Yesterday, we had the opportunity to join the Mercy Ships Southern Africa Director in sharing at the Kloof Baptist Church. Cathy gave her testimony and John shared about Moses from Exodus 3. We were able to talk with people before and after the service. We are experiencing some of the hospitality of South Africa.
As I am serving on the Advance Team for South Africa, we having been driving many different places (of course on the other side of the road). The other, I had to stop the vehicle when I saw this on the compound wall ‘INDIANA MEWS’ – (Indiana is my home state) see the beautiful ocean behind – though the water is very cold for me and we are entering into Winter now here in the Southern Hemsphire.
KRB Update #2155
June 6, 2010
Keith R. Brinkman
Advance Team – South Africa
Greetings from South Africa where I am serving on the Advance Team for nine weeks. You may ask, ‘you were just in Liberia and now in South Africa and the ship is in Togo’ – that is true; this has been a year of more travel than normal for me. The Managing Director of the ship asked me to pray and consider joining the advance team to assist with things in South Africa. The reasons we are going to South Africa are for a technical work phase primarily; though we will have some programmatic activities ashore (Eye Program, possible Dental Outreach and Mental Health training in the churches).
Even though we have only had the Africa Mercy in service since the summer of ’07 after 8 years of renovations in England, the ship was built in 1980 and the electrical generators are old and cause vibrations and noise pollution primarily in the hospital operating rooms and wards which are on deck 3 just above the engineering compartments. This has meant that during our field service in Togo – we are limited to only 4 of the 6 operating rooms. So the decision has been made to take time out of our field service schedule and bring the ship to South Africa for a shipyard phase to replacement the generators and the old air conditioning units for deck 5, 6, & 7.
The decision has been just recently confirmed by the Mercy Ships International Board that we will bring the ship to South Africa for this project. Though, we are awaiting the announcement on which shipyard contract they will sign – as there are three options. South Africa has eleven official languages – so we are trying to learn some phases and try to pronounce the names of cities and streets – but my pronunciation is not so good – we as a team laugh a lot as we are South African, a Canadian, and American.
Prayer Requests: ** Technical work to be completed with excellence and on schedule **Accommodations and all the logistics for the crew who need to move off the ship during the shipyard phase ** Divine opportunities and appointments ** Remaining funds needed to pay for the shipyard phase
Just off the dining room in our guest house is an area we have set up for the Advance Team office – pictured here are some of our ‘friends’ who come to visit – primarily they are around the house as the landlady feeds them. The little ones were really cute today. Though we have had them act as thieves and entered the house and took some of our fruit from the kitchen.
I have joined the advance team in South Africa for 9 weeks – the team is made up of Cathy Warkentin and Brenda van Straten. We usually start our mornings at 7:30 having our breakfast and prayer and devotional time siting in our backyard.
A friend and one of our board members from England had his son and friend running in the Comrades 2010 and invited our advance team to come to the Sahara Stadium for the finishing line. It was a 89 km race from Pietermaritzburg to Durban and had over 23,000 runners from 18 years old to those much older. It claims to be the Ultimate Human Race – http://www.comrades.com/
