Adventures in takeout

I had a very interesting Monday night. I was invited out to dinner with Ashley, Grace, and Jodi. We called Alfred the cab driver who is very well known to the ship as being very reliable which he is. Apparently he had been sick all day with some stomach thing, but he didn't want to let us down so he came anyways. We drove through traffic to get to a restaurant that was closed. Apparently it is not open everyday which is a shame because it looked nice and had a view of the water. Alfred tried another place but it wasn't serving food it was just a pub. We then went back to the ship deciding that it was not worth going all the way in the other direction through traffic to find another restaurant.

When we arrived back at the ship, a guard at the gate area called us over. It was already dark and he had a mom and her three kids waiting to get on the Mercy Ship. They had an appointment for March 23 for a cast change and did not show up then. I learned earlier in the day that this is a common occurrence that people end up coming days later and Mercy Ships can usually fit them in. A lot of these people travel far to get here and transportation is not the best. She had left home in the morning and the cab broke down so it was an all day ordeal.

One of her sons was about 6 or 7, and then she had twins who where almost 1years old I think--Prince and Princess. Prince had surgery to correct his clubbed feet so he was coming back to get his 2 casts changed. Ashley called the charge nurse who said it was fine to bring them on board.

I leaned over to pick up her large bag filled with random things. The guard said to me "no, you take baby, she carry bag". So I got to carry Prince while the mom put the large bag on top of her head and carried it to the ship. The Liberian women carry everything on there heads. Anything from little bags, to large buckets, to refrigerators--I kid you not we saw a 13 year old girl with a small refrigerator/freezer on her head. The doors were off of it and it was about half the size of the ones at home, but still, we were shocked, I mean..it was a refrigerator!

As I walked toward the ship with this little boy in my arms, I looked out toward the dark ocean and felt overwhelmingly happy. Happy because I am so privileged to be able to be here. To experience moments like this. Things don't always go smooth, but Mercy Ships seems to go with the flow and do the best that they can and are very understanding of the struggle it takes for people to get here. We ran into a lady earlier in the day who couldn't get here on her appointment date either and they let her on board.

Any child under 15 can have one caregiver stay with them. Sometimes, we get a mom who is a patient that brings her baby along so that she can breastfeed and the healthy baby stays with us as well. In tonight's case, we were letting the mom be here with her twins and her other little boy.

We decided to order takeout from one of the menus on the ship. It was an ordeal. Ashley had a hard time getting the order placed on the phone. Although a lot of people speak English, it is not the same as our English. We got the order placed and 20minutes later walked to the gate to wait for the driver. He called the cell phone to say he arrived but we couldn't find him. Ashley would get a word or two in and the driver would hang up. One of the Mercy Ships vehicles pulled up and the driver, Emmanuel, (a Mercy Ships crew person who happens to be from Africa) called for us and re-explained where we were located. Emmanuel said he would drive up to the ship and drop off his passengers and come back for us, because at this point, although we were near the military guards, it wasn't feeling exactly safe. While he was gone, the driver finally arrived with our food and another Mercy Ships vehicle arrived and picked us up. As we drove back to the ship we see Emmanuel, and although we honked and waved he didn't see us in the vehicle and he kept going.

I ended up asking a crew member who was jogging to let him know we were back safe because by this time we didn't feel like walking half a mile to get him.

I must say, the food was really good. We then followed up dinner with ice cream sundays. The ship shop sold ice cream today --this is a rarity apparently. We had ice cream with m&m's, oreo cookies, and hershey syrup. Life is good.

Oh, and to update, Janet, the 7year old from the orphanage will be having surgery on the ship today to repair her broken arm. Thank you Lord for that answer to prayer.

Please continue to pray for me. I am feeling at ease and and happy here but I know that is because I am covered in prayer and I do not take that for granted.

Unfortunately, I forgot about the 7:45am crew meeting this morning and missed it. I was told that Glenn Murray spoke about priorities in life. We are often taught to put God first, then family, then work, etc. He said although he tried this, it never worked for him. He says putting Jesus in the center and everything else around works better for him. Life can be busy with raising kids, etc. and it doesn't make sense to Glenn to do it the way we are often taught. For instance, now I will have my quite time to read the bible, and now I will spend time with my family, and now I will work. Having Jesus in the center and not separating him as top of the list but incorporating Him into everything makes a lot more sense. I heard this all second hand, but it sounded good so I wanted to share.

Have a good day all of you at home! Hi Angelica--you happen to be on my mind today so I thought I would just say hello.