Next Stop: Liberia

This is it, folks. I'll be going to Liberia tomorrow morning. After 7 long years, my dream of returning to Africa is finally becoming a reality. I can't believe this is actually happening.

I'll continue with my blog once I get settled on the ship.

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned!

Accounts of Dominican Republic by a missionary newbie - Part 1 of several

I was in the Dominican Republic (DR) for the past 2.5 weeks, completing the practical portion of my ministry training at Mercy Ships, putting what we learnt in the classroom into practice. Since this is my first mission trip, and the first time to the Caribbean, I was both excited and nervous.

I’ll give an overview of the trip in this post. Descriptions of our work and my reflections will be given in future posts.

DR is a developing country in the Caribbean, sharing the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. As soon as I stepped out of the airport terminal, I was greeted by the humid tropical air. During the drive to our hotel, I enjoyed watching the lush green countryside and endless sugar cane fields go by. Over the next 18 days, I experienced many facets of this fascinating country. We were blessed with hot and sunny weather most days, while that was good for our work outdoors, it also meant I had to get used to the constant whiff of garbage and open sewer, slowly decomposing under the tropical sun. I had the opportunity to savour many local food, including avocados the size of cantaloupes and sugar canes that I chopped, shaved, chewed, and spit with sweet delight.

As with most developing countries, traffic rules and safety regulations are highly optional. It’s normal to pass on double solid lines with oncoming traffic. A family of four fits comfortably on a scooter. My favourite image was a guy on the back of a motocycle taxi, holding onto a birthday cake big enough to feed 30 people, uncovered, with candles inserted, wavering in and out of traffic en route to the party. I wonder if the white buttercream will turn a shade of grey.

During the weekends, we attended services at different churches, and I enjoyed the very lively and spirited worship. Just have to remember to bring a bottle of water as the service usually last 3-4 hours. We also went the beach, hiked a nearby mountain, and enjoyed God’s beautiful creations.

Despite liberal application of bug spray, I still got a lot of bug bites. By the end of the trip, you almost could play connect the dots on my back and legs. I must have left behind a lot of fat and happy bugs in the DR.

I’ll write about the work we did at the village in future posts. Stay tuned.

More tales from the Lone Star State - outside of class

As my time here in Texas draws to a close, I want to share with you a few interesting things I’ve done/seen/experienced:

• When I first arrived at the Mercy Ships HQ, in the orientation package, there are 2 pages of warnings about the natural hazards in the area. These include various venomous and otherwise snakes and spiders, poison ivy, fire ants, and scorpions. Welcome to Texas! After the initial urge of grabbing my bags and going home subsided, I figured that since it’s winter, I probably won’t see any snakes. I’ll wear jeans and boots and stay on the paths to avoid poison ivy. I’ll steer clear of any mounds of red dirt as they’re fire ant hills. I’m not afraid of spiders, but I’m not sure how I’ll react to scorpions, as I have never seen a real one before. Then one day, I found this right outside my room. It’s a fairly small scorpion, but it still got a mean looking sting. If the baby scorpion was hanging around my room, I dread to speculate where the mama scorpion might be!

• First Monday Trade Day – the world’s biggest flea market. It takes place in the weekend before the first Monday of every month, about 15 minutes from the Mercy Ships HQ. It is GINORMOUS! You can find everything under the Texan sun there – food, clothes, furniture, artworks, cosmetics, pets, farm animal, farm equipment, and even farm equipment manufacture paraphernalia!
• Cross Brand Cowboy Church – a bona-fide cowboy church attended by cowboys, wranglers and ranchers, where 80% of the vehicles in the parking lot are pickup trucks, where kids practice calf roping in front of the church, where the pastor uses saddle horns and jeans and pickup trucks in his analogies, and where even the toilet paper holders are made of horseshoes!
• Texas longhorns – a breed of cattle with really long horns (duh!), and is a symbol of Texas. I had the good fortune to see two type of said animal on the same day, one made of bronze, and the other made of flesh and bone.

• Southern words such as y’all, big old, fixin’

That’s all for now from Texas. I’ll be in the Dominican Republics for field service for the rest of this month. I will update this blog and post more pictures upon my return, so check back in March for more of Eddie’s adventures.

Tales from the Lone Star State - in class

I just completed my extremely intensive 5 weeks classroom training at the Mercy Ships HQ in Texas.

We covered a great variety of topics that are relevant to ship life, missionary work, and life in general.

Some of the topics covered include:

• Mercy Ships – its history, mission, values, approaches
• Personal and interpersonal development
• Conflict resolution
• Prayer life and the nature of God
• Spiritual warfare
• World view and the root of poverty
• Relief vs development
• First aid and CPR
• Fire fighting (that's me in the fire suit!)
  
• Survival at sea

I'll be off to the Dominican Republic in a few hours (early Sunday morning), where we'll have the opportunity to put what we’ve learnt into practice. I'll return to Texas on Feb 28, and fly out to Liberia to (finally) join the ship on March 1st.