Archives for 2020

Watch this message in which Lynne shares how we can continue deepening our faith during this time when we are not gathering at the church. Click here for links to a family worship serves, church school lessons for children, information about technology that can be used to gather remotely and a link to the Faith and Family class on Sunday. .

Lynne shares some of her thoughts on caring for ourselves and our families in this time of uncertainty in this video message.  For a list of good Christian education resources for families, adults, kids, and teachers, please click here.

God called, and I answered. For twelve weeks (October to January), I recently served as a volunteer pharmacist onboard the Africa Mercy at port in Dakar, Senegal. Mercy Ships is an international faith-based charity whose foundation rests on an integrated biblical worldview of service to others and a personal relationship with Jesus. It uses hospital ships to transform lives and serve nations by offering free medical care, bringing hope and healing to the forgotten poor. Most all crew members serve as volunteers, pay for their own travel immunizations and airfare, and in addition pay a crew fee to cover room and board. Strangely enough, it was competitive to secure my position as one of three pharmacists onboard with more pharmacists waiting in line to serve.

There are approximately 350 crew members onboard at any given time, representing thirty countries. The best part about serving on the Africa Mercy is The Community, and the worst part is The Community! While serving, I met dozens of new friends from all around the world, but life onboard the ship necessitates close living conditions. Privacy and access to laundry are at a premium. My duties as pharmacist involved forty-five exhausting hours each week. The reward was the satisfaction of knowing that I had helped provide free, professional medical care to the poor of Senegal. During the nine-month Field Service in Dakar, an estimated 2,500 surgeries will have been performed; surgeries include maxillofacial, orthopedic, and ocular, in addition to limited general surgery. The ship houses five operation arenas in addition to an eighty-bed hospital, wards often with 12 beds. The accompanying family member sleeps on a mat underneath the patient’s bed.

While there I attended church services in the city of Dakar at the International Baptist Church. Services were in both French and English; the Africans have melodic singing voices and worship with enthusiasm. I also had the opportunity to ride a ferry out to the island of Goree, located about 1.5 miles off the coast. Goree Island is Senegal’s most popular tourist destination; for three hundred years (1550-1850) the island was the primary shipping site for slave trade with approximately twenty million slaves exported to Brazil, Cuba, the American Colonies, and other destinations. I had expected the trip to be totally somber, especially since I was traveling with a new friend from Cameroon along with six other crew members. Indeed, it was truly sobering at the Slave House with its dark history and infamous “door of no return,” but the day also proved to be fun and refreshing with the island’s colorful tourism, tropical blossoms, and beach. With new-found camaraderie among the eight of us, we enjoyed fellowship and a lengthy meal at a restaurant high on the island, framed with the standard joke that the restaurant staff must have first had to catch the fish that we were served!

You, too, can serve. The Africa Mercy and the soon-to-be-launched Global Mercy offer many opportunities including medical, business, engineering, chaplaincy, food services, reception, navigation, and teachers. Yes, there is the Academy on ship with 30 students, all children of crew members. The Mercy Foundations website lists its needed positions. If God is calling you, I urge you to check it out!

Lin Harmon

Community event: Tandem Friends School will host its second annual TANDEM Speaks! – Voices & Values Creating Community – event featuring John Hunter, a Charlottesville resident, TED Speaker, and current Founder and Director of the World Peace Game Foundation on March 13 at 7pm at the PVCC Dickinson Center. Mr. Hunter will share his visionary perspectives on the importance of engaging students in complex issues and preparing them to be global citizens. The conversation will examine the topics of peace, the power of empathy, and tools to enable children to have a positive impact in the world. Tickets available here. For more info contact Sarah Bedford.

On March 22 at 9:30 a.m., come to the library, to hear Earl Swift, nominated seven times for the Pulitzer Prize, discuss his celebrated book, Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Waterman of Vanishing Tangier Island.

Tangier Island, located in the middle of Chesapeake Bay, has been called the “soft-shell crab capital of the world,” as well as being at the heart of Virginia’s oyster industry. Tangier was settled at the time of the American Revolution by families from Cornwall and Devon in England, and the people there still speak with an accent described as a “colonial-era Cornwall patois wrapped inside a Virginia twang.”

Unfortunately, its inhabitants might also prove to be among the first climate refugees in the United States. Tangier has lost more than two-thirds of its landmass to sea-level rise and land subsidence since 1850, and if current trends continue, and in the absence of expensive coastal restoration and protection efforts, the island will likely be uninhabitable within 25-50 years.

Now, with the help of community leaders on Tangier, arrangements have been made for church members to spend the weekend of May 2-3 on the island, staying in their community center and attending services at Swain Memorial United Methodist Church, before returning on the afternoon ferry to Reedville, VA. The cost for the ferry and car-pooling to Reedville is $50/person, and there will be an orientation meeting for the trip on March 25, at 7 p.m. in the lounge. If you would be interested in going on the trip,  contact me or Ken before Earl Swift’s class on the 22, so we can reserve seats on the ferry soon.
Peter Gates
on behalf of the WPC Green Team

https://www.westminsterva.org/14322-2/