TESTS AND MORE TESTS

What do these two characters have in common? One is a Roman Solider and the other one is a Roman Soldier Wanna-Be. Your guess as to which is which!

We went to York this past weekend with friends and spent a great day roaming (or Roming) the streets of this great ancient city. Walked where the Romans once ruled, walked along the top of the wall that at that time surrounded their city. If you were to walk the entire wall it would take almost 3 hours so - - you're right - - we opted to walk the wall for 30 minutes and shop, eat and sightsee the rest of the time.

FOR MORE PICTURES CLICK ON 'LATEST PICTURES' AND GO TO APRIL 17

There was another exciting moment this week for the ship. The bow thrusters have stumped our Engineers why they would not work for sometime now and without them we could not pass the required surveyor's tests. We had to re-wire the entire system and low and behold they started up for the first time this week! That is a big PTL. One of my housekeepers got a thrill because she was in the bridge cleaning when the test was run and then was given the priviledge of blowing the ships' horn.

Some of you may know already that we are hosting a wonderful young lady from our home church, Christian Celebration Center to come aboard in Ghana in June for the entire summer. It is Jessica Behmlander and we couldn't be more thrilled. She will work for the first month in one of my departments, housekeeping and then mid-July move to a much more exciting job - - that of Dental Sterilizer. In that role she will travel with the dental team to wherever they set up our dental clinic and work directly with the Ghanian patients. What an awesome opportunity for this young woman. I know she will see and experience things she has never see before - - maybe like rat on a stick or dried monkey heads. I expect her already God-given desire for missions will be forever sealed in her this summer. So if you are looking for a great place to invest in Kingdom work here is a young lady with a lot of potential - - place an offering in the collection at church and mark it "Jessica Behmlander Missions Fund". The cost of just the airfare alone is huge and then she is required to pay room and board of $500/month on top of that.

We are doing that thing that I've come to absolutely hate - PACK AGAIN! I don't mind the changing locations as much as the adventure of trying to put everything we own again into now 1 suitcase each. Into Ghana that's all we get. The good (or not so good news) is that Mercy Ships will ship for only $13 a box anything we need sent. I couldn't believe it when we ended up with 8 boxes of personal items and 2 boxes of professional items. We leave England for Ghana on June 7.

Prayer Points

• Safe travel for Jessica and us as we move to Ghana
• Financial support for Jessica
• Continued financial support for us
• Wisdom and courage while keeping the people of my departments the main focus and not tasks
• My friend Fran who has had emergency surgery in Midland
• Godly direction for Mercy Ships in all decisions

COMMISSIONG OF THE M/V AFRICA MERCY

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I'd like to take you on a tour of our ship through the eyes of those who cleaned the ship to get ready for our auspicious Commissioning event on April 6. Remember, this is still a construction zone and it looked like it when we first started. God sent me a cleaning angel. Her name is Sue and she works for the shipyard. What a dynamo this woman is and I was able to coordinate our efforts through her, supplied some staff and we just barely made it after a week of hard cleaning.

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Here I am inspecting the ICU. Our job was to clean the "Parade Route" or that part of the ship our guests would be shown. It included the gangway, reception, dining room, corridors down starboard through the cafe, 2 cabins, stairways, the CT scanner room, ICU ward and a regular ward.

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Here is how one of the rooms cleaned up. This is a family cabin on Deck 5. Robert and my cabin is not so spacious but lovely just the same.

FOR MORE PICTURES OF THIS EVENT SEE THE SIDE BAR ON OUR BLOG SITE http://useuslord.blogspot.com TO THE RIGHT AND CLICK ON LATEST PICURES - Then go to April 5 and April 6.

All that work for a 3 hour event but Praise the Lord during the event there was a $125,000 donation to our children's school as well a donation of mattress covers for every mattress from JC Penneys and an addition $2 Million raised. Our hospital is nearly completely stocked and funded and now the money coming in is being raised to fund the development projects in Ghana.

We had Good Friday off - - let me restate that - SUSAN had Good Friday off. The shipyard wanted to run engine tests at 3am on Good Friday so that's where Robert and all the other Engineering and Deck crew were. They fortified our ropes to the dock, put her in high gear and churned up a ton of water. There was always a danger of a) pulling the ballards out of the dock and setting sail down the river b) churning up all the mud from the bow of our ship and depositing them in front of the dry dock gate c) catching fire in the engine room d) burning out the bearings. Thank God none of that happened, the tests went very well. We were able to reach about 80% power. It showed us where Engineering still had some work to do but it was a good test.

Susan on the other hand went out with 12 other friends to Holy Island about 1 1/2 north of Newcastle on the Eastern coast. Holy Island is the point of entry into England for Christianity about 700 AD. The priory (monk house) there is where they translated, without the help of a computer mind you, and hand copied the scriptures. Part of the "Adventure" was a 2 hour walk across the ocean bottom at low tide to the island. It was a cold and blustery day. Winds of about 40 mph kept blowing us down in the mud. We had to hurry to beat the rising tides. It was a great day but here 2 days later my body still aches all over except my hair.

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FOR MORE PICTURES OF HOLY ISLAND SEE THE SIDE BAR ON OUR BLOG SITE http://useuslord.blogspot.com/ TO THE RIGHT AND CLICK ON LATEST PICURES AND CLICK ON APRIL 14.

AND FINALLY ....The news I promised you about 2 weeks ago. Are you ready? It's not a big secret but we've to hold EVERYTHING very lightly here as it changes almost on an hourly basis. But we are 80.5% sure that it won't change, at least for now anyway. Robert and I are going back to the Anastasis! Susan and most of the Operations Managers as well as the Programs Managers (Health care, Development and Evangelism) are being sent to the Anastasis in early June to take over the Anastasis from the existing crew. The Anastasis is being decommissioned and sold for scrap. We thought that would happen in July as soon as the Africa Mercy pulled along side her and we transferred resources and crew but now the Africa Mercy won't be ready till October we decided to start our outreach using the Anastasis as the tool. This is a HUGE paradygm shift in thinking for Mercy Ships. And those managers that are headed over as well as those that stay behind now have to operate 2 ships instead of 1. This was good news for Robert and I because we had come very close to the end of our rope here in England. The cost alone was more than we could bare much longer and the call back to Africa is so strong. We are praising God for this opportunity although we understand the shear amount of work that is going to be required of Susan for the next year.

Robert and I are wishing you and yours a very blessed and Happy Easter. It is truly a day to celebrate, the day our salvation was secured - - bought and paid for.

PARTY-PARTY-PARTY

A local group of people threw a Scottish Barn dance and raised over $5,000 for Mercy Ships. What a wonderfully, lively night as you can tell. We hadn't had much to do on the weekends for about 3 months. Then this particular weekend there were 3 parties to go to and YOU GUESSED IT - - Robert was sick. Robert hates dancing but he really like this type. It's probably because it's less like dancing and more like aerobics combined with wrestling. Then we had a mis-matched party complete with a pinata and pin the tail on the donkey.

WORK YOU SAY? Oh yeah, we did some of that this week too and you can see some of the photos on the ship as well as the installation of the telecommunications satellite. You know what they say about missionaries? Work hard, play hard - go to bed by 9pm!