Not long after we arrived in Toamasina, preparations began to set the dockside and ship up to accept patients from ten different regions in Madagascar. Even before we arrived, preparations were underway at the Hope Center. A patient selection team travelled throughout Madagascar to remote villages and urban areas to identify people who were potential candidates for surgery. They are still on the road, completing their work by the end of March. Patients selected will then meet at pickup locations, often walking days to get to one, from where Mercy Ships transports them to the Hope Center for a final round of testing and consultations.
Our Pre-Op and Hope Center teams are hard at work assessing patients, the first of whom arrived at the Hope Center on March 3rd. We have ambitious goals for this field service: exceeding 1,700 surgeries completed and 2,000 dental visits. These are big numbers compared to last year, but there is an energy about the ship as new people arrive daily. Cabins are filling up, and the lines in the dining room keep getting longer as we approach the first anticipated surgery on March 10th. It’s exciting to see familiar faces returning alongside new ones we have yet to meet. It’s hard to believe that Durban and the AMP was just a few weeks ago since we’ve already been in Madagascar for a while.
As part of the hospital preparations, they opened up the different departments for crew tours so we could experience the hospital from a patient’s perspective. Our family experienced wound cleaning and dressing in one of the wards, where the kids also tested their skills getting a difficult patient to take their medicine. We visited another station and got practice drawing and delivering medication by needle. Then, Ivan and Dara gowned up and performed their first gummybearectomy, surgically extracting gummy bears from a live patient. Cal got to see the veins, arteries, and trachea in his visit to the ultrasound room. We also visited the sterilization, lab and chaplaincy areas to see their roles in the hospital.
Outside on the dock, the pre-op and physio tents had a unique display. The physio tent became a “the floor is lava” game, requiring people to hop from one place to another without touching the floor. They kept it interesting by tossing balls at us randomly, which we had to catch. Our balance was tested on different platforms. In the Pre-OP tent, we got to experience what our patients and their caregivers walk through. Cal was given a random ailment, gigantism in his foot, and we went through each stage as a patient would. It was insightful to see the passion and care the nurses in Pre-Op have for our patients. They work hard to communicate clearly and keep people as comfortable as possible as our patients enter this new and scary experience.
We also enjoyed a Sunday service and prayer walk through the HOPE Center, praying over the patient rooms, admin offices, and spaces where our patients arrive and depart. We covered the HOPE Center, the patience, and their caregivers who would pass through in prayer as a community. Later the same week, the community walked through the hospital areas of the ship and dock to cover them in prayer. These events took place during a week of 24/7 prayer on the ship, where a room was dedicated to constant prayer. We had the opportunity to participate as a couple, and Dan spent an hour in prayer with his team.
Dan’s team is quite busy making preparations for the hospital. They set up the internet and have had ongoing negotiations with a second ISP for the last four weeks. The IT team set up the networks and computer equipment in the HOPE Center and the dockside tents. The IT equipment needed to power our operations was up and running in less than three weeks. On top of unpacking, his team onboarded 20 to 30 new or returning volunteers weekly, ensuring laptops and MS Teams accounts were up and running.
At the HOPE Center, Rachel assisted the team by running errands with daycrew in town, she printed the certificates given out after the daycrew training, in addition to scheduling and managing the payroll and cash float. It’s a busy time all around the ship, even in the academy, where the kids are settling into their homework routine well, creating study groups and new habits that set them up for success.
As always, there is much to pray for in the season ahead. We pray for the safety of our patients and crew as incidents in Toamasina are increasing. We ask for safe and reliable trips from their homes to our ship. Pray for the engineers as they tackle the ongoing issues with our ship engines. Two are still not functioning as they should. Pray for Dan and Rachel as we move from a season of setup into a season of support; give us the strength, energy, patience, and wisdom we need for our roles. Pray for Dara, Ivan, and Callahan as they navigate school challenges and relationships with their peers. Pray for Mercy Ships and our leadership – here and around the world – that God would continue to speak his will into their plans.
Please consider supporting us as we fundraise on behalf of Mercy Ships Canada. We’re about 1/5 of the way to our fundraising goal. We’d appreciate any support you can provide at our donation page.
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