Never Ending Adventure

Hi,

The fun just never seems to end around here. This evening, at around 8:30pm, we found a barge from one of the near by scrap yards was floating adrift in the river. The barge slowly drifted closer to the ships, giving us all a scare. Fortuneately, the current or wind took the barge away from us and we were able to get a boat out to it and tie it off to a tree. The crazy thing is that it's pretty unusual for a barge that contains tons of scrap metal to break free from it's mooring. We kind of wonder whether or not it was someone who untied it and let it loose. Right now the details are pretty sketchy, but it's possible that someone could've come in on a boat and set her free.

The night watch didn't see what happened, but it's not really his responsibility to pay attention to what's happening in the yard next to ours. One of our gates was found unlocked, even though it'd been checked at 7pm and had been locked then. It's all pretty strange.

I guess i'll give a bit of a synopsis about the "vision meeting of 2006" that we had the other day. It really was a good meeting. The founders of Friend Ships gave a talk to the crew about our accomplishments of 2005 and our plans for the future. In 2005, the Grace did a trip to Haiti where tons of relief supplies were delivered, medical care was given, food was distributed, pastors conferences were held, and much, much more. Also, the Hope and Mer Sea responded to hurricane Katrina and went to Gretna, LA. The ships were stationed there for 10 weeks. During that time, a disaster response radio station broadcast public service announcements as well as Christian music, people's immediate needs were met and tons of other awesome things happened. Okay, so i can't remember all that went on in 2005, but i'm sure if you check out the Friend Ships web site, www.friendships.org, i'm sure you can read up on it all. Then, we got the vision for the future. Haiti, Cuba, Israel and Honduras are all countries we are targeting to deliver aid to. There's plenty of plans for Port Mercy as well, including crew housing, a swimming pool, an outdoors dining/entertainment tent, crew training and much, much more. There are lots of plans for the future. All in all a good meeting.

This is how i really feel about it though. I personally still don't feel as if i have a purpose or a vision at Friend Ships. Right now as an engineer i don't have an immediate supervisor. Our chief engineer is on an extended vacation. This is not a bad thing, cause he's an 82 year old guy, but it leaves the ships on the back burner without any direction. As i've mentioned, i've been working with Matt. We've been doing lots of mainenance and fix it jobs around the ships and property. This is okay, but i feel like there has to be more. I'm just getting tired i guess. After 5 1/2 years of working on the ships i'm just feeling burnt out. I don't really know what else i could do here. I just haven't been giving it my all lately cause i don't have the heart for what i'm working on. So, what the founder had to say was really good, but i just don't see my place in the big scheme of things.

That's the meat of it. That's what i'm feeling as of right now. Will my feelings change? Of course. I'm not all down and out, but i'm not giving it my best anymore. I've got hope for the future. I'm just waiting to see what it will bring. Peace to you all. Keep on commenting and letting us know what you think.

joel