P.E. Church Net - News report

P.E. Church Net

CHRISTIAN NEWS
19th May 2005

ANASTASIS HEADING BACK TO SOUTH AFRICA

The Mercy Ships hospitalship ANASTASIS is scheduled to visit South Africa again for a short time this year. The crew is currently on outreach in the war torn nation of Liberia, and will spend about 4 months in South Africa to get prepared for another 7 month outreach in Liberia from November 2005 to June 2006. Many crew says that Liberia is the poorest and most needy nation they've ever seen. Even though we unfortunately won't be able to visit Port Elizabeth this year, there are at least two ways the citizens of PE could get involved.

1. The Anastasis will dock in East London in July and August for an important shipyard phase, with a long list of technical repairs that needs to be done. We are urgently looking for technical volunteers to help us during this period, and we especially need welders, carpenters, painters, electricians, plumbers and mechanical fitters and engineers. If volunteers are willing to make their own way to East London, we will provide them with free accomodation on board as well as meals.

For more information please visit our website:
www.mercyships.org.za
or contact the national office in Cape Town: 021 715 4944

2. We do have a practical need that schools and youth groups might be interested in to participate. We are involved with several schools in Monrovia providing arts therapy classes to help the children to process the emotional wounds of a 14 year civil war. The techniques we use are very similar to what is also used for the same reasons in South East Asia after the Tsunami disaster. What we do need is as many school packs as possible. The more school packs we have, the more children we can reach!!

A school pack consists of a zip--locked bag with the following contents:
  2 Pencils
  2 Pens
  Eraser
  Pencil Sharpener
  Ruler
  Exercise Book
  Crayons
  Coloured Markers
  Coloured Pencils
  Scissors (children but please not plastic ones)

If you would like to become involved, please  me and I can forward you more detailed information. Since the ship will leave early September, it would be best to plan to have all the school packs ready at the end of August so we have enough time to get it to East London before the ship sails 5 September.

If you want to know more about the ship visit to South Africa, or have any other questions, please do visit our website or contact our national office.

As we always say in Mercy Ships: Hope to see you on board!!

Andre Cronje
Port Advance Coordinator
m/v ANASTASIS

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Currently at:
Mercy Ships Southern Africa
Tel: +27 (0)21 715 4944
Mobile: +27 (0)83 259 4859
www.mercyships.org.za

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