Back on the ship

Canary Islands
I made it back to ship safe and sound and with only two different 7 hour layovers, one in Chicago and one in Madrid. We are currently in port in Tenerife de Santa Cruz, Canary Islands. We are scheduled to leave here to return to Liberia on Wednesday, January 30th.

There isn't much to report right now. I've been working on developing a workshop to teach churches how to take care of the terminally ill. I've also been working some in crew services, helping clean the ship, working in the library, helping unload containers and supplies and I watched a welder for a couple of hours to make sure he didn't catch himself or the ship on fire (called Fire Watch).

Liberia
On a completely separate note, I've been thinking a lot about our return to Liberia and trying to prepare for it. If you follow global news at all, you have seen articles recently on Liberia. The trial of former president Charles Taylor is ongoing in The Hague and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia (http://www.trcofliberia.org/) has been holding hearings and some horrible atrocities are coming to the global light.

When we return, I don't know if the people will be different now that these hearings are going on...do they care? Does it just reopen old wounds? Will it trigger more violence? Will it bring reconciliation? These are just some questions I'm thinking about and areas to pray about.

The following is a link to a recent Yahoo article on one of the hearings...parts of it are very graphic and so unbelievable the suffering humans inflict upon other humans.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080121/ap_on_re_af/liberia_general_returns;_ylt=AmuAkGfoKXfR4vCO.RvurEpI2ocA
I also finally watched Blood Diamond last night. I wouldn't recommend this movie for general entertainment but more as an education about what the people of Sierra Leone and, similarly, Liberia, have inflicted upon themselves as well as what innocent people have endured.

Baby Joanna update
So many of you emailed me about and prayed for baby Joanna last year. She was a six month old baby for whom we performed a cleft lip surgery - she then went into cardiac arrest and was put on a ventilator for 3 days. She survived and was sent home and we visited her a few times at the end of the year. I received an email last week forwarded from my translator that baby Joanna passed away in December. I don't know any details other than that. We knew she had brain stem abnormalities and too low of a heart rate so I'm not completely surprised, just sad.

Peace,
Michele