We gathered together this morning for our Christmas Day brunch. Ken is showing me one of his favorite fruits – strawberries – which is also my favorite. I joined their family for the morning brunch. We enjoyed many types of fruits that are just not available in Africa, but are available here in Tenerife. Merry Christmas Feliz Navidad
Being an multi-national crew on the ship, for Christmas for many years we celebrate the dutch tradition of placing a shoe outside your door – for us our cabin door and friends place in the shoe late on Christmas eve a small gift. Amazing to see the long hallways on deck 4 where I live.
For our Christmas Eve dinner on board the Africa Mercy, I joined with the Royston family – Tony (who is our biomedical technician for the hospital), Patricia (school teacher), their son Elliott (also known by a Ghanaian name of Kwesi) and our senior chaplain PJ Hopkins. The galley team did a great job and prepared both ham and turkey and the fixings and various deserts like pecan pie.
This past Sunday was the fourth Sunday of Advent and the Biney Family who I have known for years from the Caribbean Mercy initially – they lite the four candles and read the scriptures from the Old Testament and New Testament. The theme of this service was ‘Peace’.
Please see the photo for what the Operating Room crew did for their decoration of their administration office door. The sign above says “The Operating Room is putting Santa Claus to sleep & celebrating the true meaning of Christmas!” They were the winner of the office door decorating contest.
During our door decoration contest, one cabin on deck 3 decorated with small photos of each and every crew member that was on board during the sail. They won one of the categories in the contest.
We have safely arrived in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands after 12 days of journey from Benin. This will be a technical work phase for the ship. Many crew will be on holiday. I will continue my work on all the final reports and individual final project reports from Benin ’09.
A beautiful rainbow welcomed us to Santa Cruz de Tenerife after eleven days at sea traveling from Benin where we completed ten months of field service.
The children and teens from the on board Academy presented their play entitled ‘The Bethlehem Express’ – this photo is from the scene at Bethlehem. Even though the ship was moving side to side a lot, they were still able to do the entire play. Great job!!!
Wednesday evening, all day Thursday, last night and all today we are having large swells and thus the ship is moving greatly from side to side – in addition to a strong wind from the west. Most of the adults have gotten little sleep. In this photo you see the affect in our galley. The staff there continue to provide meals for the 300 people on board the ship (of those still eating). We are due in Santa Cruz on Saturday.
