Hope and Healing and Plumbing Supplies

When asked how things are going in Dakar, I'll often say, "We're definitely not bored!" Here is a snapshot of what we've been up to since I arrived in October.

A Wolof lesson on the roof.
Our teacher is a Christian woman named Fatou.

It's less than five weeks until the Africa Mercy returns to Dakar. On the ship, there is palpable excitement at each mention of arrival day. The crew have been waiting for so long to get to Africa, and for many of them it will be their first time on the continent!

Chelsea and Becky working from the living room.
Always another email or phone call!

But if you mention the countdown to arrival day to the Advance team, we'll probably say, "SSH! Not yet!" There are A LOT of details involved in getting the ship back to Senegal. So much has already been accomplished, but we are still far from done! 

Chelsea and Jay-B, AKA the HR team, have interviewed and offered jobs to hundreds of Day Crew candidates who will be trained in January. Processes are being put in place to ensure the crew meet Senegal's immigration and health requirements, and that our supplies and equipment can be cleared by customs. 

Teaching a group of future Day Crew about
vehicle safety checks before their driving test.

As Port Liaison, I've been working with the Harbor Master and my talented coworker, Val, to make sure the ship will have fresh produce, water, and waste removal services. We've contacted several partners to source materials that our technical departments might need while the ship is in Dakar, like ball bearings and plumbing supplies. I also met with another local mission group that we have worked with in the past. Their welders are going to make around 100 meters of fencing for our dock space. Crew arriving by plane will be required to quarantine for two nights. To prepare, we met with a number of hotels and taxi companies to find the ones that will be the right fit for this process during the field service.

In between all these tasks, I've been able to do one of my favorite things: scouring the local markets to help find fabrics for various purposes. Soon some of it will be turned into privacy curtains for the dockside tents, and some will be what our team wears for arrival day!

On the hunt for ball bearings
in Marché Sandaga.

As we work to re-establish contact with our partners from the previous field service, and introduce Mercy Ships to some new potential partners, I've found myself face-to-face with hotel directors, travel agents, mechanics, organic farmers, and dear friends at a local craft market.

But it's one thing to be able to schedule meetings, gather info, and confirm the logistics with these potential partners. We could check off all of the details surrounding the ship's return and still miss the mark, if we are not also sharing our Why.

Why does Mercy Ships go to all this trouble to visit a country? Because God has an epic plan to heal the world.

Surrounded by toilets, sharing about
hope and healing!

I didn't want to get lost in the details and forget to share the Why, so I gave myself this challenge: Assume everyone you meet is waiting to hear about hope and healing. 

And that's how I ended up sitting in the back of a plumbing store, completely surrounded by toilets, sharing a video about Ousseynou and Assane, two Senegalese orthopedic patients, with a Commercial Manager I had just met.

Can't say I could have predicted that one.

Not in my wildest dreams.

This visit could have been a three-minute stop. But that woman and many others were touched to hear the twins' story. Suddenly, our conversation was no longer about plumbing equipment. It was about shared humanity and how love makes lives go from broken to healed.

Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.

-Ephesians 3:20

Out to lunch after the Day Crew driving tests.
(Daniel, Linda, Jay-B, me, Chelsea)

As I thanked her for her time, the woman I was meeting with expressed sincere appreciation for the work Mercy Ships is doing in Senegal, and then I got to thank her for the way their business had already supported our mission of hope and healing during our previous field service!

I hope you enjoyed a little taste of what we've been up to here in Dakar in the last few weeks. Thank you for your prayers and support. God has heard, and he has been our helper. Doors are opening and mountains are moving.

For the last two weeks of the year, we have all been enjoying a break from our preparatory tasks to celebrate Christmas and New Years. I just returned from a week on the Africa Mercy, where I had the opportunity to visit with many friends who I haven't seen in person since I left the ship a year and a half ago. Together we celebrated Jesus' birth with storytelling, reflective videos, and worship. It still felt like home there, which was a encouragement and a blessing for me.

Happy new year!

One more team photo in Dakar before we parted ways for the holidays!
(Jay-B, Linda, Daniel, Chelsea,
me, Val, and Becky)

Getting Settled

(Psst--Click here for a suggested soundtrack for this blog post!)

To everyone who prayed for my preparations, travel, and arrival in Senegal--thank you! I wanted to provide an update on life since my arrival in mid-October.

On the ride from the airport to a hotel in Yoff where I would spend a precautionary two-day quarantine, my taxi driver asked me what I thought of his country. The Senegalese (and West Africans in general) have a lot of pride associated with hospitality ("teranga" in Wolof), so I told him a story from 2019 about a man who had stopped on his commute on his way home to help me and my friends. It was peak rush hour on a hot day in downtown Dakar, and we were having a lot of trouble finding an available taxi at a reasonable price. The man was obviously on his way somewhere, likely going home from work, but he repeatedly refused to go on his way until we were on ours. In the end, he was probably with us for more than 30 minutes, and I still think about his generous efforts more than two years later. It's proof of how seemingly small acts of kindness can leave a big impression on those we encounter!

After quarantine, I stayed in another hotel in
Point E for several days on "COVID Restrictions".
I had a nice view of the surrounding buildings
(and a few sheep) from my window.

Me, Valerie, Chelsea, and Becky out for a roommate lunch on
a Saturday.

Two days and one negative COVID test later, I was in another taxi with my coworker Chelsea. I was seated behind the driver, alternating between admiring his headrest adorned with some sort of furry covering, and gazing at the vaguely familiar buildings rolling by outside the car window. As a man on the radio spoke animatedly in Wolof, words and phrases rose up from my not-so-distant memory. Salam alaikum ("peace be upon you" a common greeting in many Muslim-majority countries, although the spelling and pronunciation may vary), nanga def? ("how are you doing?"), and of course jërëjëf ("thank you").

We were heading to Point E, a neighborhood in west-central Dakar where our team is working out of an apartment. A few of us are involved in the pre-ship Medical Capacity Building programs that are currently running in Senegal. But mainly, in our respective ways, we are all responsible for the preparations leading up to the arrival of the Africa Mercy in February. 

My apartment team spent a couple evenings
helping to prepare supplies for the eye patients

The patient selection team is already travelling around the interior and meeting with perspective patients, some of whom are returning after having their surgery cancelled last year (yay!). Likewise, the eye team has been in-country for a short but intense project, supporting a small team of Senegalese ophthalmic surgeons at a local hospital, as they screened and operated on a number of cataract patients who had been scheduled for surgery before the AFM left last year (double yay!). 

Dakar, the City of Cats

The HR team will be processing hundreds of Day Crew applications, and preparing for the interview stage. And we are always attentively liaising with our partners from the government, the port, and local businesses to build relationships and collaborate on many details to make the ship's return a success. The meetings I have attended in the weeks since arriving have centered on fuel, waste management, and confirming our berth in the port of Dakar. With the February deadline fast approaching, three months feels altogether too short!

Although I know my way around the city fairly well from the previous seven months spent here, I knew that working apart from the ship was going to come with different rules, rhythms, and responsibilities. After being the person on the ship to whom many people brought their questions, I am now the one who isn't quite sure where to find extra post-its, how to submit a receipt, whether I'm using the printer correctly, and where to drop off a letter for the port commandant. It's humbling to need help with so many little things, and I'm grateful that my teammates have welcomed my questions with an abundance of grace and patience!

I personally brought very few expectations on what this period would be like. But still I came expectant, prepared to offer my efforts and see what God would make out of our work--and see what He will do beyond our imagining.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." 

-Ephesians 3:20-21

I'll update the prayer requests on the side bar, but just to highlight a few:

• Praise for safe and successful screening so far! We keep hearing positive updates from up-country.
• Also thankful for the patients who were able to have cataract surgery.
• Pray for patience, wisdom, and confidence (and a good memory!) as I'm learning this new role.
• Pray for safety for our team in Dakar and up-country.
• Pray for the continuation of positive relationships with our various partners. We cannot do this without them!

As always, thank you for reading, and for praying, and for partnering with me in this work! I'm sending hugs from Dakar, and a few bonus photos to sign off:

On a fall bike ride in MN with dad in early October.

And I'm off!

Being back in my favorite fabric store
was a highlight of last week!

On a visit to the Ministry of Health

The best is yet to come

It's often easier to look back and long for what has been left behind than to muster up excitement for a future filled with many unknowns. I still remember crying on my last day of eighth grade, because I loved my middle school years so much, and simply couldn't imagine how life could get any better.

Don't worry, Middle School Kate, God's got this.

This thought is, of course, hilarious now. How little imagination I had for the good things that could be in store, in high school and beyond! After a good middle school experience, why was it so hard to believe that a mysterious future could exceed a what I had known in the past?

I have often thought about my middle school self in the last few months. 

This has been my longest break from blogging since I started with Mercy Ships, but it's been a hiatus from more than just writing.

In late July, I met up with a few Mercy Ships
friends for some hiking in Zion and Bryce
Canyon. It was a wonderful reunion!

As I shared in my previous post, the ship's return to Africa was rescheduled to January, 2022. At the time, I already was on track to hand off my Executive Assistant role in April. With the new delay, it became a lot harder to predict what my next steps with might look like.

Playing recreational soccer with new and old
friends was one of this summer's highlights!

It was at that point that I decided to take a big step back from all remote work, and prepared to spend a season outside of the Mercy Ships bubble.

Despite the unexpected turn this year took, this has been a truly good season--I had time to join in summer activities (like a recreational soccer league) that I wouldn't have had time to consider in years past, and make leisure plans with friends without wondering whether I would be able see them more than once! God used unexpected detours to create space to rest, and He brought seeds (the spiritual kind that had been spreading their roots the last 15 months) to blossom.

With that in mind, I have some news that I am excited to share!

A new role

A rainbow that appeared last week
while I was on a run.

I almost titled this post "I'm not going back to the ship" but decided that might be a little too dramatic! It's true, but I can also explain more fully...

After wrapping up my Executive Assistant work, it was time to do some job searching. I trusted that God would open the right doors, and eventually I accepted a position on what's known as the Country Engagement Team (CET). This means that my next role is not ship-based, which will be a big change after the previous 3 years of living and working on board the Africa Mercy.

Country Engagement refers to the process of building and maintaining relationships with Mercy Ships' past, present, and future host nations, to ensure that the joint efforts with the host governments are set up for success. My team is comprised of around 12 members, and for the next few months we will be doing advance work to prepare for the Africa Mercy to return to Dakar, Senegal in late January. My specific role will involve liaising with the port in Dakar as well as some other admin. 

A new departure date

The "first wave" of the CET arrived in in Dakar in late August. I am joining with the second wave, which means I will depart the US in mid-October, 2021. This arrangement will continue until sometime in February, 2022.

My whole experience with Mercy Ships until last year was as part of the ship community. When I left that community, I was already looking forward to the unknown date when I could get back on board, back in "my" cabin, and back to some familiar rhythms in that community. Now it is not clear if/when that will be happening, and it has been mental work to detach my expectations from returning to the ship and instead preparing to work on "the other side" of things.

Wherever I "land", it's important to me that I work at my role with all my heart, as though working for the Lord. My excitement for this next step may not be attached to any specifics, but it's growing, and there have been several "wow" moments in the last few months to help it along.

By a wonderful coincidence (oh, hi God!) in August, I ended up visiting the Mercy Ships base in Texas at the same time as my future Senegal Country Director, Daniel, and his wife Linda, who works with Medical Capacity Building. All three of us were so excited to sit down for coffee with teammates... in person!

A second moment happened just this week, when I saw an email notification that my arrival had been added to my team's calendar. Although many of my upcoming preparations revolve around leaving Minnesota, this is a good reminder that that October isn't just the month when I leave--it's also the month when I arrive back in Senegal! After all the twists and turns of LOA, this is something I've been anticipating with excitement since I returned home in 2020. As an administrative professional, is it really any surprise that a calendar update almost moved me to tears? HA.

There is still uncertainty, as there will probably always be this side of heaven, but the unknown future is in God's hands, and He is very worthy of our trust! The thought of my fourteen-year-old self shedding tears on the last day of middle school is now a laughable reminder that in all likelihood, the best is still yet to come.

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On another fun note, there is a whole British TV series dedicated to interviews with Mercy Ships patients, doctors, and other staff and volunteers on TBN UK. I've enjoyed watching a few episodes over the last year. Kudos to Mercy Ships UK on this project! Check it out here.