AFISH A PA (MERRY CHRISTMAS)

Christmas aboard the Anastasis is a magical time. It starts off early in the month with a visit from Snitter Klass and Black Joe who row their boat from Spain to bring presents to good little Dutch children. Honestly, I’m not making that up! I couldn’t remember Santa’s name so for the longest I was calling him Snickerdoodle.

The best night for me was Winter Wonderland. Maybe because it’s a time for shopping, maybe it’s a time I can buy earrings, maybe it’s all the lights, maybe it’s all the fellowshipping, singing, hot chocolate, pretending it’s snowing (turn up the A/C and wear a sweater). Vendors put up booths complete with lights, signs, and advertisement and even a few hawkers (people trying to steal your business to their own booths – all in fun of course) There are beautiful hand-made crafts such as snowflake Christmas ornaments made of straws, raffia bows, batik fabrics, necklaces, bracelets, earrings, paper boxes, homemade baked goods. This year there was a raffle for a graham cracker Anastasis (our equivalent of a ginger bread house). But the bestest reason for my loving this night was that my department sold gift certificates to provide scholarships to pastors to attend the 10-week pastors training for West African Pastors. For $20, people could sponsor one person through the school. We sold 48 scholarships! Can you imagine how many people in a lifetime 1 pastor reaches for Jesus? Now multiply that by 48! What a night….God is good, all the time!

Yesterday was a day of mixed emotions. Our last day as a crew at Pantang Psychiatric Hospital. We developed this ministry to be turned over to the World Outreach Ministry so they will continue after our ship pulls out. Now it is their turn to sustain what has been started there. We pull out while we are yet still in Ghana so that we can monitor how that progress is going, offering help and suggestions when needed. A test of sorts to see how well they will be faithful to this commitment. They have really gotten a heart for these people. There is one young preacher specifically that loves preaching there. His name is Japeth. Pray for him when you think of Pantang. He is not paid to go in to the hospital and he lives a distance away which means transportation costs. They have been so faithful at great personal sacrifices. We ended our service there with a Christmas party of sorts. Homemade decorations, homemade cookies, homemade Christmas cards for everyone. We preached, we sang Carols to them, we read the Christmas Story and we gave another alter call. TWENTY-FIVE new believers stood when the alter call was given, including 1 muslim man. We were able to give all 100 persons who attended their own bible. These bibles were produced by Mercy Ships and is the New Testament only with a section in the back on health issues – HIV/AIDS, nutrition, wound care, water decontamination, and sanitation. I told them it was a book that ministered to the spirit and the body. That the body was important to God because it was the temple of his Holy Spirit. Because of the generosity of friends back home we have enough money to send in an additional 120 bibles. In January we are sending in a Dental team from the ship to meet the most severe dental needs of the long-term patients and then my crew will go back in for those two days to assist in crowd control and paperwork. This ministry has been a real blessing to my soul. I always came home exhausted but I never walked away without being totally refreshed and filled up in my spirit man.

I had a dream last night and when I woke up I knew it was to be turned into a devotional for my department before Christmas. I am entitling it “The Humility of Christmas”. People in my department are beautifully skilled and talented people who have accepted God’s assignment to do some pretty humiliating things. They struggle with the humility issue almost every day and yet they keep going. Think of it, a trained nurse, teacher or lawyer having to scrub diahhrea out of the carpets and remove it from the floor where patients don’t know how to use a toilet or where they think the shower must be the urinal. God is reminding me that He suffered the greatest humility when he left his glorious heaven. The creator become one of the created, common birth, dirty diapers, spit up on his mother, hay for a bed, as he grew being watched over, cared for and directed by mere mortals, scolded in public by his mother for lagging behind to preach in the temple, being mocked, run out of town, nothing good comes from Nazareth, washing the apostles feet, standing in silence as they stripped him, spat on him, beat him, and nailed him to a cross. And at any moment Jesus could have only breathed the words “ENOUGH, I am God and I should not suffer these indignities” and it would have stopped. I am reminded that our humility is nothing compared to His and that we should rejoice in our most humiliating situations as it is an opportunity to be transformed into the likeness, the character of our Lord and Savior Jesus.

Have a very joyous and blessed Christmas.

Robert and Susan Blanchard
Mercy Ships - Ghana

THE BLESSINGS OF ADVENT

I became a Great Aunt on Nov 14. Meet Wyatt Chase (he’s ½ Texan, ½ Alabamian), my niece, Bea and my sister Mary. Everyone is doing great and I can’t wait to get my hands on him. Unfortunately, I may have to wait till he’s walking until that happens.

WOW - - the Anastasis has entered the Advent season with a bang! The decorations are up and beautiful, plenty of activities already in full swing. Let me give you a glimpse into Christmas aboard the ship. This Saturday is Winter Wonderland, a mall of sorts. Where people have made things throughout the year or just have things for sale for crew members to buy for each other for Christmas. Then there are storytelling nights, Caroling (I already had 4 children come to my door) people decorate their cabin door and department doors and we have contests for the best. We had a table tennis tournament. The children are putting together a play and we have rounded up a few brave souls to form an official choir at different events during the month. You guessed it! I am so excited about being in a choir again after 2 ½ years. The first night was TERRIBLE. I kept thinking - - these were suppose to be people with choir experience, what happened? Pastor Leon – where are you? Until we figured out that we only had the words and no music. Do you know how many renditions around the world there are of O Holy Night? They were all being sung at one time and it sounded like cats being strangled. Anyway, the lady in the cabin next to me is also in the choir and we both happened to leave our house last night at the same time. So I decided to “give her a lift” - - I was driving a red convertible Jaguar (with the top down) and we managed to negotiate our way through the halls and up one floor to choir practice. Didn’t take as long as it use to but was much more fun. Christmas day we will all wake up to candies, homemade gifts and trinkets in our shoes outside our doors - - it’s a beautiful tradition and one that enforces the giving spirit and the blessings that are given by stranger and friend alike.

I was feeling a little gloomy when I realized my Christmas tree this year is a piece of yarn in the shape of a tree on the wall with mini glass balls taped to the wall and we only have a 20-bulb string of lights around the porthole for decorations. Then I realized my home is the ship and the ship has around 5 Christmas trees, lots of lights and beautiful decorations - - so I’m more blessed than even when we had our own home. It’s all in how you look at things.

Of course, these are the fun things of Christmas that we all enjoy but the best thing about being on the Anastasis at Christmas is all the opportunities to be a light to the country of Ghana. Our people are out in orphanages making a difference, bringing the word of God along with sewing clothes and providing shoes. Ministering to hurting youth in a destitute area. Bringing bibles and the message of a loving God to 700 children in a small village. How about taking bibles and a Christmas Party into a Psychiatric hospital? There is NOTHING better! Now that’s the true spirit of Christmas - - it’s all about showing our Christ to others. So how will you show the love of Christ this year?

This past week gave us some great opportunities to be involved in the work of local pastors. Keume is a village my friend Pam has been working at very diligently to correct the incorrect theology of the local Christian church. I put her in contact with the Pastors that I work with at the Psychiatric hospital and they sent a pastor to hold a Pastor’s training program in their village. When the program was completed we brought all the village pastors to the ship and had a graduation ceremony. The biggest problem Africa has is combining Christianity with JuJu (magic arts, voodoo, animism, etc) and still calling it Christianity. The pastors are poorly trained if trained at all and when the first hard question or event comes along they cannot explain through the Word of God they revert back to what they understand - - the witchdoctor or a ritual from their past. This is why I have such a deep passion for the work that World Outreach Ministries is doing here.

Last Saturday I was a guest speaker at the World Outreach Ministry graduation ceremony. They graduated 15 men and women from their 10-week program. Many of these were ordained pastors coming into the school but when they learned the truth about God’s Word fell on their knees and asked forgiveness of God for leading their people astray and vowed to return to their villages with the truth. I was also very privileged to hand out the diplomas and have my picture taken with every single graduate. It was very typical African. Well orchestrated, very formal, very long (4 hours), very hot, VERY LOUD. I have included a picture of the speakers that we were sitting not less than 4 feet from. And of course every speech or song was done with the reverb on. It’s an invasion of noise that can literally make you quake in your shoes. But it was an honor to be treated as an honored guest and to be part of their ceremony. My department has raised over $1400 in just making cinnamon rolls every week to help them keep the doors of their school open. We found out that the enrollment fee to the class is only $20 per student but there were many pastors that left the program because they could not pay. My department has vowed to pay the tuition fee for any pastor wanting to come to the next class which starts this Friday. It is unimaginable to me that $20 prevents people from doing something so dreadfully important but that is a lot of money here.

Count your blessings – name them one by one. 1) God loves us unconditionally 2) God has privileged us by giving us this opportunity 3) Family 4) Friends like you 5) For life and how we chose to spend it.

May God bless you all this Christmas season. May he reveal to you how to be a light in a very dark world. May you let your little light shine all year long.

For more pictures click "LATEST PHOTOS" to the left.

Love and Blessings,
Robert & Susan Blanchard
Missionaries with Mercy Ships
Serving Ghana, West Africa