The Scuttlebutt: October 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Going on 12 weeks

This doesn't mean 12 weeks until we leave Benin, it doesn't mean 12 weeks til Christmas... this means that I am nearly 12 weeks pregnant! Justin and I now have a 'plum' size baby in my 'tummy.' http://community.thebump.com/cs/ks/blogs/1sttrimester/pages/week-12-plum.aspx?r=0

This is not a surprise, Justin and I often talked about starting/having a family while we're in Mercy Ships. In fact, many of our close friends on board have young children.... the kids are a highlight of ship life. We are excited to start this journey and we thank God for this new blessing in our lives!

Here's the new 'plan of action.'

Early December: Sail from Benin to Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain.

Dec 21- Justin and I will fly to Pennsylvania and have Christmas with the Styer clan

Early Jan- long weekend in Connecticut to see friends and supporters

Jan 4th- fly to TX to be with the Ray Family.

Jan 8th (ish)- I will go to the Mercy Ships base in TX to staff a school called Gateway, for a month.

Jan 12th- Justin will fly back to the Africa Mercy in Tenerife and do technical work

Early Feb.- Justin sails from Tenerife to Togo

Mid Feb.- Lorah flies from TX to Pennsylvania

Late Feb- Justin flies to Maryland for a Marine Refrigeration course (and I join him!! :)

End of March- Justin and Lorah return to Pennsylvania and stay with Mom and Dad Styer

May 16th- Estimated Due Date!

If all is well, we plan to return to the Africa Mercy in South Africa, in Aug. 2010, for a generator replacement project that Justin will be working on. I will be working on being a 'primary caregiver' :)

We look forward to this change and we hope and pray that you will 'stay on board' with us through this transition. We hope to see many of you while we are in the states. We appreciate your continual prayer and financial support. We could not be part of this ministry without you, nor could we become a family within Mercy Ships without your support.

Below, you'll find a little bump :)

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Thoughts on Irena Sendler

My sister likes to email me forwards. Normally, I disdain that sort of thing, but my sister has great taste in her forwards, most of the time. She sent me one today about a woman by the name of Irena Sendler. Irena worked in the Social Welfare Department as a health inspector in German occupied Poland during World War Two. During this time, she smuggled 2,500 Jewish babies out of Warsaw Ghettos as well as producing thousands of forged documents to help Jewish families. The Ghestapo arrested her, beat her, and sentanced her to death. On the way to her execution, some of her co-conspiritors against the Nazis bribed the guards to release her. They complied by leaving her with broken arms and legs, unconcious, in the woods. For the rest of the war, she lived in hiding.

While she was working to smuggle babies out of the ghettos, she wrote down the names of the childern that she took with the hope of being able to reunite them with family members after the war. The majority of the family members had been murdered or were missing.

When I read about the selfless work of this beautiful woman, I realized a clearer picture of who Jesus is. See, I've been having a bit of a hard time lately with the idea of Jesus intending us to fight injustice without violence. I can't conceive how to resolve some injustices that I read about in the news without violence, and this story speaks strongly to me about how it can be done, and one of the things I hear when I listen to this story is, "This is not cheap. This is not the easy way, but this is the right way."

I want to be like Irena. I want to see great value in other people, but sometimes I just see what is easy to see. To look into the depth of another human and to see past the behavior, and into the reflection of their creator, and to redeem that reflection is not cheap, is not easy, but it is right. Sometimes I am too conservative with my time and energy and I find myself holding back some of what I have to offer to those in need because I think that my time and energy can be used better on more fertile ground.

Tonight I have seen that my effectiveness has been robbed by my concern for efficiency. I must pour into those around me regardless of my estimation of their capacity of change or greatness, but with highest regard for the image of their maker imprinted on their souls.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Hard at Work

Wow. Today I just renewed our domain registration for the blog. That means that we've had this blog up for a full year! I'm quite embarrased about the ratio of entries by myself to entries by Lorah, so I'm trying to even it out a little more over the next year. I thought that I would post a couple of pictures of a major installation that I'm in the middle of right now.

When I first arrived onboard, one of the two air conditioning compressors for the top half of the ship had just experienced a major oil pump failure resulting in irreparable damage to the unit's crankshaft. Fortunately, all of the crankshaft damage was isolated to one side of the compressor and we were able to remove the running gear for that half of the machine, plug the oil passages and get the machine running at half capacity (with a little extra vibration) for a few months while we were waiting for a reconditioned replacement.

Last month, we installed and test ran the compressor. Now we are working on getting the rest of the system operational so that we can cool the ship off again. Here are a few pictures from the installation.

The old compressor

No compressor at all

Me checking the condition of the bearings on the reconditioned compressor

The new compressor, installed!

A lot of the work that is being done onboard is not work that looks like 'missions work.' I enjoy getting to share that with people in the developed world. Often times we can overlook the ways in which we can serve God, but the fact of the matter is that no matter what we do professionally, we are the salt and light of the earth and reflecting our Father's creative, kind, loving, and generous nature points to Him in an undeniable fashion that words seldom achieve. Missions is something that you are, not something that you do, it is not dependent on location or priveledge. It's our call to be like our maker.