Ups and Downs

Well, we finished our first week of onboarding with Mercy Ships! Paul did one portion of onboarding close to 5 years ago for his role here at the ISC so they're not requiring it of him this time although it is recommended he attend as much as possible. Because of this he is able to be the contact person (or the primary caregiver if you will 😉) for the kids. So our day looks a little like this:

7:00am Wake kids and ask them to quickly dress and make their beds
7:05am Wake kids and ask them to please quickly dress and make their beds
7:10am Wake kids and tell them to quickly get dressed
7:15am Pull covers off kids and help them get dressed, forget about making beds
7:25am Breakfast
7:45am Rush out the door, and back in the door to grab multiple forgotten items, rush back out the door then jump in the car (something I insisted we would not be using to get the 1/2 mile to onboarding 🤭) 
7:54am Drop off kids while pretending to be calm, cool, and collected
7:59am Rush into adult onboarding while sweating profusely and insisting tomorrow we WILL be early!
11:55am Paul goes to collect kids and bring them to lunch
12:55pm Paul returns Margaret and Sam to kids onboarding and takes Bridgett home to nap OR Paul and all 3 kids return to kids onboarding and have either a pool day or a field trip!
3:55pm Kids pick up
4:15-4:30pm Mom is released!
 We have learned so much and really gotten to know the other on boarders so well, what a relief it was for the kids to realize the majority of these people are going to the ship with us!
  A lot of what we're learning about is community life, what it looks like, what it should look like, and why it is so important, and we have gotten just a taste of what community living on board the ship will be when first Paul fell ill, and then a week later I succumbed. We had so many people checking in on us, praying for us, helping out with the kids, and our neighbors here even brought us a delicious meal of homemade chicken noodle soup, and chocolate chip cookies! When I walked into the dining hall tonight after having missed 2 1/2 days I felt like a celebrity with everyone saying "she's alive!" and asking how I was feeling 😂
 Our house is still not rental ready. This is definitely a sore spot and source of stress for us as we had really really wanted to have that off our plates before the start of on boarding but with the illnesses and other struggles it just hasn't happened. The house is finally empty and almost done being painted so once that is done we'll give it a good clean and be able to hand over the keys to the property manager! In the meantime I'm sure we'll need mow another couple times too 🙄.
 Prayer requests:
1) Patience with ourselves, each other, and our contractors as our house is made ready to rent.
2) Safety as we travel to Spain THIS MONTH!! to join the Global Mercy.
3) Health for the kids, they have not yet shown any symptoms of what Mom and Dad had.
4) We have sold one of our cars, please pray the paperwork goes smoothly for that and that we can sell our other car quickly!
The onboarders on our first day!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Spain, Sailing, and Sierra Leone!

Image
Hi Everyone!  So much has happened since our last post, I will try to fill you in without making this post too lengthy!  Spain   We arrived in Spain Tuesday July 29th after the smoothest travel I have experienced in a long time! We only had a short delay leaving the airport in Madrid so we arrived at the Jerez airport 1 hour later than we were scheduled, that is a miracle in my book! We were the only people in line for passport checks in Madrid and all our luggage was delivered to us without incident upon arrival in Jerez, Praise the Lord! Despite this we were exhausted and we still had a 40 minute Uber ride to Cadiz and then embarkment procedures to go through upon arrival to the ship. We arrived at the shipyard and were immediately met by friends! Friends we had met through our onboarding process who had arrived ahead of us, and friends we had met last year when they were in Texas for their own onboarding before joining the ship. We were energized and excited and made i...
Read more

August, September, and October!

Image
 Hi Everyone!      Has it really been almost 3 months since we've done an update?! Time has flown since docking in Freetown! We will try to do as thorough of an update as possible without making this into a book! August     August started off on a high with our arrival into Sierra Leone and the kids starting school.      The kids were excited and a bit nervous to start school, and I (Jill) was feeling more apprehensive about sending my babies off to school when I had always thought I would be homeschooling at least through their elementary years! We all quickly realized that school teachers and staff are just amazing! They truly love the kids and their jobs and they work so hard to make learning fun and engaging! The kids have been adjusting really well and academically are right where I hoped they would be which was such great news! The mornings are a bit rough and every Thursday and Friday the reality of having to get up and go to school EV...
Read more

First Post (Jill)

Image
Hi Everyone!  Welcome to our blog! We are hoping to be able to update this frequently to have a way to kind of bring you all on this adventure with us!  When we moved to East Texas in 2019 for Paul to work with Mercy Ships we knew we were open to, and even hoping for an opportunity to serve on board one of the ships as a family. Paul would occasionally check the postings to see if there was anything available we qualified for and in January 2024 there was a posting! We discussed it and Paul was a "yes" and I was a "no". I couldn't imagine giving up the lifestyle I'd recently started diving deeper into (homeschooling, nature living, organic eating) to go live on a ship in a port in the middle of a city! Very quickly after that I started questioning my response and honestly starting to regret it, but it wasn't until the next winter that I actually admitted that to Paul. After some discussions and prayer Paul checked again and there was another posting! We ...
Read more