Quayside Extravaganza

On our last weekend in Montego Bay, Jamaica many people queued for hours to visit the Logos Hope. To bless these people as they wait patiently in line we held a concert on the stage outside the ship. Early on Saturday morning the AV and events teams got our hands dirty putting out a portable stage and setting up some serious AV equipment to provide a high quality sound that could be heard far away.
Local artists and crew members performed on stage and people were captivated by their performance. Many shared their testimonies and the Gospel.
Pictured above is Sam Stainer from the U.K, the newest member of my AV team. He is a professional audio engineer and has run his own AV business for a few years before he visited the ship in London. He was impressed by the opening ceremony and talked with the AV manager on board who encouraged him to join up for two years. Immediately he decided this was what he would do, so he began to close down his business and a year later arrived in Montego bay. Praise God for bringing the right people at the right time!

Cash desk

“Just one moment Madam” I said calmly and politely as I scanned the many rows of buttons on the cash desk. Where was the button called “find product”? Finding it, I realised it couldn’t help me either! “Head cashier!” I called, then turned and smiled at the lady waiting to pay for her books.

A few days prior I had participated in cash desk volunteer training, since I figured I could help out when things got busy, and now I had been recruited to put my training into practice. But in the heat of the moment all of my training had left me. Most items presented have a barcode that will scan but every now and then there’s a product that doesn’t scan and you have to go searching for it in the system. Thankfully the head cashier was very helpful to me. To be honest I figured that the job of cash desk was fairly simple compared to my highly technical AV job but having experienced the stress of an impatient customer and a mystery product – I have a newfound respect for the cashiers.

I hope to have many more opportunities to help these people because like me they have busy times when there are just not enough people to do the job, and I’ve always wanted to try a retail job. I also quite enjoy that most orders come to over 2000 Jamaican dollars, which is like $40 Australian, and there’s no such thing as cents!

Goodbye old friends

I don’t cry often, but before the sun came up this morning I was standing outside crying and there was little I could do about it. My good friends Ravi and Philipp – along with many others – were leaving the ship forever. We’d had many goodbye parties and farewell speaches and now the dreaded moment had come, carrying bags down the gangway and packing them into vans, lining up for one last hug, saying my last goodbyes. There was no doubt we’d gone on an incredible journey together – for 8 months combined I had known them, and they had changed me as much as they had encouraged me. I hope to visit them both in the future, when I don’t know. I hope the ship will visit India one day, but I doubt it will visit Switzerland (being land-locked and all).

Since joining the ship I’ve made new friends, and now it’s time to focus attention on those relationships, but at the same time – people will come and go, but God will be with me all the time – and I need to learn to rely on Him and not on friends. Then I can truely be a friend to others, when I don’t put my needs on them.

Coming home

On monday the 30th I arrived home safe and sound at Sydney Airport and my parents drove me home. I am currently begining the process of settling into a normal life in Australia and re-connecting to friends and family. Please if you havn't had a chance to speak to me in person and you would like to, just reply to this e-mail.

While I was over in Europe I contributed to the IT (Information Technology) department and the AV (Audio/visual or production) Department. I helped build a storage room for all the AV equipment to be used for quayside events where the crowd is too big to fit on the ship, I helped unpack, configure and install 60 new dell computers, I wirebrushed (sanded paint off) 10 parcans (lighting enclosures) and re-painted them for use, I helped arrange donated food and drinks in a soup kitchen/shelter, I helped people use the ship's intranet to communicate valuable information to each other, I did AV / Production for a number of ship events taking the load off my leader, I helped run many cables all around the visitor experience deck and I helped install speakers in the ceiling on that deck. I could not have achieved these things without your support, so you have blessed the ship ministry in all those ways.

With the extra money I was given to spend for the ministry I purchased many small things including a DI box, A really cool electric screwdriver that can go around corners (which was amazingly helpful taking the ceiling panels down), Some paint and windsocks for microphones. It wasn't a great contribution considering the great financial needs of the ship, but these small things could be purchased immediately without being submitted for approval and waiting for delivery, so in that way these small things were a great help to the current ministry of the AV team.

Also while I was there I took the opportunity to visit Cafe Jerusalem, where free meals are given to regular patrons at breakfast and lunch and an evangelistic sermon is given each day before lunch. Along with helping with the store room, I was given the opportunity to share my testimony (my life story with Jesus if you will) with a crowd of non-believing down-and-out Germans (with a translator of course). It was a great experience for me to speak in front of a crowd about why I was there and why I was a Christian. I also had the pleasure of mixing with locals at an 'open ship' event on a friday night with an Australian theme, dressed in my boardshorts, cap, sunnies, thongs and zinc cream (it's ok, it's warm on the ship). I had the privilege of joining an ausie friend and praying with a German man who was struggling with his faith and doubting God and he was very encouraged by our honesty and our faith and left the ship with a new passion for God.

I don't know if I've chaged at all or learnt very much, but I suppose that is something that is difficult to measure. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to experience all that I did and I look forward to living life back here in this great country.

Traveling to Koge

Having finally finished putting in the generator in dry dock in Landskrona the ship limped over to Koge, Denmark for the final stage of outfit getting ready for the Passenger Ship Safety Certificate.

We traveled over the landbridge between Sweeden and Denmark. The bus stopped in Copenhagen where we spent the afternoon looking around the city. I liked Copenhagen and the Kings Gardens were magnificent, but on the whole, I was over tourism. We caught a train home at the end of the day in time to walk on the ship.

Cable work on deck 4

During dry dock, while there are less people on board and less AV operation tasks to take up our time, we have been running cables in deck four - the visitor experience deck. The cables are for audio and video for the various venues including the book ex, international cafe and welcome centre. Videos or announcements can be played on the screens from any of these locations and music can be played over speakers in the ceiling or announcements can be made. Ravi and I have been working away with out hands (and sometimes our heads) in the ceiling, running cables along the lovely cable trays in the deck head. It's dirty, painful, hard work (there's a lot of sharp things in the roof) but it's very satisfying to finish running and tying down a bunch of cables. Soon we will actually run the speaker wire for the speakers and install them in the ceiling.

Mission Experience

Last Wednesday night I headed out with a group from the ship into the town of Landskrona with the intention to spread the Gospel amongst the people there. We split up into groups of three people to make it less imposing. I chose to go with two good friends from the ship, who like me had not prepared for the journey so we had no tracts or bibles or anything. Also we didn't really know what we were doing so we spent a lot of time walking around the town looking for someone to talk to. After much walking we eventually ran into a man with a dog sitting on a park bench. My friend Todd patted the dog and then we began to chat with the man. I explained that we came from a ship in the shipyard and we had people from over 50 countries on board and the ship goes around the world selling books in countries where books are hard to get, and that we help out with building projects and disaster relief. Then I added that we spread the good news of Jesus Christ. He said "Oh, you believe in Jesus?" "Yes" - "You believe in God" "Yes" - "What is God's name?" - I didn't know where he was going with this but eventually we figured out that he was a Jehovah's witness. We talked with him for a while working out the differences and trying to challenge him about freedom and relationships. I prayed quietly while Todd asked more questions. Eventually I think we caused him to stumble a little and maybe he had to re-think something, but overall we didn't get very far before he decided he didn't want to talk any more.
It was an interesting experience, I'd like to know more about witnessing to other religions. Please pray that I receive more of these opportunities in the coming weeks.