The Importance of Hope

 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. ^{Heb 11:1}

These physically impared young men are at a childrens home in Freetown. They are intelligent and have the opportunity of a good education. They hope to get into university to study further. Unless they start their own companies, the chance of employment is slim.

While I was doing the introduction to Mercy Ships the guys presenting kept going on and on about how Mercy Ships was all about bringing hope to the forgotten poor. I skeptically looked at these guys wondering if they had completely missed the point. "Why all this emphasis on hope? Should the emphasis not be on evangelism? Do I really want to align myself with an organization that is calling itself Christian, but the emphasis does not seem to be on winning souls for God. I know I have been called to this by God. Perhaps the reason he sent me here is to realign the Mercy Ships and show them they are wrong." The arrogance of the ignorant can be astounding!

What do you do when you are somebody's last hope? You can see the pain in their eyes but you can do absolutely nothing. Is it wright to falsely extend their hope? Do you callous your heart and just walk away? What do you do when you see the spark of hope in the persons eyes die when they realise you can't help them.

Everyday I am seeing people who are in pain. Not just a sore heart or a bit of rejection, but serous agonizing pain. Before you give me some christianese answer, have you ever looked into the eyes of a Mother who is carrying a child that has been wracked with so much pain for the last 5 years that it has not been able to move out of the fetal position? She looks like a Nazi death camp victim. The mother has spent a fortune to get to us, travelled across the country looking for help and at the end of it all she can't even get close to the ship. Do you pray for healing and raise her hopes? This isn't a back ache where if nothing happens you shrug it off. You can't take her to the ship; the doctors are already performing twice as many operations as what is normal for them. The government hospitals are filled to capacity. Besides the lady doesn't have money for that. What did I do? I prayed for her and then walked away.

This womans foot was injured in an accident many years ago. Her foot looks baddly infected. She battles to walk. Her hope is to see a Mercy Ships doctor to help with her foot.

What about when a women comes to you and you can see she is about to die. She is also as skinny as a stick. She is complaining about painful lumps in her stomach and to show you lifts her dress, exposing herself in front of a dock full of people. She does this desperately hoping you are a doctor who can help her. She probably needs chemo and surgery. All I can do is say "Sorry I can't help you. Maybe the doctors can see you in August." knowing fully well that if she lasts another 3 weeks she will be lucky.

What do you do? The hopelessness of it all is terrible. You can't put up defenses, shrug it off and callous your heart. If you do what are you on mission for? All you can really do is offer it to God. Put your trust in him. It is heart breaking... But that is all I can do.

Over the last week I have realised how important Hope is. It is what motivates us and drives us into the future. The hope of better things to come. If you think about it almost everything you do is motivated by hope. The hope that the action performed will result in the desired outcome. It is the essence of what drives us through life. It is central to our faith as well. Paul writes in Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." We have hope in Jesus; we have hope in the fact that we are sanctified through the cross. Take hope out of the equation and what are we left with? Nothing but despair and what is, and not even that because our perception of what is, is moulded by our hopes of what is to come.

What hope does a person have of healing if they have no money to pay for it? There are people who have spent all they have on witch doctors with no results. The state hospitals are filled to capacity, and your man on the street cannot afford the cost of health care. One of the only hopes is that they will be able to see a doctor on Mercy Ships. If a person is in a hopeless situation how can we minister to them and expect them to have a hope of things to come if they have no hope for now. The beauty of what Mercy Ships does is bring a tangible hope to a nation like Sierra Leone.

The danger with this however is that we start to trust in man and the ship, rather than in God. I have been really challenged by the fact that I was more ready to trust in a doctor with the little girl mentioned earlier, rather than God.

The long and the short of it is that the importance of Hope in a person’s life cannot be overlooked. If we minister to a person’s physical needs, it offers a huge opportunity to then minister spiritually as well. But all this said, the most important thing is our hope in God.

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.^{Psalm 42:5} Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. ^{Psalm 62:5-6}

Renovation, Pirates and Braai's

We bartered with a few local fishermen to take us across to Bunce Island

First project under the belt.
So I was given my first mini project this week. The week before the ship arrived in Sierra Leone one of the advance teams tacked together an additional room on the porch of our team house. It was built behind the mosquito screen closing in the porch out of 3mm ply wood which was nailed onto a timber frame. It was pretty roughly put together, the windows are just openings with mosquitoe screens over them and there is no light inside. The only functionality gained from it was a sense of privacy and a false impression of security.
Tracy, our team leader left to go on holiday and just after she left one of the first heavy rains of the rainy season fell and was being driven by a strong wind. As a result the room was flooded and we decided this would have to get sorted out before Tracey's return. In addition to the leaks, there is no air conditioning or lighting and the room is not painted properly.
My Mission:

• Seal the room so water doesn't get in and cold air doesn't get out
• Install airconditioning, lighting and a new fan
• Repaint the room so it looks decent
• All this at minimal additional cost

Upgrade Complete! Our team leaders room now has AC, Lights and keeps out the rain

I was able to get a local carpenter to help me out for three days. We sealed up the gaps between the boards using duct tape and subfloor adhessive. We then placed timber strips over the duct taped joints. For the windows we used a piece of perspex I found lying around and the carpenter made a new bed and a cloths rack out of some timber we had left over from a previous project. I installed the fan, AC and light and wired it up from a plug outside the room. We repainted the room and all in all it looks really good and ready for the return of our manager. Mission accomplished.

Ship Orientation
In addition to the revamp I have been attending a new crew orientation on the ship. One of the topcics was about integrating with the local culture. The lady doing the lecture spoke about how our western culture, the culture which is the base for the opperation of the entire ship, can be a barrier to the people we are here to reach out to. She also spoke about how when we are reaching out to people we must do it from a position where we consider ourselves better than them and giving them something. It is rather better to come from an equal footing where we have something to learn from them and at the same time we can share what we have with them. She suggested a few ways in which we can break this barrier and create relationships where we are not coming from behind a barrier, pressenting a surprise attack and then retreating back into our safe places. It was really interesting and motivated me to start going out of my way to develop friendships with the local people arround me as well as imersing myself in the Sierra Leonian culture.

Weekends of fun
A good South African Braai

Flame Grilled, a good South African Braai

Last week end I was feeling a bit down. While I was enjoying the ship and the team house was great, Freetown had been a real disapointment. I know that the country has had a really rough time with their civil war which only ended about ten years ago, however I was not expecting Freetown to be in the state of Chaos that it is today. The road infrastructure in the city is overloaded and in disrepair, the sewerage system largely consists of open stormwater chanels and rivers and the trash just piles up in the street. The combination of this and the fact that I felt like I was back in the first week of highschool where you don't know anyone, as well as being away from South Africa and what was familiar in terms of people, place and culture for over a month left me feeling a bit home sick.

Fun in the Sun in the team house pool

In order to get to know a few people and to have a reminder of home, I organised a South African Braai with a lot of help from Penny (a fellow Durbanite living in the off ship team house). We invited all the South Africans on the ship around to the team house and sat around the pool enjoying a good barracuda and chicken braai, a fun game of Marco Polo, and a good bit of socialising. Other activities included mosquito swatting, explaining to English and American Mercy Shippers why a Braai was not the same as a Barbecue (although those of you using gas braais are dangerously bluring the line) and throwing left over meat to the kites and vultures circling over head. It was a lot of fun and was just what I needed. It was surprising how after something so simple, the traffic didn't seem so bad, the sewerage didn't smell so terrible and the prospect of finding someone to sit with at meal times didn't seem so daunting.


Bunce Island

On the canoes to Bunce Island, an old British slave trading fort.

This last weekend I joined an expedition to Bunce Island. Lourance , the Mercy Ships Carpenter and a fellow South African, had been there before and was leading the expedition. We loaded up three Landrovers with fellow MS adventurerures and headed out with Chris (one of the ships electricians),Lourance and I driving. Lourance  headed out of port and straight up a steep dirt track. We were just outside of central Freetown, so the fact that I had to engage low range took me a bit by surprise but became apparent after I had to charge over a big bump which sent the girls sitting in the back hurtling into the roof of the landy and my popularity as a driver plunging. This was not the last hill and Lourance purposely picked a route that involved as much 4x4 that he had found in the area.
After driving for about 2 hours through mountains, highways and palm lined tracks we a rrived at a small fishing village where we bartered for tthe hiring of four canoes after which the owners paddled us over to Bunce Island. This Island was turned into a fort and a slave trading post by the British in the 1600's. It was a gateway for great wealth, as well as great sorrows. It is estimated that 30 000 people were shipped out from here as slaves. The fort was attacked numerous times by the French and pirates and was rebuilt six times.

Our self appointed guide in the ruins of Bunce Island

Today you can see the broken down walls of the last fort built in the late 1700's. Walking around the ruins we found/were shown a number of pottery shards, cannons, graves from the 1700's and the old well. The most exciting thing Laurence showed us was the old amunition store. This was underground and was full of bats. A few of us crawled in to check it out. The air was thick with the stench of guano and there was a deafening whir as thousands of bats flew around the chamber. With our little flashlights we could not see how many bats there were and after snapping a few photos and having a few bats flying into our faces we escaped to the fresh air and light outside.

Bats in the forts old ammunition store. I got hit by one or two in the face. 

On the way home, we drove through a down pour. Where three hours before we were wondering how Top Gear could have rated the Landy as the worst car ever, now we understood. With water pouring through the doors, windows and airvents and the wipers not really doing much we crawled back to the ship much refreshed by the coolness of the rain.


Conclusions
This week has been alot better than the last week and I am settling in well and am understanding more about what is expected from me in terms of work. While I have had alot of fun and intend to continue to do so I am also excitedly looking for opportunities to start ministering to those around me and the community which I am in.


Prayer needs:

• Smooth operations of the hospital. The cooling system of the ship keeps getting clogged with the trash in the water. This negatively effects the ships ability to operate effectively. The divers who are clearing this a
• Wisdom for the application and continuation of what was taught in the last to pastors conferences.
• Guidance of the hands of the surgeons, doctors and nurses on the ship.
• Protection of myself and my team in terms of physical and spiritual health and safety.
• Health of the ships crew. There are two crew members in ICU at the moment.

Arrivals

We Boarded the Ferry From this Beach, You can see the lights of Freetown in the background.

What a week. Going from Europe to Sierra Leone. From Cool to Hot, White to Black, Neat and orderly to sprawling squalor, from punctual to it happens when it happens. Freetown is something else. In the time leading up to arrival I made a point of trying not to form preconceived expectations in an attempt to not be disapointed. I suppose despite my best effort, I still formed pre-conseptions of what I was going to experience, and as predicted these pre-conseptions were wrong.


Flying High
So starting up where I left off. After an uneventful trek across Brussels, grift wrapping my luggage in clingwrap and happily checking in my two bags which I had been hauling across Europe, I boarded my flight to Freetown. In the duration of boarding and disembarking I met a group of Baptist missionaries heading out to Bo to install solar panels to refrigerate vacines, a Swiss girl heading out to a family mission in Gambia and two fellow Mercy Shippers. Three of the five different groups I spoke to were missionaries. I also sat next to a surgeon working in the Freetown Conaught Hospital. Devine appointment? I don't know, however I made a point of getting his information. He also offered me a lift up to Bo on a week end some time. Great!


Touch Down

Waiting for the bus to take us to the water taxi outside the airport terminal in  the rain.

You could tell we were in Africa before we had even disembarked. The terminal building looks like Jan Smuts must have looked 50 years ago. The one firetruck was standing on the tarmac, engine running and lights flashing in anticipation. It was probably the only comercial flight they had had all day. After passing through the chaotic border control, I picked up my bags, hurriedly unpacked my mosquito spray and joined the rest of the Mercy Shippers. We pushed our way through the crouds, faught off porters and headed to the water taxi depot. Mercy Ships had sent somebody to pick us up and guide us through the process. What a blessing, I would not have liked to have pushed my way through that croud by myself.


Pelican Water Taxi
The airport is located across the bay from Sierra Leone. To drive back takes about 5 hours, so you take a water taxi. To get to the water taxi we had to jump on a bakkie because the bus never came. It was quite fun riding on the back sitting ontop of all our luggage. We boarded at a beautifulo beach and headed across the bay in the dark. This was a bit of a pitty because I would have liked to have seen all the scenery. I would also like to see where we were going and that we weren’t about to cruise into a dug out canoe with no lights. The taxi dropped us off at the docks where we were picked up by a couple Landies which then dodged giant fork lifts and insane truck drivers and dropped us off at the Ship.


First Impressions

Town Center with a Starbucks, shop, wifi and couches. A great place to escape  from the manic bustle of Freetown

On the flight in I spotted the ship from the air. It stuck out like a white square jewel against a background of the sprawling dirty city. It is really out of place and is a first world living in a third world country. As you walk in you see trash and smell the stench of raw sewerage, you are dripping with sweat and caked in dust. You step into a cool clean fresh atmosphere where people aren’t pushing and shoving and hooting. Some people hardly leave the ship, which I think kind of defeats the purpose of coming out here, but it is nice to be able to escape to. The people on board are a lot of fun and it is a nice tight nit community, however it is possible to get lost in the crouds and every now and again I feel quite lonely.


My House

The Off Ship Projects Team House, We have a tennis court (its too hot to play though) and a swimming pool.

I Have been slotted into the Off Ship Projects team. The group is great and the people are a lot of fun. We cover agriculture training, construction projects, seminars and conferences and all facilities which are off the ship. My team consists of about fifteen people and consists of a number of married couples and several singles. We stay in our own house about 6km from the ship in the Swiss Embassy’s compound. The house is nice and spacious and has a tennis court and a great pool. The only draw back is it normally takes about 45minute to an hour to get to the ship. Yup that’s just a bit faster than walking speed.

View from our house (with razor wire and mosquito netting in between)

My Job
I have taken over the maintenance co-ordination for the off ships programs. We have three containers full of equipment, tools and supplies for our programs, but they are all an extraordinary mess. I have spent the last few days trying to get these cleaned out and organised. This is really hot work because the containers are like a massive oven  and I often come out looking like I have been for a swim.

One of my three tool box containers that I must organise before I can effectively work

Prayer Support
There is a stack more that I could write down, but I will leave that for another day. In the meen time please pray for the following things:

• Inter-denomination church leaders conference. About three hundred of Free Towns church leaders are meeting this week for a conference hosted by Mercy Ships. Please pray for unity and guidance of the Spirit.
• Smooth integration. Pray that I will continue to integrate with the community smoothly. 

All in all free Town is manic and is a major culture shock, but I am really enjoying it here.

Nazi's, Kruger Rands, and Demon Slayers.

Mom Enjoying the sun on the banks of a river.

I am not sure what exactly Hitler’s reason for invading Holland was, probably a tactical manoeuvre to avoid the French defense lines, but whatever it was, he cut through the Dutch defenses like a hot knife through Gouda. The primary defense line runs past mill and consists of a network of concrete bunkers along a canal which was hastily built during the build up to world war two. To get over this the German's simply drove a Panzer Train, full of soldiers, down an obscure line that ran through the defenses. Rumor has it they also put to practice an ancient Dutch sport called Fierljeppen and pole vaulted over the Canal. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like. The bunkers are now covered in creepers and brambles instead of camo paint, the grey clad soldiers have been replaced by rabbits and the only thing that will hurt you is the stinging nettle that brushes against the leg of the ignorant South African cyclist. Mill was extremely pleasant and it was great to spend a bit of time with my Opa and Oma, Mom and Aunt. I spent much of my time cycling around and enjoying the pleasant countryside. 

The Whole of Amsterdam Turns Orange

Whatever Hitler’s reasons were, it was not because of a lack of blond hair and blue eyes. I also think that if Hitler had had the misfortune of planning his attack, on the Dutch Queens birthday, (30 April) his attack would of come to a grinding halt and would have been delayed by at least two days. Koninginnedag is the day that the whole of Holland comes to a grinding halt, dresses in orange with red white and blue ribbons and heads to the streets for a massive party. How many German Soldiers do you know that could resist the combination of a good beer and pretty girls? I was in Amsterdam and I have never seen anything like it. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions head to Amsterdam for the biggest street party you will ever see.

I think the Amsterdam Canals would be a good place to look for the Kruger Millions.

 The following day I jumped on the train, had a good laugh at the expense of the ex-party goers tending their head aches, and disembarked in Brussels. After checking in at a youth hostel, I tagged along on a tour of the city with an international group of students who were doing a mock UN delegation. It was quite funny seeing the responses when I told them what I did and wasn't officially part of their group. The conversation went something like this:

"Hi I'm Ryan, What do you do?"

"Oh I'm just studying my masters in in International Human Rights/International Relations/Law at Cambridge/Oxford/etc. what about you? I am here representing Hungary."

"Well I studied Property Development and Construction Management and I'm Representing South Africa."

"Oh...Wow, I didn't know the UN dealt with that. What did you say your name was? I don't seem to remember seeing it on the list..."

Manikin Piss has been replaced.

It was allot of fun. After seeing Manikin Piss (a statue of a boy urinating) and a 5m high statue of Michael slaying the Demon we headed into a bar which had 2000 beers to choose from. The Belgians take their beer tasting about as seriously as a Capetonian takes their winetasting. I had a medium dark bitter beer with a hint of litchis. Interesting!

Sierra Leone here I come...