On Mercy Ships

A couple weeks ago I called my friend who is a nurse at the  missions clinic two hours from me. I asked if I could stay with her for a few days to rest. She said yes, but there was also a Mercy Ships team arriving for a screening, would I want to help with that?

When I was in nursing school I was interested in Mercy Ships in a nursing capacity. Though I have changed directions over the years,the concept and driving force behind the Mercy Ships ministry has remained something that excited and interests me. I will give a short and incomplete summary of the ministry here, but you should check out their website to see more.

 The ship stays at the port of their host country (usually African) 10 months and then goes for maintenance for the other two months of the year. Crew members from around the world fly in and serve on the ship, some long term and some short term.

Part of the job is finding candidates for the surgeries they offer, so they send screening teams around the country to find those who qualify for care. This is what I got to help with yesterday. The logistic work behind these screenings is amazing. Hundreds of people showed up the night before or the early morning to be seen, and the nurses and security and admin teams worked from 5am to nearly 11pm, seeing candidates, scheduling accepted patients, giving them the documents and information they will need to travel to the capital for surgery. The sheer number of factors in this process overwhelmed me. Think medicine, think developing country, think poverty and ignorance colliding with Western medicine.

 Of the 1100 people that were screened at the site I was at, 100 were accepted for care.I was asked to pray with people who came to wait hours in line but were rejected in the end for any number of reasons. Maybe their blood pressure was too high to safely do surgery, maybe whatever condition they had was too far advanced for intervention to be an option, maybe their condition was not bad enough to warrant the risk of surgery, etc. I so admire those screening nurses who have to tell people they cannot help them. Yesterday, whenever there was someone who seemed particularly upset or like they needed comfort they would call me over and I would pray with them.

I saw some very sad things yesterday.

But I remembered as I was praying with them, for hope in the midst of severe disappointment- that I truly believe that we do have hope, if not in this life then in the one to come. Some people had no hope medically speaking. But with Jesus our hope is never gone. In the local language I work with,  we say ‘don’t cut your hope!’ when someone is very sad. And that saying only finds its true home in the Gospel.

I am so thankful that Jesus was a Man of Sorrows, that he knew suffering here on earth, that he can enter into our suffering with us, and ultimately he will take our suffering from us by having suffered for us on the cross.

Books I've read lately

The Unseen Realm: Rediscovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible by Michael S. Heiser- I was recommended this book by a Bible translator from another organization working in this same country. Heiser talks about the worldview the ancient readers had as they were reading the Old Testament. Honestly this book presents a lot of ideas I had never been exposed to before. I wrote several of my Bible college or seminary friends to ask them to read it as well and let me know what they think. I encourage you to do the same! Maybe you will think he is way off base, either way I would love to hear other opinions.

Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry- I think everyone should read this book sometime before they die. I actually heard about Wendell Berry from interns that came and stayed with us two summers ago. After they left his name popped up in two books I was reading in the same week, what? Berry is a believer and a  farmer/writer who lives in Kentucky and writes beautiful thoughts about the things he knows. I have some of his poetry as well, but I won’t feel guilty if I can’t get into it, because to me his prose is poetry. I kind of love the fact that he has won all this acclaim and all these writing awards, and then he went back to his farm and lives in Kentucky.

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge- This was a recommendation by my friend Bethany who has never ever steered me wrong giving book advice. It is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast.  I could not put it down, stayed up late to finish it this weekend.

Binti by Nndedi Oforafor- another Bethany suggestion, Binti lives in the future, kind of a Star Wars feeling future. She is from Earth, from an African tribe specialized in math and equations. But her tribe never leaves its land, she is the first to leave it and go to another planet for university. This short book is the story of her journey there.

Writing Fiction for Dummies by Peter Economy- I actually have a friend who doesn’t buy any of the Dummies books, because he says he is not a dummy. I don’t really think I am a dummy either, but I do want to write a book and don’t know exactly how to start the process. I keep putting off starting and reading other books to help me start or to give me ideas, but then that reading takes my time, it is kind of a catch 22 situation.