Easter eggs painted like famous figures like George Verwer, Easter sunday service on Saturday night and working on good Friday. This year’s Easter was not like the previous years on the ship.
This Easter the ship that I live on is in a dry dock – which means it’s out of the water for repairs to the hull and the engines. We work hard from 7am till 6pm and have many local workers come on board to help us complete the work on time. The dockyard is in South Asia, in a country where other world religions dominate the landscape and Christianity remains a minority – so there’s little allowance for us to stop work and reflect. But we did find time to have a special prayer evening on Thursday night, watch the passion of the Christ on Friday night and have a resurrection church service on Saturday night – Easter eve. Even though we were hard at work, it was impossible to escape the reality that Jesus suffered for us. The movie The Passion of the Christ really brings home the full impact of what he did for us. In church we were reminded that we will also undergo suffering and trials if we are to grow and share in his glory ‘If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.’ and ‘In this world you will have trouble but take heart, I have overcome the world’.
Monthly Archives: April 2011
Dry dock work
So what am I doing in dry dock? Am I working in the engine room? No. I’m still working in Audio Visual, only my job has changed drastically. In place of managing a team of 5 operators and running big events I am sweating it out running cables, soldering, cutting, cleaning and otherwise making repairs and maintenance long overdue.
Working on this ship has taught me a lot about being a good steward of what I am given. People often told me to be faithful with the little things and then God will give you big things. Certainly the AV on this ship is a very big thing and I’m glad that I spent the time looking after AV in my home church first. Still I have a lot to learn about the proper care and maintenance of equipment. You wouldn’t beleive the dust that accumulates inside stuff after two years!
Like a ship out of water
As the water receded we were able to see just what Logos Hope looks like beneath the water. I even had the oportunity to go down and stand underneath the ship and see the propellers. Andy why would we do such a thing? Twice in every five years ocean-going ships are required to go into dry-dock to do routine maintenance and inspection of the hull and all of the below water fittings. It also gives us the much needed opportunity to perform maintenance and repairs while the ship is closed for business that would otherwise be very disruptive to the ship’s normal operation. And that’s what I’m doing here. I have many repairs to make that have made quite a mess. Hopefully when we open for business again all the little problems will be fixed.
When the water was taken away we could see the condition of the ship, but also when the air conditioning is switched off and the luxuries taken away I can see more clearly who I really am and how much or little I love or respect others when I’m uncomfortable. I pray that God would use this time of hard work and discomfort to break me and mould me to be more like Jesus.
Dream Event
A few years ago I was asked to describe how I want my life to be in 10 years time. I came up with something like this:
I am in a dissuesed factory in India. I am working with a team to install the audio/visual and it technology for an evangelistic event for thousands of people.
There was more to it, but that was the crux of the dream.
Two days ago I lived that dream. Over 3000 people came to the Logos Hope International Night in Colombo, Sri-Lanka. I came a day beforehand and worked hard to install stage lighting and cameras while my collegue Greg worked on the existing sound equipment. Days before-hand I had worked long into the night preparing the equipment that we brought for this event. Now I saw it going into place and working perfectly. During the event I was the video director. My job was to coordinate 3 camera people to provide video coverage of the event. Two were regular camera people from the ship, and one was from the church where we held the event. I chose which camera to put on the screen at any given time. At the end of the event I had almost lost my voice since I was speaking so much to the camera people (not shouting, just giving nice instructions), but it was well worth the long hours and hard work to see the event come together in such an amazing way. the 3000 visitors were mainly Christian so we tailored the event to encourage Christians to ‘go into all the world’. Thank you God for bringing me here to this place and including me in your plan.