11:5 – Mercy Ministries

Mike probably has one of the best jobs on the whole ship. He gets to spend most of his week visiting orphanages, deaf schools, retirement homes, HOPE Center, the hospital Pediatric unit and a home for the handicapped. He gets to spend his days seeing the little cracks between this world and Heaven and he gets to introduce crew to these amazing people and places … and he works with two of the best Day Crew on the ship, Marina and AR.

During their visits they sing songs, make crafts, paint nails, wash feet … in short they love these people well.

    

I bring a Mercy Ministries Team to the White Orchid every week.  We tell a Bible Story, have a simple craft, blow bubbles, play with balloons, play games, and sing songs.  Some of them laugh uncontrollably, others have huge smiles, they clap and they screech…when you have so little, it doesn’t take too much to make you smile.

The week before, we told them the story of the Good Samaritan Story (Luke 10:25-37) using the STS method and portrayed it with a little, a very little drama performance.  They laughed at the Team’s lack of acting ability and then drew their renditions of the story with large colored pencils on construction paper.

Now, it’s one week later and we are back.   We’re on to The David & Goliath Story (1Samuel 17).  They seem to understand the point, we do our craft,  we play our games and sing our songs.

Before we leave, I always ask if we could pray for them.  Not once, at the White Orchid or anywhere else in Madagascar, have we been told no, but I still always ask.  Then I ask what would you like us to pray for.  I’m always amazed, their request is never for them; food, water, money, healing, medicine, energy, patience, endurance, etc., it’s always for someone else.  That day they asked us to pray for the People of Madagascar who were homeless and suffering from recent cyclone and flood damage.  Go figure, I would’ve guessed a prayer for a bag of rice or a roll of toilet paper.  They ask for prayers for the People of Madagascar.  We pray.

We’re gathering our supplies to leave, when Marina, my translator with watery eyes tells me, “the Director just said, thank you so much for coming, you “LIVE” the Good Samaritan”.