Half a year done, One month left.

Over the past two days, I’ve had the amazing opportunity, to go down and visit the wards of our hospital. We have 4 wards, and right now are using 3. We have a program on the ship, called Be-Friend-A-Patient. You can sign up and you get assigned a patient, whom you can visit down in the hospital or outside on deck 7!

This time when I signed up, a got a 13 year old girl, named Aisha. She has surgery about 2 weeks ago, for clubbed feet! She is beautiful, and has a precious smile. My first visit to the wards was last night, and I got to meet her! She is in a bed near the wall, and has both her mother and baby brother with her. I held him, while talking to her. I told her I would be back tonight with a coloring book. Her baby brother kept trying to take my glasses, but he did not succeed, he only left many little finger prints on them.

Tonight after a long work day, Amy and I headed on down to B ward. We arrived to see Aisha and her brother! We gave her the coloring book and crayons, and off she went. I also walked around the ward seeing all the other patients. There was one boy, who loved saying my last name, over and over again. We walked around, hand in hand for a while, and then I met another little charmer, named Abu. He was a patient back in Sierra Leone, in 2011, and is now back for another surgery. He is a heart stealer, when I was getting ready to go back to my patient, I kissed his hand, and he grabbed my hand and did the same thing! Heart stolen yet again. When I went back to Aisha’s bed, the other little boy, came over and climbed into my arms, and pretty much fell asleep. So a few minutes later, I walked him back to his bed, and off to sleep he went. I also saw another little boy, who just had surgery yesterday on his legs, when I went over, I could see just how much pain he was in, he was lying there crying, and tears were just flowing nonstop, broke my heart, I almost just started crying. This is one of those hard moments; we are here helping, but in our helping them, comes a lot of pain.

When I was sitting near Aisha’s bed, she said something to one of the translators. He then told me what she said, “you promised yesterday, that you would come back, and you did. Thank you and God bless you”. That was probably the nicest thing I have ever heard. I did something so little, and it made her day. To think that a simple act like that, makes someone so happy. We really do take our happiness for granted, if you really take the time to just smile at someone, they can have a whole better day, and all it took you was not even 2 seconds. The kids are precious on these wards, and have already taught me so many amazing lessons. It’s okay to be white, its okay to laugh and be crazy. But most of all, all they want, is Love. They won’t ask, but once they get it, that gorgeous smile appears, and is stuck on their face. Seeing that baby boy wave goodnight is what I wish I could see every night. That Smile. Those chubby cheeks. The love spread in his eyes. His joy. His Peace. He’s happy. That’s all that matters.

As my time is starting to draw to a close, here on the Africa Mercy, it really is going to be hard to leave those kids. I’m going to miss visiting the wards so much! But Africa now and forevermore has a very special place in my heart, and I will be back soon!

A weekend full of cute kids! :)

Precious Rebecka!

These past few weeks have been an interesting challenge, there was some issues, and it put a lot of tension on things. But this past weekend I had an amazing opportunity , to go off ship almost the whole weekend. It was just what I needed!

So early Saturday morning, I headed off to a orphanage, about 30-40 minutes from the ship. When we finally arrived, we were run over by the first set of kids. There was one little boy, named Daniel, that was beyond precious. He ran up to Shelly and cried out "Mama!" with a large smile. It brought out the joy in his eyes.

Many of the kids would just run up to you, and put their arms up to be held. I got to hold one boy, he just snuggled right in, and wouldn't let me put him down. We then got out our bubbles, and toys. The kids LOVED the bubbles, they would chase after them, and pop them! Once the bubbles were gone, some of us sat on a mat, and sang songs to the kids, some even started dancing for us!

We then went inside the building to their classroom, to do some coloring and crafts. They all enjoyed it alot!
The kids would keep showing me their drawings, and one time i said it was beautiful and one of the workers just started laughing. These precious kids, have so much talent! There was one boy that the owner pointed out to me, that he's never been to school, so the craft that i thought was easy, he had no idea what to do, but he could speak french very well, and he was great with the little kids! It hurt just to think that he couldn't attend school, but it was a blessing to hear that he's starting school in 3 weeks! When we entered this room, I was holding another youngster, who ended up falling asleep in my arms, but I couldn't let him go, it just felt so right!

When we went back outside, and since its raining season in Africa, it was raining, ha ha. To the kids this seemed pretty normal, but to us, we didn't want to melt! We hid under a shelter for awhile, still playing with the crafts and boats. It was then time to go, this time i had little Daniel on my lap, and he wouldn't get up. ApparentlyIi wasn't going to leave. One of the workers told him to get up, and i stood up, and ended up with his arms around me. I cant wait to go back and see them all agian real soon!

Once we left, we drove back to the ship, picked up our lunch, and then set of again, this time to a baby rescue center! It  was about 30 minutes away from the ship. The center was in an apartment building, with the radio station on a floor, the lady that runs it has her offices on another floor, and then the baby floor!
Right now they have about 12 babies, and all of them were either found abandoned, or not wanted. When we first walked into the room, all the precious babies came running, it was beyond cute! The lady that runs it, is from Grand Prairie, Alberta! She told us that currently 3 of the babies will be adopted, one little girl named Rebecka, is going to a Canadian family, and the twins, named Jacob and David, are going to a family in Ohio! The story behind how the twins got to the center was literally heart breaking, they were left in the middle of the market, abandoned, in hopes that  someone would do something. I kept asking myself the question, why would anyone abandon such a precious baby? And as the afternoon kept going, and i held my new little friend named Sage, nick name Curious George, and kept making him laugh, i never was able to answer that question. We played and cuddled with these cute babies for over 2 hours, and when it was time to leave, we kept pushing it off. We did not want to leave these cuties!

Curious George :)

All of the little ones!

This weekend really was a good experience, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I also got to go to an African Church, my first in Guinea! It was about 4 hours long, with lots of music and a baby dedication! They even fed us afterwards! It showed love can spread no matter where you are in this crazy world!

Screening Day!

What Mercy Ships is all about.

Well with every field service that Mercy Ships does, they hold what is called a massive screening day. They advertise for weeks before hand, announcing that we will be here and doing the screening. So that when the screening day does happen, we often expect upwards to 4000 people! This year in Guinea, was no different. Mercy Ships has not been to Guinea since 1999, so we are maybe not as well known in this country as compared to Togo, or Ghana. But none the less we arrived and started to spread the word. Our advance team had already spread the word, but once we arrived and our local day workers came onboard they also started spreading the word, and we were in full force getting ready for this big day!

Even though it is a medical screening, it takes pretty close to our entire crew to be able to run this massive event. So the week before the screening, we had many briefings, for safety and security. But we also had signup sheets, for different things, such as, escorting patients, playing with kids, handing out food and water, and security.  We all had a team leader and a group of crew members, who were ready to face the day! My job or team rather, was known as the Children’s Ministry.  WE got to entertain the beautiful kids all day long. I couldn’t have asked for a better job! It was truly a blessing!

To give you a taste of what my day looked like, here is a bit of my timeline for the day!

The night before screening day. A bunch of us crew memebers got together and made over 2000 PB and Jelly sandwichs for the crew and patinets for the next day, we had stations, flying peanut butter and thoughts of bread slices going everywhere. But by the end of it we complete over our goal, and went to bed!

September 3^rd, 2012 – Guinea Screening Day!

5:25am – alarm goes off ( and I was one of the lucky ones, I got to sleep in…)

5:30am – breakfast

6:30am- meet in café for drivers and depart for the site

7:00am- arrive at the screening site!

7:30am- first walk of the main line, that started forming way before 5am.

9:00am- as I was walking the line for probably either the 4^th or 5^th time, I had a ball in my hands and threw it at this little boy, he caught it and threw it back. So I changed how I threw it, and he did the exact same thing. Whatever hand movements I did, he did. He also did whatever funny face I made. It was so fun to help him smile while waiting in such a long line. At this point our line was at least 2000 people, if not many more!

10:00am- walked inside for the first time out of direct heat and sunlight. Played with some cute kids at the last station with some balloons!

10:30am- I got to move up to the orthopedic ward! Tones of kids, and plenty to do! I sat with this one, beautiful girl, all dressed in purple~ when sitting down, you couldn’t even see anything wrong with her. But when it was her time to see the doctor, she not only had a limp, but had to walk sufficiently lower than. She had the most beautiful smile I’ve seen in a long time.

11am-3pm – still in the ortho ward, seeing so many amazing kids, with clubbed feet, bowed legs, and many other tragic things. During these few hours, I got to work with a couple girls from the academy! Which was a blessing! We colored, played with play dough and I even got my nails painted! Now because I can speak fairly good French, it made it a lot easier to talk with these precious kids. Once they figured out that I spoke French they came and sat on my lap, surrounding me and asking me all sorts of questions. We even sang a song called “Waka Waka” they loved that they could communicate with me so easily! One girl took off my glasses and asked how many fingers she was holding, now I can see close up so that wasn’t a problem. She then decided that I didn’t need glasses, because I could see her. She said that my face was prettier without them, so touching! She also said that my hair looked funny, and that it should look the same as her, with those tiny small braids. This same young girl, had bowed legs, but did not seem to care at all, she colored, played ball, we face painted each other, and when it was her turn to see the doctor, she couldn’t stop looking over at me and smiling! This was finally her time to see the doctor and hopefully get some help! I couldn’t be happier for her! When she had seen the doctor and it was time to go on to the appointment station, she came back over to me and told me she had to go, but that she will see me later! I blew her a kiss, which she pretended to catch as she walked away! Her named, although I couldn’t not say it in her language, she told me it meant Faith. So fitting for such a great girl. I saw many other cute kids, that still touch my heart, just thinking of them. There was another girl, who enjoyed taking my hat, which I finally figured out why. I had my hat and headband on, and she didn’t think it was fair that I have both. She was beyond cute and im so glad that she was able to be seen by our doctor! Two boys that also had clubbed feet, were sitting on my blanket coloring away, as I started to notice my markers and crayons kept disappearing, into their pockets, they also kept telling me that it was because the markers were for them! So I once again shocked them with my French that the markers were mine. So I got them back, eventually. Over these four hours I saw so many eye opening things that it really did make my heart ache. It ached for the people of Guinea, those who need so desperately the help that we offer. It really did make it clear that we take health care and medicine so for granted pretty much everywhere else in the world. As the line kept growing, and more and more kids kept coming over to me, most of them just came into my arms, they just wanted someone to hold them and smile with them. My job for the day was so fulfulilling, I got to make the most beautiful kids laugh and smile, despite their condtions. I looked beyond what they physically had, and saw that heart of joy and happiness. I looked past it because, it doesn’t matter what is on the outside, its what in the heart that matters the most. Yes, I saw some things, that I truthfully never want to see again, but looking in those brown or blue eyes, just melted my heart, and I would smile at them, and see something in their eyes spark. It showed them that, I care, no matter what. Just that has been a memory will never forget from my time here, if I could’ve just came for that one day, I would’ve seen the same people, but since ive been ive come to learn and look past the outside, and see the depths of their love. It is beyond incredible.

3:15pm- first break on the day! Time has flown by, and I had something to eat and drink, and rested for a bit. Around the time my break was up, I went the bathroom, and ended up locking myself in the bathroom, so me not wanting to stay there, I ended up climbing over the top and jumping down. Adding to my excitement for the day.

3:45pm- back to the ortho ward. This time we were now handing out balloons, one to each precious child. We would often have mothers come and ask for one for their baby. It really did show how small of a gesture we can do and they are beyond happy.

4:30pm- time for our team to head home, back to the ship. So we gathered up our supplies and loaded the land rovers.

5:00pm- supper time! After a long day out in the heat, we were back on the ship, ate, showered and went to bed.

This day, was one of a few, that I never want to forget. It holds many special memories for me, from the little kids, to the marriage propsals, to talking in French! It was amazing to be able to be a part of it, and looking back on it 6 days later, I still can vividly see those eyes and smiles. A picture forever in my heart. 

A few numbers from screening day!

Over 4300 people showed up

Over 200 patients scheduled for surgery!

Nearly 1000 scheduled for more follow up or evaluation!

It was a very successful day! Thanks to the many doctors and nurses! Thanks to our entire ship’s crew, even the ones who had to stay on the ship! And thanks for amazing weather, no rain! And its rainy season here!

And many thanks to all the amazing people, who came, waited in a very long line, and saw Mercy Ships in action!

Bringing Hope And Healing To The Worlds Forgotten Poor!

Line already forming!

entrance to the site!



THis girl, is the one who kept taking my hat...haha.



The marker stealer! :)

The smile says it all.