Threefold Cord – A Hiding Place

And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
—Ecclesiastes 4:12

SORRY THIS TURNED OUT SUPER LONG! I realized that my first update was the beginning of week 1, so this is covering a little bit more than a week. HEH sorry.

Soul Life

I’m adjusting alright to ship life. The routine gets a little bit easier each day, and it’s nice to kind of have more of an idea of what to expect throughout the day and throughout the week. As the excitement and enthusiasm of being in a new place and figuring it out has worn off, I’m starting to settle and get back into evaluating my heart and my soul and my spiritual health.

I think a side effect of having met so many people is that I’ve built a large number of friendships, but I haven’t yet had the time to deepen my relationships with any. There are so many people I want to get to know and want to spend time with. I’ve noticed that the people I’ve grown closest to in my life were always people I’ve felt an inexplicable urge to pursue deeper friendships with. In an earlier musing about the first of such friends I made, I wrote:

There are times where we meet someone and before getting to them or they us, we know we just want everything to do with them and we’re driven to pursue a relationship with them. Melissa was the first person I met with whom I felt that way. It was really strange to experience that drive of pursuit for the first time, and reflecting back I think it’s one of the ways God revealed Himself to me before I really knew Him. While I was still a sinner, while I still rebelled against Him, while I still rejected Him, He pursued me, with such perfect love that He sent His Son to die in my place so that I could have a relationship with Him. I did nothing to deserve His love (quite the opposite, in fact), but He knew that a relationship with Him was and is what I need to be fulfilled.

I think right now I’m getting a bit overwhelmed from having this urge with too many people. I mean, the people who drop what they’re doing to pay money and go volunteer in West Africa always have such interesting and deep stories. While most everyone has a unique story, the kind of people that have gathered in this place have stories of a special richness. It’s been a bit difficult balancing time alone and time together. It’s been a bit taxing on my introvert self.

I joined a Bible study on Monday night and learned a bit more about the Mercy Ships style of evangelism. They use a format called “Simply the Story” to share Bible stories and reveal more about the characteristics of God. It’s also the format they use during ward and HOPE Center services (church services that are held for hospital and clinic patients). It uses a basic format:

The context is introduced: characters, place, time, anything that may be relevant to understanding the implication.
The leader or preacher reads Scripture from the Bible.
Someone else in the group or audience retells the story using their own words.
Others can add on additional details to the story that they think are important, which reinforces the story.
Discuss and make observations about the story. What’s the situation? Who is involved, and what do we learn about them? What are people saying, doing, and how does it impact the story? The point is to have people learn biblical truths and draw conclusions for themselves.
Talk about how we can apply the spiritual truths we draw from the last step and apply them to our daily life and ministry.

This method emphasizes using oral storytelling traditions to spread the Good News. It’s a really interesting style. It’s definitely different from the very structured and scholarly study style we have back home.

After Bible study on Monday night, a handful of us got together to pray for a friend on the ship who was having difficulty adjusting to ship and mission life. It turned into an outpouring of our souls over the fellowship we all felt like we were lacking. It’s a bit ironic, feeling like you don’t experience a cup-filling fellowship despite serving alongside others. It’s still something that we have to actively seek and support. It takes energy to pour and fill; it’s not something that is passively absorbed from being in any kind of environment. Here’s a bit of a teary eyed photo of us before we went to bed after our time of prayer and chat.

Next to me on the couch from the left is Jackie (TX, USA), April (AUS), Trancy (AUS), and Betsy (South Korea) is in the front.

Please pray that we have more cup-pouring and cup-filling fellowship, and that we can minister to those who may not have the cup in their hands quite yet.

Ship Life

Lucky you all, we’ve had two different Christmasy traditions since the last update! I already mentioned the Sinterklaas celebration, which is Dutch! It happened and all of the children who cried because they were afraid of a strange bearded pope was glorious. We put our shoes out the night before Sinterklaas was supposed to arrive, and then in the morning they were filled with baggies of these gingerbread pebble things. Except someone came by and took all the shoes and rearranged them. So while it looks very neat, no one’s shoes are actually in front of their cabin doors…

Shoes outside cabins for Sinterklaas Eve. My friend said that someone took a few shoes and hung them on the fire extinguisher in the hallway and around the grates by the boiler room. Then the rest the shoes on her deck were arranged in a circle around the bathrooms.

Sinterklaas “arrived” on December 5th to a lot of singing He handed out presents to the children in the Academy, only for most of them to cry when they had to approach a strange bearded man.

This week, we celebrated the Scandinavian tradition of welcoming Santa Lucia. Santa Lucia was a martyr during a period of early Church prosecution, and died for her faith. She wears a crown of candles and a red sash, and she comes to bring light to the dark winters in Scandinavia.

The Scandinavian crew sang a bunch of songs but the most exciting thing was that we had OPEN FLAME ON THE SHIP also it seemed kinda crazy that they picked the one of the tallest crew to put candles on her head. Ship ceilings are way low, so it does present a bit of a fire hazard. The singing and candlelight was pretty lovely, though. They sang in some other language for most of the night—I’m not going to pretend I know which one—but ended the night with Silent Night in English. As they began singing, everyone attending sang along, and it was quite a beautiful experience.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUFF4VjbFDQ]

The ship also has some “national Christmas trees” around the midships area. Crew came together (before I arrived) to decorate a designated tree to represent their country. Some are pretty great.

United States. Very American. Very patriotic. SO MANY FLAGS. ALL THE STARS.

Not to be outdone, those from the UK also brought many a flag, British paper chains, and the classic London double-decker buses.

Canada, in the most Canadian fashion, was very gentle and classy with their national pride. Many maple leaves. A hockey player, and only one flag.

Similarly classy, Switzerland didn’t go all out on the decorations. Just a lot of tiny Swiss flags and a Swiss flag ribbon.

The only reason I knew this tree belongs to Sweden was because of the flag printed on computer paper taped up behind it. I was taking photos of all the trees with Kailee (AUS), on the left.

New Zealand with their Kiwi-related ornaments, and the NZ fern on the other side (not pictured). Commonwealthers. I guess it’s still being watched over by the UK tree.

The Aussie tree has koalas all over it. Each of which has an Aussie flag. And one ginormous bell that tips it over just a tad.

Perhaps my favorite, the Dutch tree (as noted by the piece of paper at the bottom with “Dutch Tree” scrawled in marker). It’s just covered in a popular Dutch cookie. It used to have more, but they have been disappearing with each passing day. I suspect people have been taking the cookies off one by one and eating them.

Thursday night we had a Carols by Candlelight service, which is apparently and Australian thing (though some of the Aussies I talked to said they had never heard of it, perhaps it’s regional). It was arranged by the Australian crew and the AFM worship team helped provide music. It was held on the dock off ship because EVERYBODY GOT AN OPEN FLAME. It was a lovely night, and it even sprinkled a bit, even though it’s dry season! Now I can officially use the phrase #blesstherainsdowninafrica.

From the left: Sarah (CA, USA), Kathy (MN, USA), me, and Rosie (from many places in the USA, mostly CA but most recently Guam).

We also had a gingerbread house contest. I did not participate because the thought of engineering a house and stuff with limited tools and supplies was just way too stressful. But some of the entries were really amazing.

Venturing Off-Ship

I made it off ship!

I finally managed to take a more normal-looking photo of the ship. It’s pretty big (only about 2/3rds of it is pictured), so I can’t quite get the whole thing in the shot. The first time off the ship was during a fire drill, hahahaha.

A bit distorted from the pano, but here’s the full ship.

On Friday nights, the cultural center in the city holds an African dance class. It’s a bit like a workout class, but the teacher puts together a simple choreography sequence to teach each week. Instead of using music speakers, there’s three live African drummers who play. The class is taught in French, but the teacher is so good with communicating with body that you don’t really need to know French.

Here’s a sweaty photo of all of the attendees from the class that Friday. The teacher is the one with the tank top that says FASHION on it, and one (and a half) of her drummers are also in the photo. :) Most of the people who came this time were Mercy Shippers, but a few of them are locals/expats.

I managed to grab a video from a friend who recorded us doing some of the dance at the end of the class. By this time, my feet were covered in blisters and we had been doing high intensity cardio dance for an hour and a half! It was a really fun time, and I’ll definitely be heading back (maybe while wearing socks to protect my baby feet). Enjoy watching us suffer at the hands of our teacher who had endless energy levels.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3uNSzwm1I8&w=560&h=315]

So one thing that is a bit cultural that we have had to be aware of is that taking photos in public is not very well-received in Guinea. The government and military in particular are very suspicious of photography, and if you take a photo while close to any government building or structure, you may be approached by guards and ordered to delete it or pay a bribe to keep the photo. The public is a bit similar in terms of discomfort or dislike for being photographed we’re told, and so we’re discouraged from openly taking photos while we’re out in the city. A lot of the photos I have were sneaky-sneaky taken by small GoPro cameras by other people or taken from the inside of a car.

We went to a nearby market and fancy ice cream store nearby called Le Special. We walked through Marche du Niger (Niger Market), which had a lot of produce stands.

Saturday, we drove about 3 hours out of Conakry to the countryside to Dubréka to see a couple of waterfalls. The first is at the base of a mountain called “Le Chien qui Fume,” or “the Smoking Dog” because of how the mist rolls down the mountain in the wet season. The dog is not “smoking” right now because we’re in dry season, though.

The other waterfall was much bigger, and it has dried up significantly since the end of the wet season. Here’s a picture of it in September:

And here it is right now…

Also the traffic is ridiculous. People hang onto the outsides of cars and cram as many people as they can into the car. One of the other crew joked about making a calendar where each month’s photo is a picture of a car with that number of people hanging onto it. After today, I wouldn’t be so surprised if it was possible…

I think I can see twelve people on this one??

LAB LIFE

The lab decorated our doors for Christmas!

We’re the B Team because we’re all blood type B positive, hahaha. What’re the chances?

I painted all of us as animals representative from our origins. Kathy is from Minnesota, so she’s a moose. Sarah is from central California, so she’s a bobcat. I’m a squirrel, and Caitlin is a kangaroo since she’s from Australia.

Our donor room door has a glove-wreath with holly berries of red-top vacutainer caps.

I’m slowly getting through learning how to do everything on the test menu, but one thing I’ve gotten pretty good at is O&Ps. I used to be really not-confident in my ability to look for parasites, but this week we had a few buddies join us on the ship! Parasitology is a lot less intimidating now, since I’ve had to do so many stools already. I don’t get to do much bacteriology yet since the on-call person usually does that so they can follow themselves over the weekend, but I’ve been helping Sarah as she goes through it.

EXCITING LAB FINDINGS

I was under the impression that Entamoeba coli is not supposed to be that bad, but these people have a TON of it. Anybody want to weigh in on if that’s ever significant?

ANYWAY, sorry for the super long post, but thanks for reading and congratulations for making it to the end! Spirits are still high here, and things will wind down in the next few weeks as we approach Christmas and New Year’s, as the ORs (and the lab) close for 2 weeks. A lab tech is still on call during the holidays for urgent work. I’m on call Christmas and the two days following, so I’ll have some time on the ship, but I’ll probably be getting out of the ship during the Christmas weeks!

Hope you are all doing well. Please send me a quick hello and update from home when you can! I’m always so happy to hear from you all.

Blessings,
Jasmin