Christmas Drip

 There was a photo booth for all the fancy Christmas clothes everyone was wearing.
I am sat next to my friend Caz from Kyrgyzstan.

Merry Christmas!

 It's Christmas time onboard! I was working 00:00am - 06:00am Christmas day. The only rational thing to do is catch and kill Santa. Mission accomplished. No Christmas next year...

 I'm only joking of course. This Christmas has been a really wonderful time, full of reflection and worship... for God came to earth, and this really is amazing.

I was able to celebrate a short Christmas party with engine. Here things got out of control...

Christmas Eve was a very formal event. Everyone dressed up dapper for the most festive family dinner yet. Of course, I rose to the occasion...

After Christmas Day service, it was time for photos on Deck 9. I tried to keep it low-key, but with Jotham, that is never really a possibility.

And of course, whats a Christmas celebration without some decorations? One of my cabin mates is an electrician. Oh yeah!

In all seriousness, Christmas is such a special time. Please take time out of the festive fun to consider why we celebrate, and how this can impact our own lives.

Merry Christmas!

Lebanon Arrival Photos

 While the Logos was arriving in Lebanon, our photographer took some photos of me. I thought I'd leave them here!

Graduation

 I am now officially a Watchkeeper!  A short while ago, I graduated with the rest of my engine class, and now I'm ready to serve as part of officially signed-on crew! My whole class passed. I'm so proud how we came together to help each other out and support one another during this journey!

Here I am receiving my gift from the Chief Engineer!

As part of engine, we have assigned teams we go on watch with. My team is called Rust-eze, which keen eyed CARS fans will spot is the official sponsor of Lightning McQueen. Here we are celebrating!

But of course, Engine is only one half of Marine Operations. Without the Deck Department, we would be like sitting ducks in the water. This graduation was also for them, and I'm so glad that we have this opportunity to work together for the glory of our Lord.

Sailing to the Middle East!

 After three months on board, we have finally arrived in the Middle East! How exciting is that!

Logos Hope has docked in Beirut, Lebanon. It's a little bit crazy, but I'm so glad that we're here, having the opportunity to share knowledge, help and hope with the locals!

I also wanted to talk about what I did during the sailing. It was a much smoother sail than the one to Cyprus - only one day long and I didn't get seasick. But even still, I spent the day working. That day it was my task to make a bin. 

I had never worked with metal before (and neither had the person I was working with) but together we cracked on and tried our best. We had to empty a barrel of the dregs of oil, then drill holes into the side for the handles. We made the handles (that took some time) before finishing off with a classic engine room shoddy paintjob. This is what we came up with!

 

 

I'm actually so proud of it!
I will sign off with a picture of Beirut at night... this is a proper city!

Dentistry

 For the last couple of weeks I've been absent from the blog. The reason being because I've had some trouble with my tooth, and the recovery process after that.

I needed a root canal and filling, so for the past week I've been dealing with that. But despite this, I've actually really enjoyed my time in Cyprus. The dentist was top tier, and even though my time there has been a challenge, I feel so much more comfortable on the ship, so much more grateful for my friends onboard, and so much more energised for the current port of call; Beirut. Big thanks to my ship-brother and watch-partner, Emmanuel from Zambia, for how supportive he was while we were working together!

Thankfully my tooth is feeling fine now, so praise God that debacle is over!

I'll talk about Lebanon (and the sail over) another time, but for now, here are some pictures of what I got up to! In these pictures, I was exploring Limasoll old town with my old friend Jonathan (from my STEPer days in 2019) and another friend from the Netherlands.

Exploring Cyprus

 After my sailing watch, I had two off days... and seeing how they coincided with arriving in Cyprus, I took the opportunity to explore the island a little.

I made two principal journeys. On Sunday, I visited Limisoll Old Town (albeit briefly). Imagine my delight when I realised that in Cyprus, they drive on the left side of the road! Indeed, much of the scenery is reminiscent of the UK, including road signs, shops and language. In Cyprus, Greek and English are the principal languages.

I tried to visit an old castle, but it was closed. Instead I went to McDonalds.

On Monday, I joined some friends and made the journey to the city of Paphos. Wow! What a city! There was so much history here, even a location where the Apostle Paul visited! I had some homemade food at a classic restaurant and got to see a wonderful old church! Look at the mosaic!

We had to rush back to the bus to get back to the ship in time. By then, I was pretty exhausted.

As I write this, I have an off-day before a week of watchkeeping again. I'm looking forwards to it, but I have a spot of toothache, so please pray for that! Thank you!

Reflecting on Montenegro

 It's true that the ship has been in Cyprus for a few days now, but before I talk about that, I wanted to share and reflect about my time in Montenegro.

In my last week in Portonovi I was fortunate to make some friends with a young local couple. My time with them was most definitely something to remember and I'm so grateful to God that now I have some real friends in Montenegro!

Portonovi, the port which the ship was moored, is actually a resort owned by arabic owners. Indeed, Montenegro flags aren't even allowed to fly within the port. But the town adjacent is called Đenovići, and it really is the strangest thing.

Half the town is owned by foreigners that visit during the Summer, as in, the houses are empty half the year, leaving the locals to depend on the summer season and the tourism that this brings. The friends whom I made pointed to houses along the way as we walked and told me 'an American owns that house, a Russian owns that house, I've not seen the owners of that house for ten years'.

I made friends with this couple, gave them some tours of the ship and they gave us a nighttime tour of the old town (Herzeg Novi). The next day, myself and some friends squeezed into their car and we toured around some other areas of the bay. Really amazing!

They told me that many of the local people's only chance for a proper living is to work in the maritime industry. The woman said that she works as a nurse, but she hasn't been paid for a number of months, and she likely won't get paid until early next year.

They were open to prayer, and we prayed together, which I am so glad about. They wanted to show me more, but our schedules didn't align.

Getting to meet this couple was really super, but it still highlights ways in which the world is changing, and not always for the better.

Sailing Watch

This past week has been a real challenge. The ship has left Portonovi, Montenegro and sailed across the Mediterranean to Limassol, Cyprus. The journey took five days!

During this time, I had my first week of watch. This is when I keep an eye on all that's happening in the engine room, recording what the machine's do and making sure that everything is under control. Watch-keepers (that's me) do this for 8 hour shifts for seven days, but because this sail we lacked sufficient numbers of engineers, we had a more 'interesting schedule'.

While Logos Hope was at sea, my schedule was 4am - 8am, 4pm - 8pm. Four hours on, eight hours off. As you could imagine, pretty exhausting.

To compound the challenge, for a couple of days we were sailing in stormy weather, so most of the people onboard were feeling seasick (present included). People said this was the most difficult sail in a long time.

But actually, despite the circumstances, I really learnt a lot during my watch! The ship made it to Cyprus on Friday evening, and is now open to the public!

I'm really proud of how the watch-keepers worked together during this time, and I think we're better off for it after surviving such a temperamental first watch.