1,600 patients booked

Screening Day. The ship is empty bar the on-duty crew as every person is assigned a role to help with the enormous task of facilitating the medical screening the thousands of people coming to seek help from the Africa Mercy in Togo, West Africa.

The ship arrived into the port of Lome in late January for our fifth field assignment in this desperately needy nation. In order to find those we can help, advance notice is given of a mass screening day, and this time 3.500 people came seeking help from everything from headaches and minor wounds, to tumours, blindness and incontinence.

You can catch a 90 sec glimpse into the heart of the day here                                  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwrBKTbhaCc
The task is gruelling; emotionally, physically, spiritually. Initial descriptions with sometimes several translations from tribal to local language then to English, those we can help have their history taken under even more challenging conditions as people with minimal education and much superstition attempt to describe their symptoms. Those suffering from conditions like cataracts, club feet, cleft lip, tumours, contractured burns, and obstetric fistulas are the ones we can help as these are our dedicated surgeries. Surgeons examine, blood tests taken, patient ID photos made. Sandwiches and water are passed out to people in the impossibly long queues. Hugs and kind touches reassure frightened people who have been physically isolated by their conditions sometimes for years that God loves them and hope is on the way!

Hope On My Horizon

Parachute Music Festival 2012, 20,000 punters. No, not performing (Hahahaha) we have the privilege of working alongside singer/songwriter Peter Woolston who has written a powerful song called Hope On My Horizon for Mercy Ships NZ, and at Parachute we ran a Sing2Win competition for some fabulous new talent to audition for a part to sing on the chorus of the soon-to-be released album. Exhausting, exhilarating, and wonderfully fun ... we are ready to open the People's Choice X-Factor voting portion on Saturday Feb 18th at http://peterwoolston.com/sing2win/ , so why not check it out?

Kolkota

How many people can you get in a train? ALL of them! Between accidently sitting on the women's side of the bus, missing his train stop and being momentarily lost 7 hours outside Kolkata, and learning to hail a rickshaw ... Jason's orientation to India's teeming culture has been exciting as well as a little stressful at times. Oh how very strange it is to be on the OTHER side of sending young people into missions!

Jason has divided his time in Kolkata working with ministries that help street people in various ways. Asha Bari is like a day care centre for street kids so they have an alternative to wandering the dangerous city streets all day. The photo on the left is of a wee boy who loved blowing bubbles with Jason.  who helped feed and bathe the kids attending for the first 3 weeks he was in Kolkata. In the weekends he helping out at the Mother Teresa Sisters of Charity home, mainly washed the orphans clothes (by hand ! Hope he doesn’t lose that skill!). For the latter 3 weeks he is working with a FairTrade project called FreeSet which provides employment for women wanting to get out of street prostitution. He has been doing some graphics work, and a lot of manual labour. He was very pleased to have been able to take a few days out of the city to visit a World Vision project, as he is works part-time with thecharity here in NZ. A lot for him to process, and we can’t wait to hear all the tall stories when he gets home late February, ready to begin his 2nd year at Uni studying Communications
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Giving Glory to God

The Africa Mercy spent 2011 in Sierra Leone; a nation where 1/5 children still die before their 5th birthday, and 1/8 women still die in childbirth

During the field service Mercy Ships completed :

• more than 3,300 life-changing surgeries (including cleft and palate repair, tumour removal and orthopaedic surgeries) for more than 1,400 patients

• more than 10,000 general medical consultations

• more than 34,700 dental treatments

• more than 2,600 eye operations (including cataract surgeries) and more than 17,800 eye consultations.

More than 36,000 people directly benefited from the help received!

• In addition: Mercy Ships offered Basic Health Training (covering topics like nutrition, hand washing, wound care and dental care,) to more than 12,600 people in villages and clinics.

• Sixteen students from local organisations were trained in organic farming methods.

• More than 450 local health care professionals were coached and trained in their area of expertise (anaesthesiology, midwifery, instrument & equipment sterilisation, orthopaedic and reconstructive surgery).

Firsts

This year begins with a brand new experience for us - being at the OTHER side of sending kids into the wild and woolly places of the world, where the needs of the poor are desperate and immediate. Jason, our eldest, left today to spend 6 weeks in Kolkata, (Calcutta) India working amongst street children. We are delighted, proud, nervous and above all grateful to Jesus for planting this desire in his heart. We know he will be a changed young man when he returns, just in time to go back to Uni in February.

After a busy 2011 with all the sports activities, academic challenges, and youth groups activities Chelsea and Daniel have enjoyed down time over the summer holidays. The absolutely rotten weather has given them a bunch of time to blob out, but with highlights of friends and family visiting from Australia. Chelsea begins her finial year at high school in January, loves playing guitar, and hopes to play again with the girls First XI soccer team. Daniel begins his first national exams (NCEA1) - do they have an X Box subject? He's loving playing both his drums and tennis.

This less than delightful weather over Christmas did mean that Graeme and I were very happy to get on with our DYI house projects, and achieved another first - painting the interior of our very own house. It may seem like a small thing to be so excited about, but it was a delightful first for us. It even turned out OK!

We have some  exciting events coming up this year in our work in New Zealand with Mercy Ships, the most immediate being a PR event at the end of the month at Parachute - Down Under's biggest Christian music festival. With 27,000 expected attendees the exposure for people with a heart to serve the poor is tremendous.We are trusting God for people to sign up to volunteer onbaord as wellas to support this work with Africa's poor finacially.Either way, they become part of something life-changing for people with little hope.

Our lives have been radically impacted by God's heart for the poor, and one of the most incredible things we have experienced is now seeing our children also stepping out determined to make a difference in this arena. Go God!

Reflections

Our ministry focus and attention in 2011 was on the visit of the Africa Mercy to Sierra Leone for 10 months of the year. It was Mercy Ships 5th visit to this West African nation still struggling to recover from a decade-long civil war. The atrocities committed and the scars on the bodies and emotions of the local people are ten years later still a weight and a burden for many. Even before the war it was one of the poorest nations on earth, and our determination is to be a part of God's answer in bringing both hope and healing.

All previous visits have been made by the former flagship Anastasis, and this was the first visit for the new hospital ship Africa Mercy. It was a hugely impacting time. The exact statistics of the field service in terms of surgeries performed and how people were reached are to be released in a month or so, but we do know that the increased capapsity of the newer ship means we can help twice as many people as we could with all the other previous Mercy Ships put together!

Our family sat around the meal table the other day reflecting on the year past on a personal level - the highs and lows, and most significant moments. It's been a hard one on some of our family who live in the Christchurch area where, since September 2010 they have experienced close to 10,000 earthquakes and aftershocks. Graeme's elderly parents are in a rest home and while they are safe and cared for, it is very stressful for them and all the other folk living in the region. We that God that neither they nor my brother, who lives on a farm in the region but works in the city, have been physically affected by the major quakes.