too. It’s been an adventure, but I know that in the end, we will have the right people driving our patients, the people that God wanted in that position.

Exploring some back roads in Cameroon.

We’ve also managed to have some fun and explore more of Cameroon in the last few weeks. On Canada Day, Manda and I went for an off roading adventure and discovered some amazing places to drive, or hike, around. It was great to get out of the city (although it took a while) and be in all that nature! You haven’t been off-roading until you’ve gone with Manda – he was distracted by every side path (even if they were only meant for people or motos), loved to go up and down hills and through random fields, engage the four wheel drive, and get to the point where the map showed that we were in the middle of nowhere. Being a multicultural team means that we also celebrated the fourth of July, with the whole team going out for burgers to celebrate (I got Indian – I am now addicted). I think I knew the American anthem better than some of them (thanks to watching thousands of hockey games!). They topped off the evening with fancy desserts and sparklers. We also got to celebrate my birthday together, which was a lovely experience, filled with love sent from all over the world, and ending with Liz bringing out cookie cake (second year in a row!), and watching a movie together. I was particularly touched by two videos I received, one from my mom with a whole slideshow of pictures from the last 25 years and encouraging words, and another from the Comms team in Texas, which was absolutely hilarious and so sweet to know they were thinking of me (even though I haven’t met half of them yet!). It made me even more excited for the ship to arrive and to get to meet, not just the new Comms team, but all of the new crew members! 

A beautiful hotel outside Limbe!

We also took a team vacation/exploratory trip to Limbe, which I’m fairly certain will end up being the favourite Mercy Ships getaway destination. I discovered a whole new respect for the Advance team and all the prep work that happens before the ship arrives. In Benin, we showed up and people told us where the best restaurants, the best cultural things, the best beaches, the best everything was. Well that took work! It’s quite different to be in a new country with no one to guide you or tell you where the best places are. But we had an adventure figuring it out! It took us about 2 hours to get there (we left at 6am to skip the traffic), but our map showed us that the place where we booked room was at the top of this insanely steep dirt road, that we had Manda drive about halfway up before getting stuck in a rut and changing our minds and having him come back down (not everyone has the same threshold for risk apparently, who knew?!). So we drove around and stopped at various hotels, asking for prices and checking out the rooms. It was like the story of Goldilocks – too expensive, not near the beach, terrible rooms….ahhh just right! We found a nice place, had a delicious American breakfast (I think it’s considered American if they serve more than just bread…), and spent the day hanging out by the pool and swimming in the ocean (well that was just me). It has been raining a lot here lately, and we were blessed with two days of sunshine!! The next day we drove some more and found the PERFECT spot. A (black) sand beach stretching on forever, ocean, mountains, green winding roads, even a pink flamingo floatie - what more could you ask for? When we asked about the rooms, we were amazed at how cheap and nice they were. I think this is the place! 

Being on Advance means that you also hear crazy stories of how God showed up in amazing, unexpected ways. Some days it’s a phone thief who calls the owner’s mom to tell her that Mercy Ships has been calling to offer her son a job, could she please pass on that message? And then RETURNS the phone. Some days it’s a struggle with the government that is at an impasse and gets lifted to God and then is solved the next day without any further input from us. Sometimes it’s someone who overhears a phone call when you were told you couldn’t see someone and then makes sure you get to see the right person. Sometimes it’s several applicants showing up who happen to have driving licenses that they hadn't previously mentioned. All these stories and many more get shared during our morning devotions and it’s so encouraging to hear how God is with us and behind us and before us in each and every task!

“Now I am about to go the way of all the earth. You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed." ~ Joshua 23:14

Such a blessing to get to spend some time enjoying nature and going for a long drive.