The Adventures of Melisa, Anna, Beau, and Greg!

Bon swa! Como Sava?

Greetings from Lome’, Togo! I’m again in West Africa and SO happy for some heat and humidity after the -10 F Minnesota winter I left last week!


Thank you all SO very much for your prayers for my travels! I had a wonderful time traveling with Melisa from Chicago to Brussels, then up for a quick Netherlands visit before arriving. We had nearly-flawless travels (with one 3-hr flight delay in Chicago) by plane, train, and car, managing to keep all of our luggage with us and be on time for our trains and flights. We had SUCH a lovely time with our Dutchie, old Mercy Ships friends: Corina, Timo, Berdien, Geke, and Johan. We traveled from Brussels --> Rotterdam --> Lisse --> Urk --> Dordrecht --> Brussels.


Along the journey Melisa and I decided to name our luggage. Her extremely large, rolling black duffle was affectionately named “Beau” (short for Buford or behemoth… whichever you prefer), and my large camping pack we called “Greg” (less imaginative; short for Gregory, the brand name). Soo… our trip was dubbed “ The Adventures of Beau, Greg, Anna, and Melisa”. Maybe sounds like we picked up some men on our journey, but no fear. They only refer to our outlandishly giant bags of luggage.


After hauling our 80+ extra pounds of luggage through train station after train station, we managed a number of amazing stops; one of which was in the “hiding place” of Corrie Ten Boom, a famous Dutch women whose family hid Jews in their home in Haarlem during the second World War. The Ten Booms had a secret room made of brick through which 6 people hid for 2 ½ days until they were able to be freed from the Gestapo. (Fitch and I in the hiding place; below).


We had a wonderful time visiting Mercy Ships friends and old roommates on our way to the ship. Thankfully, our awake-until-3am-jetlag happened in the Netherlands where we could better manage the side effects with some delicious Dutch coffee! We had SO many gracious hosts and hostesses! Melisa and I could not believe the warmth of Dutch hospitality. We both agreed that we have a lot to bring back home from the many examples of hospitality we received. Thank you SO much, all you Dutchies!

After hopping on our final train to Brussels , Melisa and I started to get excited… we were getting closer and closer to AFRICA!!! By the time we arrived to our gate in the Brussels airport, we realized we were late arrivals to the enormous group of nearly 40 crew sitting, waiting to board our flight. After we all flew into the Lome’ airport, we were all met by a huge welcome party of Mercy Ships landrovers! As we walked up that gangway, like we had so many times before, Melisa and I were met by huge hugs and “Welcome home!” greetings! Oh! It was SO good to see so many faces once again! I felt the span of the last 5 months since I had left the ship melt away and back into the dear friendships I had forged in Sierra Leone. But then the reality of a ship full of new faces started to settle in. The ship and everything about it was essentially the same, but so many of the people associated with the memories were gone. New faces with new opportunity for memories were approaching! So many lovely new nurses and crew had come to experience the ministry of mercy ships for the first time, and I was SO excited for them!


I did find out I will be Charge Nursing again in the General ward, and am so excited to be able to settle back into that routine from last year. We will be starting out the year, however, with just Max-fax (maxilo-facial) surgeries the first 2-3 weeks, so a little variety will be nice! I was actually secretly hoping to be in Max-fax this year, so in a way, I get my wish!
Ways you can be praying:

1) Continued transition and bonding for all the new crew; especially us nurses as we will be grouping together and meeting our day volunteers who we will be working with all outreach.

2) Our Screening Day is scheduled for February 1st- planned for an intense morning screening to hopefully schedule the remaining patients we need for our various surgeries. I found out that I’ll be the Team Leader of Escorts (I’ll talk more about it later), so if you could pray for that, that would be great! I’m not quite sure what I will need to do or manage yet!

3) Personally, for continued direction and leading from the Holy Spirit to know and see people and opportunities where God wants me to reach out and bless others. Also, a heart that is active and not reactive to the things around me.

Thank you so much! Love to you all!