thoughts about mercy ships

The last 7 weeks on the ship have been amazing!
The dental team saw their 3000th patient. We did a three day outreach at the local prison. Seeing about 247 patients and extracting 675 teeth.
We saw about 50 students from the local deaf school. The children were a delight to work with!
We have the best day crew working with us from Madagascar! The best translators.
Our team has been great to be with!
Our Sunday evening community gatherings that led up to Easter were very special with great messages and I felt like we learned quite a bit.
I've met the most inspiring people here in Madagascar!
People from over 35 countries living together in a small hospital ship.
Eating together and living in tight quarters. Working alongside another to help the malagasy people.

Proverbs 3:27

Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.

This verse keeps coming back to me. 

Mercy ships is doing amazing things here in Madagascar in the name of Jesus.

https://m.youtube.com/?#/watch?v=n2wykrmoUqk

I was here when this patient was on board the ship. :-) 

Pray for the people in Madagascar! 

Easter on the Ship!

It's been a wonderful Easter season here on the ship!
The last week starting with Palm Sunday we had lovely services on the ship all week. Song services at night, special programs including a Seder Supper in the dining room. We learned about all the Jewish Traditions with Passover. It was very interesting and special to be a part of. The dining room was set up beautifully and each table had the special foods like Matza set on it. We sang a little bit of the Jewish songs that are sung at the Jewish Seder supper. :)
They also had a night with special things in different rooms. On deck 7 they had a foot washing station set up for anyone to come and have their feet washed or to come with friends and wash each others feet. The international lounge was set up as the Garden of Gethsemane where you could go and have some quiet time in prayer. Then there was a room set up as the upper room where you could go read the sequence of events leading up to the crucifixion of Christ.
A very special week to be here!
The Good Friday service was Friday morning and Sunday morning there was a sunrise service on deck 8 followed by another service later in the morning and a beautiful brunch was served in the dining room! So enjoyable to be here with friends and celebrate the resurrection of Jesus!
He is Risen indeed!
This afternoon we were able to visit the deaf school where our patients were from. One of the teachers invited us to come by and see the school.
It was in a nice quiet location in the city and was very nicely set up!
We found out the school has about 30 students that live there and during the day about 30 more students come from the surrounding area. It is one of the only deaf schools in Madagascar so children come from far away sometimes.  The school is sponsored by a Christian Bible group? I'll have to get more details. They have a lovely chapel on the grounds. And the Mercy Ministries group goes to the school once a week and they tell Bible stories to the children. I would have loved to join the group while I was here but they only go Wednesday mornings and... I am working the hours they go.
So it was very nice to see the school today and see the children when we were not pulling their teeth out. :-)
Our friend from the dental clinic was able to take me and a friend out to the Lemur park for some hiking yesterday and to see the lemurs for the last time. The hike was up a short mountain with a nice view and then waterfall along the trail! We had a picnic by the waterfall and then enjoyed a nice ride on a bamboo raft down a river back to town. Most enjoyable day!
Now it's time to start saying goodbye to all my friends and it's been sad.
One of the hardest things about Mercy ships is all the goodbyes.
The ship has so many amazing interesting people on it and friendships form so quickly.
I have started to pray about coming back for one more outreach with the ship..Mada 2. I hope I will be able to see my friends again. :-)
My friends Julie and I are now preparing all things to arrive in Bangkok and head up to Chiang Mai within the first week. Our plans are coming together!
Don't worry about us because we will rarely be alone as we are meeting friends in each place we go. :-)
  

Finishing up my time on Mercy Ships.

This is my last week here on the ship. Hard to believe things are coming to an end again.
We finished working with the deaf school students! They were so much fun to have in the clinic. Lots of smiles.. Maybe some tears. It's all part of the dental world.
My time here was 4 weeks working with adults and then 3 weeks working with kids.
It's completely different working with adults than with children.
I enjoyed both immensely!
Working with the kids has been so rewarding! And.. well.. Hard at the same time. There are those kids that :
are smiling when they leave.
are crying (hysterically sometimes.. usually the 4 year olds)when they leave.
are terrified when they leave.
are wondering what just happened..
And there are those... That are screaming when they come into the room.
Can you guess my favorite?
An experience to be had!
After 7 weeks I've now worked with people in the dental clinic from: Germany, Switzerland, North Carolina, Australia, Peru, California, Arizona, Canada, and Texas. And of course our local Malagasy people! We've had a great group of people together. While I was here the dental team saw their 3000th patient. Pretty awesome milestone!
It's so sad to leave the clinic. Today as I was working I had a thought that I could stay here for a while longer. I love serving the people here in Madagascar.
The dental team will never run out of work to do.
We have seen some crazy dental cases that I've never seen at home.
Some of the surgeries we have done have made huge differences in peoples lives.
Ask me in person and I can share details.
So yes.. Leaving next week.
Saying goodbye to our day crew is hard! And then I'll have to say goodbye to my friends from the ship soon.
But....... Going back to the name of my blog..
I don't think this is my last crusade. I've already been talked into coming next field service back here in Madagascar.
On that note..I need a job! Anyone know any nice dentists that need a dental assistant for 6 months? Anywhere in the world? I'll move! :)
I'll post photos again soon!
Hugs*

 Max, Julie,Toni and I. I worked with Max for 3 weeks and now I'm working with Toni seeing the children!

 Our day crew translators! Awesome guys from Madagascar! We have a lot of fun in the clinic!

 We were able to visit a friends church here in Mada. These are some of the sunday school kids!

 Our friend Claudia is in charge of the youth program at her church!

 Celebrating international woman's day! Out for lunch with the girls!

 Our set up at the prison!

 Two wonderful Dental teammates at a dental dinner!

 This cruise ship pulled up next to our ship and made us look rather small. :)

 Just a photo from the clinic.. :P

 We like it when we get cute little angelic babies in the clinic!

 Artwork you can buy in the market is beautiful!

 My dental team of 3 weeks! Max and Narcisse!

 The nerd herd!

 We went to visit the local dentist that makes the dentures for our patients. This is a photo from her office. It was very nice!

 How would you like to take a nap like this while waiting for work?

 Quite a few old cars around in Madagascar!

 Sometimes we get nice sunsets and it we sit on deck 7 outside it's a nice dinner sunset!

 St. Patties day!

 We can see the ship from work.. So one day Julie and I walked home on the beach!

St Patties day BBQ on the dock! Wearing green!

new role in the dental clinic!

Ok! Something new happened this last week.
I switched from working with just the adult patients to working with kids!
I always said you could not pay me enough to work for a pediatric dentist! It scared me out if my mind! :-)
But I decided to go try working with our amazing pediatric dentist! It must be God changing me! Because now I am paying to work in pediatrics!! Crazy!
It's been so much fun! The kids are so cute to work with! Of course we have our Monday screaming  day kids. But for the most part so far we have not had too many upset children! :-)
I like giving the stickers and the teddys to the kids. :-) So cute!!!
This last week one of our special outreaches was to a deaf school. Tuesday-Friday we were getting children from a deaf school. A teacher came with the children to translate! The dentist I'm working with and i learned a few dental signs to help out with seeing the kids.
I might say that these kids might be the high light of working in the dental clinic.
We were able to see most of the children in the school and some of the workers.
This week I think we may see some more from the school!

So when I'm not at the dental clinic I still stay very busy here!
Always something going on with the ship.
Every year on mercy ships they have their annual film fest!
This is the first year I've been here that I've been able to attend!
My friend Julie and I decided to make a dental film at the last minute!
We took a go pro and shot some scenes from the dental clinic how our day goes and put it in a fast forwarded play.
If you are interested in seeing how our day goes let me know somehow and ill try to get the link to you!
Julie's awesome brother Jay edited the movie for us and made it super cool!
So we all dressed up nice for the film fest and had great food after and a little awards ceremony! Very fun indeed!
Weekends lately have been really relaxed just going  the market and the beach. Makes up for very busy weeks at the clinic!
Every 2 weeks a dentist leaves and a new one comes!
We have a new one from Germany this last week and now this week we have another new one from the US!
It's fun to work with people from all over and see the different techniques.
Well. I'll try to post photos soon!
The beaches are very nice here the farther you get it of town! Not real good swimming water though because of the large waves.. and I've heard there are sharks.. I'll stick to swimming  pools or just wading in the ocean! :-)
I'm hoping the second week of working with our amazing pedo Dr goes well!

prison week!

Last week we did our prison extreme dental outreach!
What did this entail? I'll tell you!
Tuesday afternoon we ended our day at the clinic early to pack our supplies for the prison. Since we would have no power or electricity ,we packed only supplies to do extractions. Lots of gauze and anesthetic.
The next morning we got up extra early so we could get the land rover packed and get set up at the prison early.
Having a 20 person team(about that many) ,we were able to set up fairly quickly and get started.
The prison in tamatave has about 1000 inmates. I heard it was about 100 prisoners to a cell. And I guess the woman and juveniles are separated from the men.
The conditions were pretty sad there. And as it is rainy season here.. it rained some of the days and I felt sorry for the prisoners that were wet and had no way to be comfortable. They don't feed you in prison here. So if you end up here you hope your family well be bringing food or that you make friends with someone that shares.

We set up clinic in a church that was built there recently for the prisoners.
There were Windows so we had a nice breeze going through the first day.
We started it by seeing the women then the young juveniles. Then last the men.
They were very happy we were there to help them out of pain.
The first day we saw 91 patients! Great day full of easy extractions.
 The next day was rather difficult. Full of hard extractions and it was very hot outside.
It was very nice for our Friday to be cooler and wet. Very hard to work in masks and gloves when it's so hot.
So I believe the total of patients we saw in 3 days was 247 and we extracted 675 teeth!
Yay dental team!
So , mercy ships has a mercy ministry that goes to the prison every other Saturday! I am planning on signing up to be in that group for the next Saturday to see what goes on!
I've officially extended my time on mercy ships two weeks more! Wishing I could stay longer!

Lemur photos!! As Promised!!

Lemurs are so cute! We went to an island where they were jumping out of the trees onto us! Of course we had some bananas to lure them in. They LOVE bananas. We had even a mommy lemur with a baby on her  back jump onto us. Cutest things ever!

 The brown and white lemurs were loud and fiesty to the little lemurs around.  They were pretty territorial.

 A stick insect! This was the coolest thing ever! I hate bugs.. But you can barely even feel this bug when it's walking on you!

 Large snails were all over the trail on the island we stayed on.

 cute lemur that was calm enough so we were able to pet it!

 Gorgeous plants around the island!

 And some tortoises! Madagascar has some awesome wildlife and plants and trees!

 Mama lemur with baby!

 Lunch at the restaurant at our bungalow lodge area.

 Our beautiful view along the river ride to the island.

 This little guy jumped over here to the restaurant.

 The aye aye lemur comes out only at night so we went on a night hike.

 We woke up to find this little guy on our front porch with his friends!

First time feeding a lemur!!

 Holding another baby lemur!

I <3 Lemur!!!!!