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