Disclaimer: While the next few week I will be chronicling my time aboard the Africa Mercy, the views and opinions expressed therein are my own and are not affiliated with Mercy Ships.
Wow, you guys.
So I promised a few people that I would keep a blog while I was here, and it's a good excuse to go off by myself and write, and I haven't blogged in a while, so here goes.
From the start, this journey has been an exercise in trusting God, which is something that I will freely admit to struggling with regularly. I am a very independent person and so I find it difficult to trust an intangible Being the way that I should. This whole journey has showed me how much I really cannot control things in my own life, no matter how well I plan them out, and also that God has everything in control, and will work all things out according to his plan (even if his plan includes making my uncomfortable, which it probably does).
I first heard about Mercy Ships a few years back, when I lived in Columbus and a couple of their representatives came to speak at Crosspointe, where I attended church. At the time, I thought they were an excellent ministry and organization (still do!) but I did not see what it had to do with me. After all, I could never go into the medical field. And the other thing I remember the representatives mentioning was that they needed teachers. I didn't think I would ever be a teacher, so I figured that did not apply to me either. So I was interested but thought I could never be useful to this particular ministry.
Oops.
Then I moved to Missouri and started my MSEd to teach. Then I discovered Mercy Ships has a "Future Application" option, where I could go ahead and submit my application even though I wasn't ready to go. This turned into an email conversation with one of the organization representatives where she asked if I was available for a short-term trip during the summer or sometime before I finished my degree. They apparently need folks in all kinds of capacities, from Kitchen and Dining Room staff to Housekeeping to Photographers plus the doctors and nurses and therapists and I couldn't even begin to remember all of them. So I put in an application for a short-term position in February, and here it is the 20th of May and here I am sitting midships.
Raising money for this was stressful, but God has blessed my friends and family and church generously and has blessed me with their generosity. Planning this trip and working on my graduate degree and working part time the last half of the semester was super stressful but I managed to get all of my assignments done on time and God provided some healthy outlets for that stress and some very relaxing and comforting time with my family and friends in Georgia so that I only had a slight #yolo attitude going into my finals. Ordinarily, I am such a plan-aheader that I wouldn't even think of applying for a big trip like this only three months in advance. And yet here I am.
This is my first time traveling overseas alone. Last time I did it, I was with a group and so just followed the group leader around. This time, I was my own leader. I was unable to check in early online for my flights, which was stressful. Then, one of my flights got completely canceled after spending three hours on the tarmac, and so that caused me to miss all of my subsequent flights, Air Brussels rebooked me onto an Ethiopian set of flights to Benin (so now I had to travel through Ethiopia instead of through Belgium), and I spent a night barely sleeping in the Washington Dulles airport. But I made some friends along the way. A PhD student from Benin (who attends school in Wisconsin I think) was traveling back to Benin with his mother, and so we all three went through the cancelling and rebooking experiencing and had the same Ethiopian Air flights (they ended up coming with me through customs when we arrived which was super helpful because my French is not as good as it should be). It turns out that Ethiopian Air offered really fantastic service, and the thirteen-hour flight from DC to Addis Ababa had enough open seating that I had an empty seat next to me (as opposed to the French guy who was squishing me on the Air Brussels flight). And I finally watched Hidden Figures on that flight, which was awesome!
I made it to Benin by myself, after all of these things I had planned for having gone wrong. I was picked up immediately in the pouring rain by a very nice lady from the UK and, even though we got soaked along the way, made it to the ship one day late.
I am all checked in and settled into a berth that houses ten girls, though not all the bunks are filled. Feeling overwhelmed over lots of introductions in an unfamiliar place (my official tour won't be until Monday), I ate dinner alone. Then one of my roommates came over and started talking to me, and when I confessed I was feeling tired and overwhelmed, she showed me the best places in the ship to get alone and quiet time. And just now, I jumped into a scrabble game that was very exciting with a lot of ladies who have now invited me to go to the beach with them tomorrow.
I am feeling great! But also very tired. Thank you for your continued prayers for me on this journey. I start officially working on Monday!
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