My January update - slight repeat of my last update.

To summarise greatly everything I have been doing:

July I travelled to Zambia and did 5½ weeks mission work, generally open air, door to door talking to people, playing lots of football with youth and generally having an amazingly blessed time in Africa. We saw so many lives changed and met lots of wonderful people. I also had a very near death experience being chased down the road by a rather large upset Elephant, that was interesting.

Then my team travelled to Madagascar where we spent a week helping to prepare for a conference, 2 weeks attending a conference and helping, and then 2 weeks in a small village doing evangelism, prayer and worship. It was such a different time to Zambia, especially with the language barrier (they speak Malagasy and French mainly) but it was time of blessing the nation and speaking truth to people.

Then after sometime in Perth and Sydney I returned to the UK in October and got a job working for Sandwell Council (where I had worked the previous summer) for 2 months, which I really enjoyed and had a great time with the guys there and got some work done.

Then on 6^th December I left the UK again for Gran Canaria with over 84kg of luggage (don’t ask – but I managed to get it on the plane paying much much less than I should have for that huge amount – a real blessing), and by the evening was lying in a 4 berth cabin on the Africa Mercy. Finally after almost 10 years of waiting for this moment to arrive I am on an active Mercy Ship.

For the first week hear it was a matter of saying hello and goodbye to so many of my close friends on the ship but after a while I started making lots of new friends that can cope with my sarcastic British wit!!!

Work wise I am working on the Project team again dealing with little projects that need to get done onboard ship and preparing for the larger jobs. Also I am being trained as a linehandler which means that just before we are about to leave dock (or arrive at a dock) a called is put over the Ship PA system “Linehandlers, please man your stations” so I get to the Aft of the ship and pull the mooring lines in (or get them out) which is not as easy as it sounds especially when the lines are wet and very heavy.

We left Gran Canaria on Saturday evening and are now docked in Tenerife – all of this sounds like a great holiday but unfortunately I am going to have to be working most of the time I am here, but I hope to get a few days off to do a little sight seeing.

Apart from that I am trying my best to get involved with anything I can in preparation to getting to Africa and joining the Community Development Team as a Water and Sanitation Project worker in February 2008.

I really hope you are all having an amazing blessed Christmas day and enjoy the New Years celebrations too. It is very strange being away from my family and old friends during this time – to say it’s struggle is an understatement, but everyone here is in the same situation so brings us all together.

So in closing, hopefully next time you hear from me I’ll be in Africa and have some great stories and photos to show you all, I’ll also have my software all back again and so I can do my old colourful attachments.

Keep safe, and be blessed

Paul Waldron

m/v Africa Mercy

Docked in Santa Cruz, Tenerife.