December brought me back to the ship after a very restful furlough with friends, family and Thanksgiving. I joined the ship midway through it's stay in Guyana. It was a help port so most of ship's company had been sent into the countryside to help with projects like building churches, youth centers and water tanks. I spent the time falling back into my role as the Volunteer Coordinator and made some wonderful friendships with the women volunteers. They invited me and some other girls over for dinner one night, appetizers were Chicken Feet!
For Christmas and New Years we were blessed to spend the holidays in Curacao. It was an absolutely beautiful port with crystal blue water and swimming from the dock! And after Guyana, it was nice to have a slower port with less visitors.
January we sailed to Aruba. I was able to go on an overnight team to a local church. Along with 3 other girls we moved a pile of sand (A BIG PILE) and organized a large hall that had daycare equipment and toys. I really appreciated our host who showed some of the island and kept feeding us... (no chicken feet).
Aruba and Curacao were pretty quite ports for the ship, which God knew we would need because now we are in Jamaica!! Today we had over 3,000 school kids visit the ship in just 3 hours! The ship will be in Jamaica for a total of 9 weeks, 4 weeks in Montego Bay and 5 weeks in Kingston. In this first port I've been working with 34 volunteers. It's been a cultural adjustment for us all, as I've had to learn about relaxing and going with the flow, and the volunteers learning about "being on time" and showing up for their work shifts! In the next port I'll have about 60 volunteers!
Besides all the school kids, regular visitors and the volunteers, Jamaica also brought major changes to our community life... Since January we've been saying I said good-bye to friends who have been living with for the past 2 years, about 50 people in total. Including all the Indians on board, some I considered very close friends and look forward to taking them up on their offer to visit India! And I said farewell to my bestest roommate Mel, who has gone back home to work as a Trainer with a ministry called Caleb in Australia. But the change doesn't stop there, on Wednesday we welcomed 60 new recruits from around the globe.
That should catch you up from my lack of blogs. Keep praying for our ministry as we share Jesus with each of the people that come to the ship. Pray also for the volunteers that they can experience missions in a whole new way and learn to share their faith with the fellow countrymen. And lastly pray for our community as it is growing and changing.
1 comment:
Thanks for the update! Hopefully you're surviving the culture clash in Jamaica. Just remember to keep breathing whenever things get stressful. Praying for you.
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