|PIC1|More and more Australians are among as many as 1500 serving each year as volunteers short-term or long-term, all paying their own way and raising financial support to do so. One of the charity's 14 national offices has operated at Caloundra, on the Queensland Sunshine Coast, for eight years. In earlier years, there was a support office in Townsville, later moving to Newcastle where one of the smaller ships, the Island Mercy¸ was based to serve the Pacific region.
The emphasis now is on the needs of the world's poorest nations in West Africa, where the hospital ship Africa Mercy provides the platform for services extending up to ten months at a time. The Africa Mercy is the world's largest private hospital ship, with 6 operating theatres, a 78-bed hospital, and a crew of 450. A permanent land-based program operates in Sierra Leone, while teams also work in several nations of Central America and the Caribbean.
Mercy Ships offers a range of health and community development services free of charge. Highly skilled surgeons on board the ships perform thousands of operations each year to correct disability, disfigurement and blindness. Medical and dental teams travel the countries and establish clinics to provide vaccination programs, dental treatment and basic health care for those with no access to these facilities. Local community health workers receive training in hygiene, nutrition and disease prevention. Mercy Ships builds hospitals, clinics, training facilities and basic housing where none exist. Agricultural projects help replenish livestock in war-torn areas and boost food production. Working in partnership with local people, Mercy Ships empowers communities to help themselves. The result is a way out of poverty.
The beginnings
30 years ago, Don Stephens, founder and now Chairman of the international organization Mercy Ships, paid $1 million dollars for the retired cruise liner Victoria, re-named Anastasis – Greek for 'resurrection'. A few days later, initial crew members went on board the first hospital ship that would help fulfill Stephens' vision of following the example of Jesus in giving hope and healing to the world's poor.
Stephens was a teenager when the idea of a hospital ship first struck him. He was 19 when he took a trip with his youth group to the Bahamas. It was 1964. That summer, Hurricane Cleo swept through in what Stephens says was a one-in-a-hundred-year storm that caused massive devastation. Homes were destroyed. People were killed. Stephens' youth group hid in safe places; he was with a small group in a WWII British air hangar. The youth group scattered about and prayed together. After the storm ended, Stephens heard that a teenage girl in another group prayed, saying it would be a wonderful thing if a ship could come in after the devastation, providing care and supplies, showing the love of God during the crisis. "The hearing of it challenged me," Stephens says.
In 1989, after Stephens and his family had lived on the Anastasis for 10 years, they moved off the ship to better care for his handicapped son. He and Deyon continue to serve at the charity's International Operations Centre in Texas. Stephens says, "I am confident that God who has been faithful for the past 30 years will be faithful in the future." He added that with 60 million blind people in the world today, "We don't have to worry about running out of a market."
Among his plans for the future, Stephens wants to see a greater marriage between Mercy Ships and the marketplace. He would like to see small businesses flourishing in the port cities Mercy Ships has visited. He wants Mercy Ships to make an economic difference in the developing world. Stephens says he is still amazed and a little in awe at what God has allowed him to facilitate. "When I see Mercy Ships doing what it does in the developing world, I sense His pleasure."