Update from Mercy Ships - Senegal

Things have just started to slow down and we have started to catch up on the regular maintenance of the off ship facilities. The past month has been hectic we had a massive storm that damaged the patient exam tents and threw canopies across the dock and into the water and caused a lot of damage to the rehab tent causing it to collapse and be unusable. We moved the rehab into the eye screening tent which wont be used until January luckily. I have also been acting vehicle mechanic as well as maintenance assistant in charge of 30 land cruisers regular maintenance as well as the various off ship facilities. We have had 20 accidents so far with the vehicles and numerous issues with the buildings we are using for the Dental clinic and the Dental team house as well as the Hope center. My daily routine is do a service on a vehicle in the morning and then run out to the HOPE Center in the afternoon to fix the wiring/plumbing or any issue that has come up. There is one other maintenance Man that i work with he is a very experienced man from Benin that was hired as day crew and now has become crew, we get along really well and can get a lot accomplished in a day. We are able to have fun even while working hard making it a really Enjoyable and rewarding mission!

We just got a new vehicle mechanic from Alberta last week so i have been handing over the vehicle work to him so i will only have to do off ship maintenance which will be nice break.

The Max Fax surgeries are well underway and this week the Orthopedic surgeries start the Hope Center and Dock space are filling up with children with severe bowed legs and knock knees as well as club foot patients who are very excited to be finally receiving safe and FREE healthcare!

the children are opening up and really starting to be kids again as they are surrounded by people with the same conditions as them and are being shown the love of Jesus by the nurses and crew members. I heard about a Man who's granddaughter is a patient on board and through the love and acceptance of the doctors and nurses he started asking why we would care so much about a Muslim man and his family when they told him about Jesus he asked to hear more and over the span of several days of asking questions and seeing the practical faith of everyone on board he gave his life to Christ!

I am so happy to be a part of Gods work here in Senegal! I want to thank you all for the Prayers and support!

I would ask that you pray for continued positive interactions with the patients and for the surgeries taking place in the OR rooms on board here and the healing and recovery of the patients.

The Screening nurses have also asked for prayers as they have to turn down so many people for injuries or illnesses we are not equipped to handle, it is very hard on them as we can only help a fraction of the people that come to us. they work long hours trying to find people with the life threatening illnesses and severe medical conditions that we are able to help out with.

I also ask that you pray for the Crew on board as we are away from friends and family for a long time in a foreign country and sleeping in small rooms with up to 10 people. and put in stressful situations in our work and daily life on board.

Thank you All again for your love and support!

Snapshots From The Past Week...

November or "Go-vember" as it is called on many P2C campuses across Canada is a time when many of our ministries begin to promote and talk about mission trips. Our applications went live on November 4th and we already have 22 students in the process of applying for one of our seven 2020 mission trips.

I spent the first half of last week with all the mission trip directors (group picture below), helping them to get started with planning these trips. Already we're excited about the potential growth in our Canadian mission trip that we call Praxis. Also, this year we're anticipating partnering with P2C's humanitarian ministry, GAiN, and we're trying a new music and missions trip in Montreal during reading week. It was fun to dream together, plan together, and watch the trips start to come to life.

Lord willing I will be helping to lead an international mission trip in 2020, so last week it was a juggle helping other trip directors with their questions while at the same time trying to plan and have discussions with my co-directors (see picture below with my co-directors - Rolf and Ben). It's been five years since I led an international mission trip. Some days I wonder what I've gotten myself into, and other days I have a lot of excitement.

After Mission Trip Director Training last week, I went straight into a day and a half of team meetings. Our team (pictured below) which is normally spread across four provinces had the chance to meet in person. We have great discussions and laugh a lot when we're together. We also enjoy eating good food, and seeking the Lord together. It was a blessing to have the time to connect.

We got almost everyone on our team together. We’re just missing two members.

My week ended with a campus visit to the University of Windsor on Friday. My teammate Tiffany spoke at the group's weekly meeting and together we meet with students who are interested in working with P2C after they graduate. I meet with a student, Leah, who went on the Desert Rain mission trip last summer and is exploring the idea of going back for a year.

Tiffany and I having brunch together on our way home from Windsor Saturday morning. Not the best picture of me, but it had been a full week.

Thank you!

Thank you for standing with me in ministry last week. Your prayers and financial support make it possible for me to give students the opportunity to go on mission trips and experience God at work in and through them.

As my team comes to mind please pray that God would keep us and sustain us. Many on our team have different mental health struggles or family members going through mental health struggles. Recently, I've had some added responsibilities due to a teammate needing to step back for a bit. Pray for me to lead well, and to seek the Lord above all else.

How God Worked this Week

Serving with Din from Thailand.

On Monday we asked you to pray as we hosted missionaries from five countries - Thailand, Indonesia, India, Iraq and the Philippines.

Here's a great story God has woven about Din, one of our participants from Thailand.

1993 - A boy named Din with a buddhist background thinks this 'Jesus' his friends talk about is pure fiction. That is, until they invite him to see a film about the life of Jesus. When Din saw, with his own eyes, how Jesus forgave, even his enemies, his perspective changed and he made a decision to follow Jesus.

2019 - Today Din is a digital missionary team leader creating digital media to reach his highly visual/oral culture of 70 million. "Thai people can read, but we don't read," Din told me. "They want to watch things in their Facebook feed. If we want to reach the Thai people, we have to be there."

This week, while hosting Din in Singapore, we were able to help him get the Jesus Film in Thai online in YouTube. Even though the film is over 40 years old, the Holy Spirit uses it powerfully all around the world.

Excitingly, without any promotion, the 3 minute clip from the crucifixion scene in Thai was viewed over 600 times in less than 24 hours after posting this week. Reviewing the analytics Din chuckles with his broken English, "I could never share my faith that many times in a year, but in one day we reached so many people... wow!"

As his team returns to Bangkok, they will now use this film and others to offer viewers next steps - like chatting with a mentor or watching other evangelistic content. This is a big step forward for the Thai team on their engagement strategy. They feel more equipped in using YouTube and media to help people discover Jesus online.

Your prayers and giving make it possible for us to serve Din. Thank you for being a part of leading the next generation of digital missions.

If you'd like to see a short montage of the week, you can watch it here.

Photos Below:
1) Our kids in front of our flat
2) Learning local culture at school - Moon Festival Lanterns
3) Matchy-matchy at hot pot lunch with friends after church

We Need Your Prayer This Week

Engaging the unreached with YouTube.

We have a quick request for prayer this week.

This week we are hosting/facilitating next generation digital missionaries from India, Indonesia, Iraq, Thailand and the Philippines here in Singapore.

Our task will be to come up with better ways to engage over 8M people who have visited content on our Jesus Film Project YouTube channel from these 5 countries in the last year.

Unfortunately we haven't been giving any of these visitors clear next steps in how to discover/follow Jesus, and are hoping to change that this week with some simple and localized content pathways for these 8M visitors to engage with a next step on their spiritual journey.

Please pray that we come up with creative ways to offer next steps and that we work effectively together as a team across language and culture. Thanks for praying along with us in leading the next generation of digital missions.

We'll let you know how it goes,

Safety in the Prison Chapel

““How precious is Your loving kindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings.”
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— Psalms 36:7

Safety in the Prison Chapel

Sometimes I get to walk the prison ranges to visit through the bars of an inmate's cell or visit in the prison hospital or in a private counselling room but the majority of our encounters with inmates happen in the chapel area of each institution.

Inmates have recently shared with me how the chapel environment in prison has been a place of blessing to them. I assumed they were going to speak appreciatively about hearing the life changing message of the gospel. But it was one particular man who told me he was able to relax and let down his guard, not to have to keep “the eyes in the back of his head open” (with constant awareness of his surroundings). Another one expressed that the positive, respectful and safe atmosphere is what draws him to attend.

In prison there is much that makes life stressful: inmates taking advantage of other inmates for food or personal items, emotional outbursts of verbal and even physical harm, ongoing condemnation from staff and management, the list goes on.

We have sometimes been discouraged when we notice that some men attending chapel services or programs fall asleep. But we have come to understand that the chapel is a safe place and so for some men they can relax, drop their guard a bit and not have to be on “high alert” (enough to doze off for 40 winks!).

The prison climate is not static; it varies as populations change. One or two obnoxious men coming onto a range can change a somewhat civil environment to one of terror and intimidation.

The Assessment Unit where inmates start their federal sentence is an ever changing population where stress levels run high. Last week there was a murder on one of the ranges at this Assessment Unit. An inmate’s throat was slashed. These are horrific realities related to prison life sending incredible fear and anxiety into so many of the men who are not violently inclined or where their lifestyle was never one of violence and aggression. How desperately the message of the gospel is needed!

So when we see men sleeping during programs in this particular institution we now understand the possible back story to their situation. Our earnest prayer is that they will come to find true spiritual safety in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour.

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Pray for each of the chapel services, Bible studies and other programs in chapel institutions. This is one place where inmates can come and feel relatively safe and most importantly can hear God’s message of love and forgiveness.

Pray for the safety of all inmates. Pray for Christian inmates as they seek to grow and be a witness of their new faith in this difficult environment.

And please continue to pray for us as we enter these tense conflict-prone environments. What a privilege to speak the life giving message of peace and hope. By God’s grace each of these men can know the forgiveness of sin and be over comers.

“...And this is the victory that has overcome the world - our faith.”

— 1 John 5:4

Thank you for taking the time to read this update and we would love to hear from you as well!

Blessings,

Robert and Susan