Arriving on the M/V Africa Mercy

The ship seemed larger than life when we first saw it!

This is the entry way of our cabin. The door to the girls' room is on the right, the wall of the bathroom is on the left and then the kitchenette. The living area is straight ahead.

The door to the girls' room.

The girls' bedroom. Deborah on top, Anna on bottom.
Our cabin is the 5th window from the right, top deck. Our other window is hidden by the crane.

Field Service Part Three

Before we left Benin we visited a seamstress where we chose our fabric, we each picked out a style, and then she measured us and made us these beautiful clothes.

And a picture of the motel we stayed at in Abomey, Benin. Each 'hut' was divided into three rooms, each with a bathroom.

Field Service Part Two

Our sleeping arrangements in Abomey, Benin.

Our bathroom.

Pastor Rolland's church.

Pastor Ferdinand's church and our favorite. Each church service we attended was translated twice so that the service could be understood in French, Fon and English.

And the saddest day for us, the day we had to say goodbye to the children at the Children's Home. They had a program for us where they sang a goodbye song and gave us letters they had made for us. We left right after the program and the following day we headed out to Lome, Togo to meet up with the M/V Africa Mercy.

Field Service Part One

On Monday morning, July 12th, our team headed out to the Dallas airport in two Mercy Ships' vehicles, one of which was pulling all of our luggage in a trailer. Izzy came too.

We got to Abomey, Benin on Wednesday of that week and then visited the Children's Home there in Abomey every day for lunch and then some afternoons we would stay until 4p. We stayed the whole day on Tuesdays and Thursdays and would do programs with the kids or just hang out with them. Our team men decided to challenge the boys in the Children's Home to a football game (soccer). The building in the picture is the boys' dorm and the tree to the left of it was Deborah's favorite climbing tree. I think she may have been up the tree when I took this picture.

Ray is on the left in this picture playing goalie. This was taken moments before he sprained his thumb. I didn't get a picture of the thumb but it did turn lovely colors and is now back to normal and fully functional (which is important when you are an electronics technician).

Deborah with some of her friends in the favorite climbing tree.

And there I am with Anna and a bunch of girls that I miss terribly and one little boy in the center of all of those girls. I miss him too.

Pool Practical

Our last day of Basic Safety Training Week was about personal survival at sea so we had a pool practical that evening at a local college pool. First we had to don these orange gumby suits in 2 minutes, here's Ray finishing up.

Then we each had to jump in the pool in a certain manner and 'swim' to each other to do a huddle and then to make a train. I was having quite a bit of difficulty staying upright and kept flipping either onto my back or onto my face. Then I started laughing because what else could you do? Then when we made the train I kept laughing the whole way through the exercise so here we are with Ray in front, two friends inbetween and then me, 4th person from the front, laughing of course.

We were finally able to take the gumby suits off for our next exercise. Here I am pulling the anchor of the life raft, and still laughing it appears. Our final exercise of the night was to flip the life raft from upside down to right side up. Everyone in our class was able to do this though it took me two tries to get in the right position to get it to flip.

The next morning we had our final class and then two days later we flew out of the Dallas airport for Cotonou, Benin.