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Showing posts from August, 2009

Pictures of the Week (2)

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Dental Team Marcos with Jean Claude, Agriculture specialist Building Bethesda Agriculture School Bethesda Agriculture School Jesus Film setup Jesus Film

The Church in Agla

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On the second visit of the Anastasis to Benin in 2001 Lawrence Adjei was a discipler at the construction of a clinic building in Agla. While visiting a house in the community Lawrence noticed that the daughter of the man he was sharing with had a high fever. He asked the father if he could pray for the girl. The father replayed, yes, who don’t need prayer. The next day Lawrence went back and found that the girl had been healed. With permission of the man of he began a weekly Bible study with the family, few weeks lather 20 people were attending and within three months 100 people from the community were gathering together to worship God. With the covering of a church in the region a church was established. Lawrence Adjei, now the Africa Mercy boatswain, was one of the students of the Efficient Deck Hand (EDH) course on board last week. He invited me to preach at the church in Agla on Sunday. The expression of worship through singing, dance and a willful act of celebration is indescriba

Pictures of the Week

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Worship on Deck Seven of the Africa Mercy Splicing wires Ropes and knots Instruction on the Africa Mercy Deck Efficient Deck Hand (EDH) Students and instructors

Training is an Investment

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Training is an investment, said an article in a magazine devoted to training and education. It is an investment because it requires time, dedication, energy and resources. It entails t he crew to stop normal activities to receive instruction. Now, if training is an investment, what is the return? The return is a crew better prepared to do their work, with renewed knowledge and skill, a new attitude toward what they do and a safety culture so needed when working on ships.. This has been an intense week of training for the deck crew of the Africa Mercy. Nine Rating crew attended a one week Efficient Deck Hand course that finished today. I’m convinced that the skills they learned will make them more confident and efficient on the job they do.

In His Time

I flew into Cotonou, Benin, on August 16, on an Air France flight from Paris. Three other crew members joined me at the airport Charles de Gaulle, a young lady from North Caroline, who will work in the dining room for 9 months, a nurse from Norway, who will work in the Hospital until December and a dentist from Germany, who came for three weeks. By divine design the dentist from Germany, sat beside me in the airplane. A dentist of the German Navy, Marco Ritter, is using his vacation to serve with the Africa Mercy dental team. I asked him how he heard about Mercy Ships. He said that when he was 19 years old he visited the Mercy Ships Anastasis docked is Hamburg, Germany. He got a poster from the Anastasis that he hanged in the wall of his bed room, dreaming of one day to work in that ship. He said the poster is still hanging at a closet door at his parent’s house. Meanwhile, he joined the German navy, studied to be a dentist. Now after many years the dream of helping the poor and needy