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Sorry to have been out of touch for so long. I forgot my DTS address book at home and haven't been able to access my CompuServe for a few weeks. I still haven't been able to get my CompuServe working with the ship phones, but now at least I have your address in my work computer and am allowed to use that freely. So if you want to write back you can send things to this address "gephardt@mercyships.org"
I've been on the Caribbean Mercy for two weeks now and am beginning to feel a little bit at home. It was a difficult transition partly because of the awkward timing of my arrival. While the ship was in dry dock, only about 1/3 to of the crew were on board for the first week I was here. It made it a little easier to learn a few names at a time, but the routines on board were very confusing. Now they are in PR Mode and it will be very busy around the ship. They have tours from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily from Tuesday through Sunday.
We will be in tour/PR mode throughout the trip to Korea and back. We will off-load some relief supplies and a few people will be allowed to leave the ship to go to a local orphanage and the medical people will do surgeries and medical care in North Korea. When we are in South Korea we will be doing tours again. They want to see many times more people visit than usual.
An interesting thing about this ship is that since it is not considered a passenger vessel, the law only allows them to sail with 87 people total. Since they have over 100 long term crew plus children, every time they go somewhere they have to fly or drive part of the crew to the next docking place. I think that I will be sailing through to Korea this time, but sometimes I guess I will fly or drive/ride there.
Stephen and Belinda Baumann are on leave from the Anastasis and have stopped in for a visit today. They are on their way to visit Stephen's sister in Seattle, but they had never been aboard the CARIBBEAN MERCY. There are several people on board who went through DTS with the Baumann's or served with them on the Anastasis. It was fun to see them. God Bless, Deb