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