Two more weeks

I'm not so good at updating this blog daily as I had intended to mainly because of the internet speed. A lot is happening on this ship and knowing myself, it's hard to find quiet time ever... even on a missions trip! <-- that's something you can pray for me for=)

Here's what I do on this ship outside of work hours and where your money had gone to support=)

Mondays
- Toastmasters. Improving the speech. I've only been a guest the past two times
- French lessons. As Mercy Ships sail to Togo and Guinea next year for their outreaches, the crew is also prepared parler l'francais to the patients and community. Thank God we have some wonderful crew who are from Africa to instruct us.

Tuesdays
- HOPE center. Unfortunately out of the 14 orthopaedic patients who came back last week, only four were ready for surgery. Praise God there were four! The rest are scheduled and prompt to return for the Guinea outreach. Hopefully with another nine months, their vitamin D and calcium intake will increase and help straighten the joint alignments. It would be so great to see them all with aligned extremities again! Visiting them for the last time (as they all left today), made me quite sad. I think this is why many people on the ship choose to befriend only those who are leaving with them around the same time - less emotional separations. We presented a puppet show to them of the story of the good Samaritan. Seeing it reminded me of the sermon I watched at The Meeting House a few years ago. It's a vague memory now but it was exactly the sermon which helped me to see Missions and the need for it. Sometimes its hard and tiring to "love our neighbours as ourselves"....But these bowlegged children are so adorable how can one not love them?=D
- I watched Pride of Lion again and I realized how blessed I am to come to Sierra Leone out of all the places in the world. It's the poorest country in 2006 and I have the privilege to serve the people here and somewhat help some of them to pick themselves up. Thank you for allowing me to do this! I really hope in my lifetime Freetown may become developed again. On a positive note, some areas of this city is starting to pick up with electricity.

Wednesday
- Yesterday I spent the morning with Mercy Ministries to visit Missionaries of Charity. It's a shelter founded by Mother Theresa for patients diagnosed with HIV, TB and malaria. The shelter is now run by four nuns and a doctor who comes in once a week for assessments. Screening of new patients are done twice a week. Mercy Ships plans weekly visits in which we sing songs and make crafts. I realized I'm not great with communicating to these patients whether it's language barrier or a lack of things to talk to them about. My conversation to them stops after I've asked them "ow de body" and responded with "fine". So I just helped them with their crafts. Praise God for the hard work these nuns do to care for 60-80 of them day in and day out!

Thursday
- As the ship prepares for sail in a couple of weeks, the hospital procedures are coming to an end in two weeks time, things are slowing down. Today I started helping out with office duties. I am now sorting out the thousands of patient charts, putting the sheets in order and scanning them all into the network. The sad thing is we only have TWO scanners in the hospital!! At least I'm doing something useful with my time.
- Community Gathering. Tonight's sermon message was on trusting the Lord. It is hard to trust the Lord at times but as our relationship with Him grows with time and with experience, we learn more about His character and know that indeed He is someone we can trust. 100% too! <--something you can pray for me as well.

So as the title states, in two weeks' time I'm will be leaving Freetown. Time has passed by so quickly and although it's been up and down, I know I will still miss parts of this place/people/experience.

Anyway, it's way past bedtime. Sorry for any grammatical errors and thanks for reading!

P.S. The fume has been gone this week. PTL! Thank you for your prayers. I'm so glad my headache's gone.