Ups, Downs, and Unusual Things

In the past few months David has been taking Karate lessons, along with several of the other boys, on board the ship here from one of our African crew members, Montez. He has really enjoyed that! The boys did a demonstration at a recent Academy function and that was a lot of fun to watch! David also participated in a short recorder concert! Bethany and her classmates recited some poetry they had written in class. Bethany has enjoyed writing poetry.

David came home a few days ago with a big smile on his face and a paper in his hand with "David" written on it many times. He exclaimed with great enthusiasm that he had been learning how to write in cursive! He clearly felt that this was a rite of passage and that now he too could write his name in cursive! He's coming into his own one stroke at a time! Joey and Bethany went to Kpalime a few hours north of Lome' last weekend on a junior high and high school youth retreat organized by the Academy. They had a good time there hiking, playing in a waterfall and having prayer times with the leaders and teachers. They did complain a bit, though, about the "midgies", small flying insects (not mosquitoes thankfully) that loved to bite them. They also had a rough first night as the chemical that their mosquito nets were covered in burned their faces so that they had a lot of trouble sleeping. Bethany also had some stories to tell about a huge beetle in the shower. I think these were great opportunities for character development so I'm glad for them especially considering that, all things considered, they seemed to have enjoyed their time there.

A few days ago two of the teachers in the Academy here had their heads shaved. A large crowd of crew gathered to watch in the cafe' area of the ship as it happened. The Academy had held an auction of goods and services that the teachers were able to provide at little cost to them in order to raise money for flights to Kenya over Easter break in order to attend a teachers' conference there with other christian teachers in Africa. Having an opportunity to share ideas with other missionary teachers and be encouraged in that way was needful for them. Two of our teachers, Ben and Tommy, had offered themselves in the auction in order to further encourage donations to the cause. Almost $5,000, in gifts from crew members, was raised in the auction a large portion of which was given in hopes of seeing our male teachers lose their hair. So on the 15th of April, after the conference, the ceremonious shaving commenced led by Paul our London-based hairdresser. The guys had also been required, as the auction price rose, to shave their legs and wear pink bows on their cleanly shaved heads, for a time, which they both humbly took in stride with no trouble. They took their humiliation like true men for the sake of our children's education! I only wonder what some of the new crew who were not here for the auction and didn't understand the context may have thought about all of this. I wonder if anyone, watching bewildered, thought, "So is this what missionaries do in Africa!" I guess the answer to that question might be a very meek, "Uhm, yes, but only sometimes." After all, missionaries need to have some fun once in a while too.

The day after Easter, Vincent died here on the ship. He was the man I wrote about in my blog post entitled "Green Thumb" that had surgery on the ship early in the field service in Benin. It turns out that the reason his thumb would not heal was because he had cancer there. It eventually spread and took his life. He was cared for and loved here on the ship throughout the course of his treatment and eventually became, as is rarely the case, a palliative care patient on the ship here in Togo. His life and death affected many crew members in profound ways. We couldn't cure him, but I believe that he received love and care here that he would not have gotten at home. Even what family of his we could locate in Benin did not want anything to do with him, so we became his family. I hope we were able to help him in some way find a bit of peace during his final days. A pastor here in Togo buried his body. I will remember him and his story. Vincent was an outcast, unloved and full of pain. That was clear. Jesus loved him here through us. That is the testimony. Isn't that what this is really about? God's love extends to every one of us! Perhaps part of God's purpose in bringing him to the ship so many times was to remind us of that.

I'm sure most reading this blog will already be aware of the grounding of flights in Europe as a result of the current volcanic eruption in Iceland. We here have been greatly affected by this too. There have been a number of crew members, mostly short-term, who have been stranded on the ship over the past week because they couldn't fly out. Most all flights to Europe and North America from here are not possible at the moment. An orthopedic surgeon is among those stuck here. They have been able to fill his surgical schedule with patients so he can continue working while he waits for a flight out. That's a bonus here, but I'm sure he will have a stressful time once he gets back home trying to catch up on his backlog of patients that missed their surgeries this week there. Other new crew were supposed to come this week and have had to delay or cancel their plans. We just continue here the best we can and hope, like everyone else that normal air travel resumes soon. It isn't usually loads of fun when things don't go the way we had planned, but we are not always given a choice. But we are always given a choice about how we respond to the forces that bend us, about the attitude of our hearts when control is taken from us. A saying I have heard comes to mind, "Blessed are the flexible for they shall never be bent out of shape."

An interesting group photo I have made recently is one of all of the people named Jen, all of the ladies named Jennifer, Jenny, Virginia, Ginnie, Jen, etc. and even a man named Jens.

I also recently made a group photo for the O.R.'s Loud Scrubs Day. Things were quite colorful around here that day. One doctor wore a pirate hat that day because he didn't wear loud scrubs. Jenny called it the "hat of shame". One Dutch nurse even made her own loud scrubs by dying a bed sheet and sewing a scrub top out of it! She gets the award for effort! Fun.

John