A Year in Review: December 2011

December started with Deborah's 10th birthday and she decided to have a mystery party.

All of her classmates showed up in disguise and then had to solve the mystery of the missing star (from our treetop). 10 is a big deal on the ship. It means you can serve yourself in the dining room and it means you can be unsupervised on the ship!

That same week we left Sierra Leone after 9.5 months there and set sail for Tema, Ghana. One of the signs of imminent departure is looking out the window and seeing a Land Rover hovering in mid-air as it's being loaded up onto deck 8!

During the sail the girls' dance class performed "Winter Wonderland" at the ship's Winter Wonderland which is like a small craft market set up in mid-ships.

The girls performed in the Academy's annual Christmas musical and then before we knew it it was Christmas morning. One of the traditions on the ship is that you place one of your shoes outside your cabin door on Christmas Eve and then on Christmas morning it is filled with all sorts of goodies. The girls and I enjoyed putting goodies in other people's shoes on Christmas Eve and we all enjoyed finding goodies in our shoes on Christmas morning!

After we got dressed Ray (aka Daddy) read the Christmas story from the Bible.

Presents beneath the tree...

This past week the girls and I had a chance to visit the Cedi Bead Factory. It was a lot of fun watching the beads being made and then we had a chance to design our own beads!

Here are some of the finished products in the gift store made by Mr. Cedi and his staff.

Merry Christmas 2011 and Happy New Year 2012 from the Szareks!!!

A Year in Review: September/October/November 2011

Here is one of the many gorgeous sunsets looking out our cabin window.

This is one way we set up our family cabin for me to teach music. I measured our cabin with my trusty tape measure just to see what the dimensions are and this is what I got: 14 feet wide and 35 feet long (includes two bedrooms, bathroom, living/dining room and kitchenette) for a total of 490 square feet :-)

On one of our ship holidays a few of us took our kids out for a mini field trip to a local museum in Freetown. The kids are standing in front of the life size mannequins dressed in their Secret Society costumes. We would see the Secret Society groups often in the streets. Anna was really loving the heat in this picture and was wishing she was someplace cool!

And this was the traffic on the way home which is why it took 1.5 hours to go 5km.

We had the privilege of attending Greg and Becca's wedding here in Freetown.

Congratulations!!!

A Year in Review: July/August 2011

We had the opportunity to stay at a hotel in Freetown one weekend and really enjoyed ourselves. The view was spectacular!

And the pools were lovely.

The kids were soon busy with Summer Program and since I was helping with the Preschoolers, I was able to go on some of the field trips too. The Chimp Sanctuary was a lot of fun as long as you stayed out of reach of the stones they were throwing!

The kids loved seeing the baby with its Momma. Can you see it?

Here are all the Summer Program kids getting ready to hike up to Charlotte Falls.

Can you see the Falls? Anna was manning the camera during this excursion. Good job, Anna!

Getting closer...

and closer...

We made it!!!

Isn't Charlotte Falls beautiful?

The end of August meant that Anna turned 7 years old! Here she is with her Princess Tiana cake made by one of our friends here on the ship.

And here are all the girls ages 2-13 at Anna's princess party.

A Year in Review: May/June 2011 Part Three

And finally it is the last day of school! We had a special ceremony where the kids advanced to their next grade level and received a certificate.

And now its time to head to the beach! But it takes 1.5 hours to get there and this is some of what we see.


Ahhh, we made it! The beaches are absolutely lovely here in Sierra Leone as long as you can ignore the vultures, goats, garbage, and mangy (but cute) puppies roaming around.

A Year in Review: May/June 2011 Part Two

One of our visits to the Hope Center. I got to hold this sweet little boy.

Anna playing with the children.

Deborah with her Mercy Ships classmates playing with the children.

And a special honor...Deborah was chosen to present the Vice President of Sierra Leone with flowers when he and his wife were visiting the M/V Africa Mercy.

A Year in Review: May/June 2011 Part One

May means time for Academy pictures. Here is Deborah's grade 3 picture.

Anna's grade 1 picture.

Here is the engineer picture actually taken in February but thought I'ld throw that one in with the other official pictures.

And the Academy picture for the school year 2010-2011.

A Year in Review: March/April 2011

March started out with our mass screening to find candidates for surgery and soon after the screening the actual surgeries started. Here is a link to why Mercy Ships is in Sierra Leone.

By Easter, the hospital was at full capacity and all the ministries that Mercy Ships provides were in full swing. Ray was leading the Ministry to the Men's Prison biweekly and also would participate in the Jesus Film. The girls were able to visit the hospital and the Hope Center to play with the patients.



Ray's job requires him to work on the ship's radar so he took a couple of pictures from the main mast. Here is a view of Freetown.

And here is a view looking aft.
But though Ray works hard as an Electronics Technician, he does have some down time on the ship. Here he is relaxing with a meerkat that we are allowed to have on the ship :-)

And here is a picture of the girls ready to go to school for Spirit Day. They were book characters, Deborah was Pippy Longstocking and Anna was Amelia Bedelia.

A Year in Review: January/February 2011

We moved back onto the M/V Africa Mercy at the end of January and by mid February we were ready to sail! We left Durban, South Africa and four days later arrived at Cape Town, South Africa for 24 hours.

We took a trip to the top of Table Mountain and enjoyed the view!

And then we sailed on for another 13 days to reach Freetown, Sierra Leone in the early morning of February 27th.

The Freetown Police Band played hymns and choruses as we docked.

Enjoy this slideshow of our arrival in Sierra Leone.