MERCY SHIPS

Published Apr 27, 2021, 11:30 AM

Mercy me, do I have a fabulous podcast to share with you! We're doing a deep dive into the medical ministry of Mercy Ships, a 40-year old organization that sends floating hospitals into some of the poorest communities on earth. From humble beginnings, Mercy Ships has been able to complete over 100,000 life-changing surgeries and is dedicated to performing hundreds of thousands more, for people who otherwise would not have access to medical care. What's even more amazing, is that the organization is powered by prayer, donations, and volunteer efforts. Today I'm joined by Kerry Peterson, VP of Advancement at Mercy Ships, and 3 incredible volunteers, Rayanne, Marta, and Nate, who will share their experiences with us. We'll close with information as to how YOU might become involved, either by volunteering your time and skills, by donating, or by your prayers and blessings. Join us! ~ Delilah

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Have mercy. Mercy is what this episode of Love Someone is all about. Mercy Ships, to be more precise, giant floating hospitals that travel to the furthest reaches of the globe to bring medical care to some of the poorest communities and to those most in need. For over forty years, Mercy Ships has been changing lives, healing lives, saving lives, serving as a beacon of hope. They provide free medical procedures over one hundred thousand to date to those with no other access to medical care, aided by volunteers in the medical field and countless other professions who support the ship's operations the galley crew, housekeeping, hospitality, administration, education, and many many more areas. And what's really amazing is that it is all sustained by the generosity of volunteers and donors. Today we're going to take a deep dive into how, why, and where these high seas adventures take place. And to help me tell this tale, I'm being joined today by Carrie Peterson, vice president of Advancement at Mercy Ships. You have served with the organization, Kerry for how many years, well, on and off for probably thirty three years. I took a tenure break and I've been back for the last twenty two years. Wow, you have been helping to bring about some amazingly successful fundraising efforts by the organization. You've held several management positions during your time there, uh in finance, the on ship general manager. So you understand the ends and the outs of this beautiful, beautiful organization. But before we get to the adventures of our swashbuckling surgeons in the ship's crew, we're gonna send a ship to shore signal to one of our sponsors right now, the folks who make this podcast possible. This podcast is sponsored by a company making a wonderful product designed to help grow and strengthen hair. It's Neutraful. 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This is their best offer anywhere and you'll receive free shipping to get off at neutraful dot com spelled in u t r A f o L neutraful dot com. Use the promo code Hope. Back with me is Carrie Peterson, who has been with Mercy Ships almost as long as Mercy Ships has been around, because they've been around like forty years right a little, and you've been on board and off board the ship, off and on for thirty two. So you got to come on board Mercy Ships when they were an infant, right as they were getting started. Tell us who our Mercy Ships. Give us the backstory and a little general overview of this amazing, amazing ministry that I want to shout from the rooftops. How proud. I am of the work carry that you guys do. It's changed so much over the years. Um. You know, basically we've been called to help people, and I think the original vision came from our founder Don Stevens when he was just a teenager having served in the Caribbean after a hurricane and seeing the devastation and getting the vision for having a ship that could come and provide aid and deliver relief supplies. And that was really where the dream started. It was many years later when it actually became a reality with our first ship, the Anaestosis. That would have been in seven the eight So just as I was graduating high school, the first ship was taking to the seas to go to the poorest of the poor. Well it didn't start that glamorously and actually and we graduated high school about the same time. But anyways, um, now in the first ship was bought. It was an old ocean liner that served in the Mediterranean and it was purchased for the price of one million dollars and converted that It took several years to convert it and make it into something that was usable. Back in the old days, we would have one hour of power a day, where we would go and buy a fifty gallon drum of fuel so that we could have power for one day. And we had volunteers chipping, rust and standing and trying to get the ship back in shape to be of service. And that ship was joined later by a couple of other ships, smaller ships, and it served, I believe, up until when it was replaced with the Africa Mercy, the ship that's now currently in service one hour a day to do all the work. Yeah, and if we had more time. There are so many other stories of having no heat or having no air conditioning in Africa and all the wonderful hardships that we had um and I really say that fondly because it was so many challenges, but it was a community of people that were we're called to be there to serve others, and we met the challenges together and it was it was just a wonderful time of community while we were able to serve so many other people. And now tell me what Mercy ships looks like. So Africa Mercy replaced the Anastosis back into only twelve and it has been serving in Africa. We have a crew of about four hundred and fifty people that's people from all walks of life, over forty different nations of crew that come and give themselves to volunteers. Some of them come for years, some of them come for months. We have teachers and engineers, and doctors and nurses and cooks, um We have an onboard academy for the families, for the children of the families so that they can go to school and the families can stay together as part of the community. And currently we are preparing to go back after COVID into Senegal starting in January of two and we are just so excited about being back doing what God has called us to do. So I know that you do amazing things on the ship, but I did not know until this past year when we started kind of working together the amazing things you do off the ship, which blew my mind because I think a lot of times when people go into a community and do good and then leave, sometimes it leaves a void. But what Mercy Ships does is you go into the community wherever you dock, and you set up clinics, and you teach the doctors and the nurses, and you work with the local population so that when your ship pulls out of port, the community is not just got healthier people who had surgeries or who had medical treatment, but the whole community is empowered. Yeah, that's that's one of the amazing things about the model that we have, and we've been doing that for years, and honestly, for all of the bad that COVID has brought us, they're one of the blessings that it's really allowed us to focus in on finding new ways to expand that. So as during the season where the ship has not been able to serve in Africa, we still are able to find new and innovative ways to continue to help even more people on the ground. And I think that model is going to continue in years to come, so not only using the ship and all its resources and the training facilities, but you know, finding new ways to train even when the ship before the ship gets there, after the ship leaves. And as you know, we have a new ship, the Global Mercy, that we should be taking delivery of in the next sixty days, and that ship we got to design that from the ground up. Our other ships have all been refit for other uses, but this one we were able to design using all the experience we've had for the last forty years. In how to build a functioning hospital, but even more important, this one is built for training. We have simulation labs and training rooms, and that ours are designed so that we can be training local physicians and surgeons, so that long after we go, people are still receiving the help that they so desperately need. Carrie, tell our listeners how you, personally, more than thirty years ago, got involved with mercyships and why you keep coming back. Well, that's a complicated story because when I first joined, I was in the middle of my college experience and kind of a workaholic and was getting burned out between my work and going to school, more work than going to school, and I needed to take a break. And I had known Don Stevens, the founder, from several years before, and I asked if I could come and join, And I flew down to New Zealand and joined the ship down there, served with them for a little while. I think it was while I was single, and then I met my wife back home and she moved on board. We had our first son on board, so we served for a couple of years and then I left. I kind of finished my schooling and took a job consulting for ten years, and why I came back was simply because I knew that I knew that, I knew that this is what God wanted me to do, and that's why I'm still here today. And how many surgeries I mean, I know because of COVID it changed, But how many surgeries does the Mercy Ship typically do in a ten month time in a country? Well, I believe it's just over a thousand. So um I see, before COVID we had mentored a hundred and fifty healthcare professionals. There were a little over eighteen hundred surgical procedures, so some people have more than one procedure, but so it's probably about a thousand, little over a thousand patients. So we also trained about a little over twelve people in UM essential pain management, safe surgery, primary trauma care, anesthelia procedures, things like that. So that's part of our overall commitment. When we leave, we want the health care infrastructure to be so much stronger than before we got there. I think that's one of the things I love most, Carrie, is that you're you're not just going into a community or going into a country and doing good and leaving you're going in and changing lives and changing the whole healthcare paradigm. So even after you leave, you're still there. You're still impacting lives. You're still changing lives. You're still saving lives and blessing people and making communities stronger. Well, that is what we're called to do, alright, Arry, Now that we have a better understanding of what Mercy Ships is all about and how you got started, I'm going to share some incredible conversations here that I've had with a few of your volunteers. Their stories are amazing. So right now, let's listen to Rayanne. Rayanne share her story of why she chose Mercy Ships, she and her family and how that has changed the trajectory of their lives. Drane and her family joined Mercy Ships, I believe ran in the summer of twenty nineteen. Yes, that's correct. And how many of you went to live on the ship? Was it just you or was it the whole family? Our whole family went. We have three children, a son who is twelve, and we have twin daughters who will be fifteen in April. And your hobby went with what was your role on the ship and what was his so my husband was hired to be a chaplain on the ship, and when I first arrived, my role is the primary airgiver, so I had to make sure my children were taking care of first, and after that I worked in the communications department as the creative coordinator. But really my passion was to also do chaplaincy work with my husband, and come March of I was able to transfer over into the chaplaincy department and that's where I served for the rest of our time. And how long were you on board the ship? Not even an entire year because of the pandemic, So what what did you have to go through? What did you and Roger and the three kids go through in order to be a part of Mercy Ships for that year. Well, it was actually quite a long process. My husband started researching it for quite some time and he applied for his position and I want to say November of and then it was just a long process of interviews, background checks, references, and one of the hiccups was trying to find a space on the ship for our whole family to live in. What was how he doing that? He could just just say, oh, by the way, I want to go live on a ship. With my family. He was in law enforcement for almost twenty years and decided that he wanted to retire and perhaps go back into full time ministry, which he was doing prior to being with the police department, and he did. He tired from his job when we knew that we hadn't offer for Mercy ships. Tell me how this impacted your children. Our kids are incredible and they are total troopers. They all were in we went. Definitely the first couple of weeks, if not the first couple of months, there were lots of tears at night. You know, we miss our home, we miss our friends. It was difficult, but I told them, isn't it ironic? One when we left the ship, there was far more tears and they were devastated that we had to leave. They did not want to go, and they were radically impacted by this experience, mostly because their worldview was blown up, and not just because they were living in West Africa, but more so because we were living in a global community on the ship, where there's people from over forty different countries in the world living on the ship together. So their eyes were opened. So do you have a favorite story, something that just blew your mind? Maybe with one of the patients, with yourself or one of the kids, or or your hobby. What an amazing opportunity to be a pastor to people from over forty countries. Oh my goodness. I have so many stories that I share with you, but I think the one that really impacted me deeply was was March fourteenth, twenty when the ship went into lockdown and we were told that we were gonna conclude operations as soon as possible to be able to leave sent Ugal quickly, and Mercy Ships employees over two hundred of the local people to work on the ship while we're in country. Whe We call them day crew, and they are essential. There are translators, They help in the engine room, in the galley, in the hospital. They're very essential. But because we were going into lockdown, we couldn't have those day crew going home to their families at night and then coming back to the ship and risking any infections. So we asked over seventy of the day crew if they would stay in isolation with us, not returned to their home, and help us pack up until we were able to leave. Surprisingly enough, all of them said yes, and a couple of days later we were down on the docks saying goodbye to some of the crew that were flying back to their home countries. And I looked you up and I saw this one Senegalese man. His name is Mamballa, and he was one of our security guards who stood at the gate of our dock leading into the port to make sure we were safe. He monitored who came in and who came out. My daughters had got to know Mamballa a little bit because they would take the trash out each week for the academy and they had to go out into the court to do that, and so Mamballa would open the gate for them. And when we would leave to go into town to have dinner, and we would speak with Mambala. And on this day I saw him and I walked over to him and I had tears in my eyes, and I said, Mamballa, thank you so much for staying with us, thank you for helping us and staying for lockdown. And he looked at me and he said, oh, mom, you are my family. We are together. Of course I'll stay. And I was so impacted by this sentiment. And I learned that in Senegal, in their native language of wool Off. There is a phrase called Nokia book. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but it means we are together. And this is really a lifestyle for the Senegalese people, and I learned later that it's not really just unique to Senegal, but it's really the continent of Africa and the people. They believe that the whole is more important than the individual, and so it was really powerful for me to see someone sacrifice being with their family, the comfort of their own home and their bed and their food to lock down with us. And definitely, I think being in a culture that's very individualistic, like the one I grew up in, it just really impacted me and convicted me. Made me feel that I want to live my life considering other people as more important than myself, and I want to raise my children in such a way that they look at looks at others as more important than themselves and live their lives in a way that is self sacrificing like this man did and several of the other son Agal people did for us. I love that. It was amazing because Mumballa told me, he said, I will be here until you leave. And I have a video and a picture when our ship pulled away from the dock. The dock was completely empty and the only person that was there was Mumballa waving goodbye to us. M h and how soon before you go back? We'll go back as soon as we can. So I was going to say that I saw the project that you do. Is that our Point Hope, Point Hope, And we're hoping that we can team up with Mercy Ships because as you know, not only do they you know, they poured at different places in developing countries, but they teach the local doctors and nurses so that the work they do is sustainable and continues on after the ship pulls out of port. And we are so hoping that Point Hope can team up with Mercy Ships for some of that wonderful training and that goodness that they impart on the not just not just you know, the people that come on board the ship, but they impart goodness on the whole community forever. Yeah. Absolutely, Oh that would be wonderful, It would be great. So that's what we're hoping for. But I just love what Mercy Ships and what they do, what they've done for decades. I I know several people who have been a part of it and who have traveled with them and who have made the two year commitment, and they all say, I am such a much better person, a different person because of what Mercy Ships in that community on board the ship brought into my life. So so proud of you guys. Well, thank you. It was it was such a privilege and that And honestly say, for the last ten months that we have been off the ship, my husband and I have been grieving. There is not a day that goes by that we don't more in that experience. And they're so devastated that it ended short for us. Well, God's got a plan, that is for sure. He wouldn't have broached it back early if he didn't have a plan. So, um, I've got your number and we're going to be in touch. Wonderful. Well, thank you, I'll talk to you soon, honey, God bless you, Thank you you too, Thank you, Rayanne. Now we're going to spend a little bit of time getting to know Marta and we're going to find out how Mercy Ships has helped Marta and how Marta has helped Mercy Ships and one very special special patient in particular, Hi, this is Marta. Hi Marta, this is Delilah. Thank you for agreeing to spend a little time talking about Mercy Ships with us. Oh my goodness, it is such an honor. I just I can't leave. I was even asked, so, how old were you, Martha when you decided to be a part of Mercy Ships. So when I was back in high school and thinking about being a nurse, my dad had kind of heard about Mercy Ships and he said, you know, there are lots of opportunities for missions, and so there's even a floating hospital out there. And I was like, what, that sounds so cool. And so that's when I first heard about Mercy Ships and kind of kept it in the back of my head. Right around after I had been working as a nurse for two years, sixty Minutes did a special on the Mercy Ships, and um, I remember watching that with my mom and just bawling, and I just knew, like, this is something that I need to do. So it was actually that night I printed the application and started the process, and then it was about a year from then when I actually landed on the ship. How long was the stint that you did? How long did you volunteer for Yeah, it was about seven months, so it was long enough that I had to quit my job and I really wanted to be on the ship from the start field service to the end. And that year was the first year in Mada Gascar, so it was a seven months spent. Was it transformative, Yeah, Delilah, it absolutely was. I really wanted to make a difference in love people. I was going to say, tell me about some Bonni. Yeah, he is the one patient for my time there that stands out the most. He arrived with a I think it ended up being a sixteen pound tumor on his base, and he was so weak he actually had to be carried for the whole journey. He lived. He loved way out in the boonies, like there were no roads they had. His grandson carried him for two days just to get to a road so they could ride a bus to the ship. The surgery was risky just because the tumor was so huge and his body was so so weak. So you know that doctor talks about, you know this this kind of a life threatening surgery. Are you sure you want to do this? And he said, like, I feel like I'm dead inside already from this tumor. It's worth the risk for me and I want to get this tumor removed. And so he went in for surgery and I think it was it was an all day surgery and he ended up meeting ten or eleven units of blood. It was amazing. I went out to dinner with some friends that night while he was having a surgery. And when I came back, I was walking up the steps into the ship and somebody yelled down the ramp at me, Marta. Some bunnies in surgery and he needs your blood. And I was like, what, Like they had run out of the units that they had stored for him, and so they were asking all the other A positive people to go um, don't get their blood. And so I went down into the lab and they drew it right away, and I mean they didn't even put it on a cooler. They took it right into the O R and gave it to him. And then this is the coolest part, Delilah. I went to bed that night um praying for him and wasn't I mean, I didn't know if he was going to make it through surgery. And woke up in the morning for my seven am shift and I walked in and he was my patient for the day. I got to take care of him. And um, when I went in for my shift, he was still to date it and on the ventilator, and I got to be the person to hold the mirror for him to see his face for the first time after that tumor was removed. And I just remember him laughing, like he looked at himself and he just laughed and he took his hand like kind of trying to touch where the tumor used to be, like not he wasn't used to having that face anymore. And um, yeah, he was just so so excited, and we were all crying, God, let you form this relationship before the surgery with somebody. Then he let you donate your own blood to save his life. And you got to be the nurse on duty when the big reveal, when he got to see himself afterwards. How cool is that? It's just amazing. I would love to go back someday. All right, God bless you Han, you too, Delilah. And now we're going to talk to Nate, a young man who is so excited. You can feel the excitement in his voice in his stories and his love for Mercy Ships. Hi, Delilah, tell me how you got started in this why Mercy Ships? How old were you when did you first say, yeah, I want to be a part of this. Well, it actually goes back Oh gosh, if I think about it, eighteen years ago, when I was eighteen years old. So I first introduced to Merseyships during a gap here, so at high school, not just not quite clear on where I wanted to go, what direction I wanted ahead in terms of a professional career. So I took a gap here and most of that year I spent volunteering with Mercy Ships. So I wasn't yet a medical professional, but you know, a lot of opportunities for people outside of the medical profession in Mercy Ships. So I volunteered at that point that was in two thousand three, and really just got my kind of not my first exposure to healthcare in developing worlds, but it really was one of the significant seeds that was planted in my mind about healthcare being a tangible way to help people that are suffering or that are in need. Okay, so you started at eighteen. How long did you spend during your first stint? I think it was about five and a half six months something like that, and part of that was spent on the ground in in Sierra Leone, which is a country in West Africa. So the ship at that time was sailed around a lot more than it does now. We were in Sierra Leone, and so really good experience for me to learn about about how our patients live essentially, um and that would prove to be very valuable for me in the future when I went on to work on our patient selection team and as a nurse and awards and other roles that I've had with the organization. So you came back, he decided to go to school, and what is your degree in? So, yeah, I've eventually found my way into nursing. So I have a bachelor's in science and nursing. And actually during nursing school, went back to the ship and volunteered for a summer in nursing school just to keep I guess my eyes on the prize about what got me interested in nursing in the first place. Um, And it did just that. And then I finished nursing school and worked for several years, almost five years in a burn intensive carrying it in California before going back to the ship finally as a nurse in two thousand and twelve, and I've mostly been a full time with mercery ships ever since two thousand twelves. Tell me, mate, one story, if you can can narrow a town to one, one experience, one story that you've had over the last eighteen years that was life changing, Like when I first went to West Africa. I was changed on a cellular level. My d n A was changed after I went on my first trip to Ghana. Um, tell me something that happened that you knew that you knew that you knew that this was the path that God wanted you on. Well, I think the one that comes to mind for me was it happened? I think it was two thousand and fifteen. Ship was docked in a port and Madagascar, and we happened to be there for two years in a row, which is unusual for us, But that was because the Ebola crisis was happening in West Africa, which we're just not quite well equipped for on our ship. So we were in Madagascar and I was on our Patients Selecting team at that time, which is the team that comes up with the strategy and then is responsible essentially to implement that strategy to recruit the patients that we do surgery for on the ship. And we raveled all around the country of Madagascar, which is beautiful by the way, and we went to this town about the highest bio diversity in the world by the way, absolutely beautiful. Yeah. So we we took this trip to this town kind of across the island actually, and we were there for two days holding a big pit and selection event which is just open to the public. Usually we would hold them at a hospital and just streams and streams that people would come to see us to see if there was something that we could do to help them. So, um, hundreds, if not thousands of people kind of come to these events, and this is the first time that they interact with Mercy Ships, and we're essentially doing kind of some triage and figuring out if there if we can help them on the ship. And so we were there for two days. It was a very busy two days. But on the second day I was the one doing the pre screen, so doing the very initial yes no, and the line had finally wound down and it was sort of just people were coming in in a trickle and um, I saw this woman coming towards me down the home, and as she got closer, I realized that she was holding a little child in her arms. And they got closer and then right in front of me, and this little child didn't have a shirt on, and there was just something kind of covering her neck and her upper torso and her upper arm. And as she began to talk, she explained that the child, who was about three years old, had been burned in an accidental skull burn in the kitchen about five months prior. So oddly enough, what I was looking at was a burn, but I didn't quite recognize it as such because it was had been untreated for that long, and so all my years in a burning, I had never really seen something quite like that, but this was highly infected. She was obviously in pain. She looked very frail, and to me it looked like she had lost weight I had assumed. She just looked very thin and very unhappy. And the mother explained what was going on. They hadn't been able to find care for her. And this is all happening in my heart sinking, because um, we have certain inclusion and exclusion criteria and a certain set of kind of a scope of practice that we have on the ship, whereas you know, not like a Level one trauma center in the in the States, because we don't have all the specialists, we don't have all the equipment needed for every kind of condition um and and this type of burn is not something that's with normally within our scope of practice. So my heart sank and I was holding back tears and let out some size because I was trying to figure out how to convey to this woman that we weren't going to be able to help her, which was going to be devastating for all of us. And so I just kept pausing. I couldn't figure and figure out how to formulate the words, and finally I went to one of my colleagues and said, I know this is outside of our scope of practice, but we need to call back to the ship and ask for an exception. And she agreed, and we called back and we got we fortunately got a positive answer, and they said, yes, bring her to the ship and we'll see if there's anything that we can do. So I got to go back to the mom and relay that to her and she was very excited, but they wanted to chat it over with the family, which they did, but at the end of the day they decided um, they said yes, and we asked them to come back with us the next day to the ship because she really needed pretty urgent attention, and she met the medical teams on the ship got the care that she needed. She she really needed surgical debreement under general anesthesia for this burn because it was so it was beyond just uh, you know, cleaning up like you would have burned it might happen at home. And we gave her all the nutrition that she needed, got her all tuned up, and then a couple of weeks later she got a skin graft and soon enough she was kind of bouncing on the halls of the hospital, a plump and healthy three year old child again. And the story normally stops there for for most of our experiences in merceryships because we don't get to follow up long term with our patients in a lot of instances. But as I mentioned, we were in Madagascar two years in a row, and so the occurred in the first year. The second year we were there, we went back to this very same town. We did a two day patient selection event very similar to what we did the year before at a very similar time of day. On the second day, I was out pre screening and lo and behold, mom and daughter came walking down the same corridor, but this time she was not held in her mom's arms. She was almost skipping along beside her. And they huge smiles on their faces too, to basically say hi and to say thank you for what you have done. I'm just sitting here crying picturing this with you, and uh, we just had hugs and smiles all around. And then they invited us over to their their house to meet the family after our work day was done, and we we had taken orange soda and just celebrated. But yeah, it was one of the most special experiences of my life that I'll never forget. Oh my gosh, there's a there's a chance she may have died if it was left untreated. She was she was really that sick, um, and she could have died from stepsis or something like that. But at the very least without treatment, she would have been quite disabled, um and limited in her range of motion and things like that. So um, it's just an amazing privilege to be part of her story and to get to share that with her. I hang on to that story a lot when I'm having down days where I'm discouraged about things that we're working on and challenges that we're facing. So uh, it's stories like that that that keep me going and there, and there's just hundreds, if not thousands more like that. Um. We're we're so lucky in this organization because we get to see pretty quick results from the work that we put in. So UM, I know there's a lot of other development work out there that's equally as important, but they don't get that quite as immediate feedback as we do. So I feel I feel spoiled in that regard. Well, thank you for taking time Nate to talk with us, thank you for being with c ships. Mostly thank you for having such a tender heart, you know, such a such a beautiful heart, that that's your priority is blessing and touching and healing and loving because it's it's easy to talk about love as a concept, It's easy to talk about love as an emotion or a feeling. But what mercyships does is they truly show love in a tangible, life changing way. Yeah, you're exactly right, and that's that's one of the major things that I'm drawn to about this work is how practical and tangible it is. I mean that links back to really my age and year old experiences. I saw that. I saw that, and I was drawn to that. And again, I I have nothing really other than just a posture of gratitude that I get to be a part of this because I'm I feel a part of a whole thing. It's not it's certainly not a individual thing, but yeah, gratitude is my overall response. Carry you know, I cried when I really did. I cried when I talked to each of these amazing volunteers when we connected and they shared their heart, and I cry every time I listened to them. These stories helped me to visualize how absolutely life changing, not just for the patients, not just for the very very poor people in the communities that you are empowering, but for the volunteers that are on board the ships and how their lives are impacted. Yeah. So, as I told you, as we talked about before, we have some amazing people who are called together to be a part of this wonderful work that we're so privileged to be a part of. I think that as I look back on all these years and all the amazing transformations that I've seen, and I have my own stories of of people, individuals, pays that have really touched my heart and changed my life. But when I really look back at it, and people have asked me before about all these wonderful people that we get to serve and things like that, and why why I'm called here, And it would be great to say it's so I could help all these people, but I really believe it's because God wanted to change me and do it work in my life. And I see the impact of working with the volunteers, and that's what they say over and over again as I talked to them, and I know it's true in my own life as well, that being able to serve and to help other people has been more of a benefit to me than it probably has been to them. As I just see all of the good and form the relationships. I want to get a little more information carried before I let you go, but I need to star up here for a moment and say a few words about one of our podcast sponsors, this episode's podcast sponsor, without whom we wouldn't be able to share this great news and the good works of Mercy Ships. Want in on a secret of keeping your kids busy with a fun project from Annie's Young Woodworkers kit Club, the sponsor of this podcast. Now, what they send to your home each month is perfect for encouraging kids creativity. They're able to build something they'll be proud of. Every month, Annie sends you the supplies, the instructions, even the tools. When you sit down and help your kids put the project together, it's a fun time, a bonding time, and the pride and sense of accomplishment that comes with mastering real world building skills goes a long way. The Young Woodworkers Kit Club is designed for children seven to twelve years of age. It's the perfect window of opportunity to pass on a love for woodworking. Visit young woodworkers dot com slash love for off. That's Young Woodworkers dot com slash love for off. Alright, Carrie, it's your turn again. Before I let you go, please let our listeners have all the information they need so that they can contact you and get involved with Mercy Ships. It takes all kinds, you know. We have teachers, we have cooks, engineers. We need all kinds to join together to be part of this global community. Of people with a heart to serve others. And it's not hard. We've got a new ship coming. We need volunteers, we need support, we need people to pray, we need people to give, We need people to go. And it's quite simple that can just go to Mercy Ships dot org slash love and they're on the website. They'll be able to see how they might want to be a part. Pray, give, go first and foremost. We need to be in prayer that God would just have his hand upon the Mercy Ships and everybody involved. Give if you can donate, you know it's not cheap running a floating hospital. And go if you can volunteer, if you're an electrician and engineer, a plumber, pastor a teacher, somebody that can can wash sheets, whatever it is. I know that there is a place for you to be a blessing to others. Yea, and in the blessing will be theirs and ours. Carrie, it was awesome for you to join me. We're trying our best. I'm trying my best every day on the show to get the word out about Mercy Ships. The work they do, it is almost incomprehensible until I went to West Africa. Myself, I had no idea the disparity between what we have access to and what a large part of the world's population has no access to. The volunteers brought it to life for us. Talked about how rewarding serving aboard one of these floating hospitals can be. Um if you, my listener, if you have some time and a skill that you can share. As Carry said, they need volunteers of all kinds, not just medical professionals. If you're inspired by the Mercy Ships story, maybe you're a photographer, Maybe you want to do videos, maybe I don't know, maybe you want to cook. There are just so many ways you can help, and of course donations are desperately needed, especially as this new ship comes online. Your prayers, your blessings are the most important. If you want information, as Carry said, visit Mercy Ships dot org. Mercy Ships dot org. You'll find all the information. You can fill out the forms, you can get involved in any way you wish. Thank you for joining me here on Love Someone. We have a new podcast the second and fourth Tuesday of each month, and of course join me on the air live every night. Carrie Lord, bless you, Thank you, Jolilah, it's been wonderful talking to you.

LOVE SOMEONE with Delilah

In a world that can feel divisive and bleak, it's easy to get caught up in feelings of hopelessness, 
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