Logos Hope Trip - #3 - At Anchor, and a Change of Plans

I wish I had written more down at the end of each day we were on the ship, since the week is already starting to get blurry as I try to remember the details of what actually happened. Of course, the fact that we were stuck out at anchor and couldn't participate in many of our planned activities didn't help. The first couple of days (Fri-Sun) went according to plan, but the announcement early on Monday morning (about 6:00AM) that we were leaving our berth due to the continued swell, pretty much threw the rest of our agenda to the wind.

(Apparently, the problem was a storm on the other side of the island. We had bright, clear weather with a moderate wind, but the waves were carrying around and coming into the harbor where we were tied up, causing the ship to rock back and forth enough that the captain was concerned with potential damage to the ship and moorings. We were also concerned with being bumped out of our berth by a grain ship which was due to come in to offload flour, a process that would take several days. If we had been forced to leave that berth, we would have lost the advantage of being open up to the public for access to the book fair. If we had moved to one of the cruise line berths, then the crew could come and go, but the general public wasn't allowed.)

I now have a pretty good idea of what seasickness feels like. Thankfully, I didn't get really nauseous, as some people do, but I had a nagging headache for most of the first day at anchor, and for the next couple of days, found myself constantly tired. Later in the week, the waves started to calm down a bit, and I started to get used to the constant rolling, but overall, seasickness wasn't one of my more pleasant experiences. According to our original schedule, Monday was supposed to be an "off day," so we had planned to go ashore and look around the island a little. Unfortunately, that trip got immediately axed. However, I managed to take a nap on during the day, which helped with the seasickness. My bunk was perpendicular to the axis of the ship, which meant that I was rocking head-to-foot rather than rolling back and forth. At least I wasn't feeling like I was going to roll out of bed. Eventually, my system sort of got used to the rolling, and though I still felt tired a lot, I was still able to work, and after a while, even enjoy the rest of the week.

Sue and Joyce did a lot of sewing during the week, from curtains to mending. They had planned on doing some sewing anyway, but being at anchor and our onshore activities canceled, they took up sewing in earnest. A couple of people came up to her and almost begged to have some of their work clothes patched. (Those people down in the engine room and serving as deck crew can be pretty hard on even the toughest of clothes!) I had to spend an hour or two on Tuesday trying to fix one of the two old sewing machines, since it wasn't functioning at all. I'm no expert on sewing machines, but with some fiddling, I was able to at least get it sort of working.

Starting Tuesday, Dave and I went to the book exhibit. With all the pressure to just keep the shelves filled during the time visitors are on board, it's hard to actually spend time checking that the books are shelved correctly (not jumbled up by people putting things back in the wrong place), or even that the price markings are accurate. Since the ship visits so many different ports, they don't use any specific currency, but instead, use "units", which then correlate to a list of prices posted around the floor. For example, a book of 200 units translated to something like 5 Barbados dollars. However, sometimes, there would be a change in the unit price of a book. If someone put up a new stack of books but forgot to change the ones already there, you would have a discrepancy. So, Dave and my job for the next two days was to go through the stacks and make sure that the prices of the books were marked and consistent..... all while the ship was rocking, back and forth, back and forth. OK, remember we have to be FAT -- Flexible, Available and Teachable. ;-)

While I (mostly) enjoyed the practical work on the ship (OK, I really liked the engine room), what I really thought was important was the time we had interacting with the young people on board. While at anchor, there was a lot of frustration among the crew that they couldn't get off the ship or open up deck 4 and the I-Café to do what they had come there to do. However, as the ship's director reminded us, God wasn't surprised by our turn of events, and He still had plans. Since we couldn't get on shore, the effect for us was that we had much more time to talk to and work along side of the crew.

We had many meals when we could sit down and share with people. For Sue and me, it was especially rewarding to catch up with some of the young people we had met 8 months earlier at the GO conference in Germany. We'd met so many people there, full of hopes and dreams and visions for the future, and now we had a chance to see how they were actually doing. It was encouraging to see how much each of them had grown in that short time.

Of course, they still had their struggles. One common theme was that of relationships. Several people mentioned having a difficult time because they had developed close friendships with short term people (such as people in the “STEP” program, which only lasts a few months), only to have those friends leave the ship at the end of their term, perhaps never to be seen again. One asked for prayer after developing a friendship with one young lady, and then feeling crushed (“I can't breathe.”) when she left the ship at the end of her time there. Sometimes, with the intensity of life on the ship, it's hard to find someone who will just be a friend to hang out with, to talk and joke, to give you a chance to unwind and decompress. There were issues with balancing between working/ministering and relaxing. Some worried about getting to the end of a day and looking back and feeling like they hadn't used their “free time” wisely, while another asked for prayer for a balance between being involved in an endless blur of activities and being more contemplative, or as she put it, “a balance between being a Martha and a Mary.”

Still, with all the pressure and struggles, I was amazed to see how God was working, and the depth of character that these young people showed. We had the opportunity to attend several prayer meetings on board ship during the week we were there, and when there was time for sharing, they would come up one after the other, sharing Scriptures, and encouraging each other. I never heard them complain about the work, though I did hear some frustration over not being able to get off the ship to talk with people on shore more. For me, that time was perhaps the greatest blessing I could have received from the trip -- to see how, in spite of all their fears and foibles, God was filling the hearts and minds of these young people with a passion to serve Him and to know Him.

Logos Hope Trip - #2 - In the Belly of the Ship

On Saturday, I was assigned with Dave and Larry to work in the engine room (deck #1 - as far as you can go down in the ship, not counting the ballast tanks). We first had to get our ear guardians and steel toe shoes. They had a big bag of shoes for people to use, but I couldn't find anything that was actually my size. I found a pair one size larger than I thought I wore (they used European sizes), which I could get on my feet, but they were pretty floppy, and make going up and down the stairs pretty dicey.

Once we had our feet and ears protected, we went down in the engine room and had our safety briefing. This mostly involved walking around the four main compartments (generators, main engines and cooling, machine shop and fuel bunkers) and pointing out the various fire extinguishers, emergency exits and waterproof bulkhead doors. There were also the various alarms that would go off, most of which we actually were supposed to ignore, unless there was a general alarm, which would mean heading to our assigned muster stations.

Elanor spent most of the day working with us, since she was responsible for “Vision Teams”. First went to the most aft compartment in the engine room, which housed one of the main fuel bunkers (heavy fuel oil). It had been primed once, but we had to wipe it down with solvent (to remove any film from the constant oil in the air) and then give it a second coat of primer. Once we had wiped down the wall, we got paint and small rollers (much smaller than normal rollers: about 1 inch diameter and about 4 inches long). Talking with Elanor while we were working gave us a little snapshot of life on the ship.

The next painting project was a small workshop they were building for the chief engine specialist (I don't remember what his exact title was), where he could have a more controlled working environment for his specialized tools and sensitive engine parts. I'd actually had about as much as I could take with solvent fumes, so I volunteered to do power wire-brushing of some of the extruded steel supports on the outside wall of the workshop. This was a little more “fussy work”, but actually suited me better. It was tricky getting in all the tight corners to get at all the rust, since the spinning wire brush was about three inches in diameter, and the tool was big enough that it made it difficult to get around some of the other stuff in front of the wall we were painting. You end up holding it about 6 inches from your nose. Yea, look out in case it grabs and kicks back at you... ;-) Dave, Larry and Elanor were working on painting the inside of the shop while I was working on the outside. Once I had finished wire brushing, we were able to complete painting red primer on the outer wall.

I was glad that I had brought a pair of grubby jeans to work in. We were definitely filthy by the time we were done, not to mention exhausted!

By the time we mostly finished that job, it was time to clean up. Since this was on a Saturday, which is the end of the week for the crew, we spent the last hour or so doing what they call, “Hour of Power” -- doing a more thorough cleaning of the whole engine room area. The team was in the middle of moving some equipment lockers around in preparation for the “Heavy Oil Project” (setting up to process the cheaper, but dirtier heavy fuel oil to run in the generators and main engines), so that had to be straightened up. We also helped with hauling out garbage, which included various scraps of steel and other parts that had been left over from other jobs, and hauling it up the very narrow and steep stairs to the deck above (#3) where we left it in a large drum to be dumped later.

One of the things that Elanor said was that she really enjoyed working with short term Vision Teams, perhaps even more than some of the other departments, since whatever the teams down in the engine room did, it usually made a visible, long term impact on the ship. When you paint a major piece of equipment, it's obvious when you were done. You can point to that job and say, “That's where I made a difference.” Other assignments, such as working in the book hold or helping in the galley, were perhaps just as important, but those were often ongoing activities where it was much more difficult to see a long term, physical impact on the ship. As we finished up sweeping, the engineering team expressed how thankful they were for the contribution of our team. I was tired and filthy with oil and paint and rust, but I definitely felt like I'd accomplished something, and made some good friends.

Logos Hope Trip - #1 - First Impressions

“You have to be FAT –Flexible, Available, Teachable”

My first impression of the Logos Hope is of the size – not so much of the ship itself (though it is a pretty good sized vessel), but of the vision, the ministry, and the hand of God on the crew.

Since we have been working at the OM USA office, I have gotten used to the idea of working full time at a place where God is the center of everything we do. People there aren't perfect, and things don't always go smoothly, but there is an intentional effort to see God working in us and through us. Prayer is serious business, and miracles are something you come to expect on a regular basis.

On the ships though, everything is even more compressed, shaken together, with the fluff squeezed out. People are still people, and it doesn't take long to see the little signs that everyone there is still God's “work in progress”, but there is no doubt that this ministry exists based on the power of God.

Of course, there are still plenty of practical things to do! There's this huge ship to keep running, and floors to vacuum, and a crew of between 350 and 400 to feed and clean up for, and books to sell, and there's still a never ending battle against the corrosive effects of salt and water on wood and steel.

We arrived on Friday afternoon, with enough time to settle in to the cabins where we were staying, get some organizational details and to get a tour around the ship. When you get there, the ship feels like a maze of twisty passages, all looking the same, but after a few days, you start to get a feel for how to get from one place to another. One of the first hurdles was the sheer number of steps to go up and down! I found I had to be careful not to over-stress my knees. You eventually start to learn which stairs go to which areas in the ship, though if you don't have a porthole near by, it's still a challenge to figure out if you are headed forward or aft at any point in time.

Saturday was when our activities started in earnest. I had expected that we would be doing more activities together, but when we received our schedules, we discovered that we had quite different assignments, depending on our own skills and where we fit in. Remember: be flexible and available.

For our first full day (Saturday), some of the team was assigned to the “Visitor Experience Deck”, deck #4, which is the main book exhibit and visitor area. This area is designed for people coming through to buy books and to provide a place for the visitors and crew to interact. Some of the responsibilities there are practical, such as welcoming people and selling the books and making sure the flow of people keeps going in the right direction. Another job though was specifically to sit down with people as they are in the “International Café” and to start up conversations. This actually works quite well, since people have already gone through the book exhibit, and are usually happy to talk.

The I-Café is one of the most direct opportunities for interacting with visitors on the ship itself, but there are still plenty of other opportunities for getting out among the local people and interacting, either on the streets or in different ministries such as going to prisons or orphanages. Some of our team headed into the city with an “e-day” team. They visited in a park where some of the team set up a story-board to attract people and start them thinking. Others on the team then circulated around to hand out literature and start conversations.

To be continued...