Mercy Ships (2)

From Wikipedia

As promised, here’s a post by Kevin D on Mercy Ships…

Mercy Ships was founded in 1978 by Don and Deyon Stephens. It was an amazing journey for them when the idea of doing “something different” came to their minds. Oh boy… they certainly did do something different! They went out and bought an 11,701 tonne ship which 4 years later became a floating hospital named Anastasis. THAT was the start of an even more adventurous journey across the entire world.

And here we are today, 31 years later. Mercy Ships is the proud owner of the Africa Mercy, officially today’s largest non-governmental hospital ship in the world. Africa Mercy boats 6 operating theatres and can have up to 78 patients on board at any moment. That’s in addition to a crew of almost 500 volunteers who are on the ship at any given time, such as today when you’re reading this!

Our mission is very simple, yet so powerful and meaningful: “Bringing hope and healing to a world in need, following the steps of Jesus”. We reach out to people by sailing the oceans of this world, going to the poorest of the poorest countries, taking hope to people through medical care. These people had lost all hope of ever being helped until Mercy Ships, a gigantic of the oceans, came to their very doorstep and invited them on board. Same as with Jesus’ calling and invitation to follow him, Mercy Ships makes no discrimination regarding race, religion, creed, skin colour, age, etc. We are there to help all those that we can. Our main areas of expertise are: cleft lip and palate operations, dental care, blindness (due to cataracts or similar illnesses), vesico-vaginal fistula (VVF) or fistula repair for women left incontinent during a difficult child birth and operations to correct other deformities such as tumours, burns and leprosy and congenital abnormalities.

Our achievements are just staggering when you think about it. Since 1978…

Mercy Ships has provided services in developing nations valued at more than £355 million, including the following:

• Performed more than 35,000 life-changing operations such as cleft lip and palate repair, cataract removal, orthopaedic procedures, facial reconstruction and obstetric fistula repair.

• Treated over 238,000 people in village medical clinics.

• Performed more than 194,000 dental treatments.

• Taught over 14,500 local health care and professional workers, who have in turn trained many others.

• Taught 105,000 local people in primary health care.

• Delivered more than £28 million worth of medical equipment, hospital and other supplies.

• Completed over 950 community development projects focusing on water and sanitation, education, infrastructure development and agriculture.

THIS is why I’m so passionate about this charity. It follows Jesus’ example by bringing hope and healing (mental, spiritual and physical) to those who thought they had no hope at all left and who thought they’d live in pain, poverty and forgotten by the world for the rest of their lives.

Just to note: we are planning, with Kevin’s help, to run breakfasts in aid of Mercy Ships on Easter Day, after the 6 am Sunrise Communion on Epsom Common, and at 9 am, after the early Communion and before the 10 am Parish Communion.