I awoke one morning to the sound of the public address system. It was the captain’s voice. “Good morning ship’s company” he said. And you know that if the captain is speaking it’s going to be something important. He went on to anounce that we would be leaving the port immediately (and it was around 6am) and going to anchor a few kms off the coast. Bad weather nearby had caused large swells and the ship was being damaged in port. I went back to sleep since it was my day off.
It occured to me later that we would stay at anchor for a few days – in fact it turned out to be a week and a half – and for all that time we could not have any ministry onboard and we were very limited on what we could do onshore. On the first day the captain allowed the use of our rescue boat (up to 6 people) to take people to and from the shore – only on business. Then later we hired a service to pick people up, and this weekend we were able to use the 80 person lifeboats to do ministry ashore.
While we were essentially stuck on the ship we had an extra prayer night and movies and nintendo on the big screen to keep us from going crazy. I participated in a leadership training course to help me in my new position. The AV team was able to relax a litte as there were no onboard events and only a few more community events.