The ship sails today!

After a frantic couple of weeks cleaning and tying everything down the ship is scheduled to leave Monrovia port at 2pm this afternoon (Friday).

Our friend, Daniel, who is a sailor on the ship says this:

"It takes us around 6 days sailing before arriving in Tenerife. The weather is mostly good here on the West coast of Africa but as a seaman you need to be prepared for every kind of weather conditions. Also pirates are sailing around on the West coast of Africa, not with swords but with rocket launchers..."

Please remember the sail in your prayers.

Tommy

CRB Check sorted!

Good News - my CRB check came in the post today and has been sent on to Texas. Hopefully this is the last bit of paperwork we need to get our visas sorted for Benin...

Thanks for all of your prayers (especially you, Natalie - very effective prayers!)

Tommy.

[33 Days and counting...]

Vaccinations

Sarah and I had our last lot of jabs this week and my mind cast back to the presentation Dr Leo Cheng did at Eden in the summer. He said that he went to Africa feeling like Superman having had so many vaccinations. Here's what we're immune to now...

TB - BCGs for Tommy and Sarah when at school - Tom and Josh still to have theirs in the next few weeks
Hepatitis A + B - Sarah just needed a booster, Tommy had 4 injections while the poor boys needed 5!
Yellow Fever - Just a single injection each
Cholera - 2 drinks for Tommy and Sarah
Meningitus A,C,W+Y - 1 Jab for all (Josh will have his as a nice 2nd birthday present!)
Typhoid - Single jab each (Another present for Josh's birthday)
Flu - 1 jab, 2 for Joshua, none for Tom (getting a bit needle phobic now, as you can imagine)
Tetanus, Diptheria, Polio - 1 Booster for Sarah and Tommy
MMR - Booster for Sarah and Tommy
Pneumococcal - 1 for everyone

There are two points that I would like to raise about these vaccinations.

The first is to ask that you pray for Tom when he has his TB injection as he is beginning to react quite strongly when he knows he's having an injection and the BCG jab needs to be controlled and carefully placed otherwise he'll have to have it twice!

The second is to reiterate a point made by Leo in his talk. We are so lucky to have access to these jabs and between them they will protect us from one of the three big killers in West Africa. Thanks to the excellent provisions on the ship we will also be protected from Malnutrition and unclean water supply. It's sobering to think that this is not the case for the people we will be serving just the other side of the dock and in the near future these will still be the big three killers in West Africa and the reason around 1 in 5 babies born won't see their fifth birthday...

CRB Check

As part of the application process for my new job with Mercy Ships I need a background check with the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). I got the forms over a month ago and sent them back to Mercy Ships UK to process the application. Unfortunately, they were in the process of changing providers of the preliminary CRB check process and so my form hasn't been sent off to the CRB. To compound matters, the form I had completed was addressed to the former provider rather than the new one so I need to fill in a new form! It usually takes 4 weeks or so to get a CRB check back.

The problem is I can't get my visa stuff from Mercy Ships in Texas until they get a copy of my CRB check.

Please pray that the forms are processed quickly and we aren't delayed in receiving our visas.

Tommy.

Bon Voyage...

Well today we dropped off the bulk of our possessions at the UK warehouse in Stevenage. They will be picked up tomorrow and head off to meet the ship in Tenerife via the Mercy Ships warehouse in Holland.

We have been frantically packing since Friday evening when we first found out that we needed everything there by today - at least we don't need to think about what needs to go on the container anymore...

Please pray it all arrives safely - some of the children's most prized toys are in the shipment.

Tommy.