Happy New Year: Pray for Guinea

Happy New Year!! We are having a quiet New Years, the girls and I sat outside our house and watched some farmers fireworks across the fields next to our house.. They were pretty cool for a low budget display. Guinea continues to unravel, please pray for the people of Guinea.

Christmas, 2008

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are having a quiet Christmas as I recover from my surgery. The girls are so excited we got a second hand fish tank and goldfish for them for Christmas.

December 22nd, 2008: Mark's Hernia Repair

I'm headed in for surgical repair of my abdominal hernia, today. I f any of you haven't seen it, it is the size of the a football sticking out right below my rib cage and my kids called it "Experiment 626" a.k.a. Stitch. The kids have written messages on my body for the doctors. They include "Warning: Contents Under Pressure!" and "Danger Blast Zone" and so on. The surgeon expected me to be in great pain and need to spend the night in the hospital due to the size and complexity of the surgery, but I felt nothing and didn't even take any of my pain meds, my total meds for the first week was 8 ibuprofen. PRAISE GOD!

December 20th, 2008: Guinea Coup

Over the last 6 months I have been warning our leadership that we should look for another country other than Guinea for the 2010 Field Service because of the Junta regime and the fragility of its leader Mr. Conteh. He did die today and a young Captain in the Army has launched a coup. He has threatened to kill anyone involved in corruption, which is just about every government leader and members of Mr. Conteh's family and friends. Please pray for the people of Guinea as they struggle to live through this uncertain military action. Please also pray for my team as we scramble to set up protocol negotiations with Angola and Congo, two countries that we have never been to before.

September 23rd, 2008: Benin Assessment

I am once again in West Africa performing an assessment for Benin and negotiating protocols with the government. Just to make sure this trip won’t be boring, I will be traveling alone without a team mate and the city I am traveling too has just had a cholera outbreak where several hundred have gotten sick and several have died. I could use your prayers on this as if I get sick there is no one to cover for me, so I simply cant afford to get sick. Please keep my health in your prayers.

I arrived on the evening of October 10th and proceeded to spend the next 2 hours waiting for my luggage to come out on the conveyor belt. The heat was stifling with high humidity and as I waited the first 15 minutes for the belt to start, I realized I was back. The smell of several hundred Africans crammed into a tight space with the humidity and heat hit you like a sledge hammer. As I was try to think cool thoughts, I started singing a worship song in my head to stay calm and try to enjoy this first moment in Africa.

But then the belt started and what occurred next could only be described as a combination of a rugby scrum and roller derby. People immediately began pushing people over to get bags, that in the end were not even theirs. Everyone owns a black bag in Africa and they all look alike. People would scratch and punch to get a bag and then hurl it back on to the belt. One of the first pieces out was a dog carrier with a little dog that would not stop barking. As this African version of a wrestling cage match went on for 2 hours, that dog continued to go by me every 2.2 minutes (yes I timed, it I had nothing better to do). In the beginning I was sympathetic to the dog; but after 2 hours of his barking to remind me my luggage was still missing, I was starting to wonder how bad dog could really taste.

Eventually my luggage arrived unscathed and I finally found our former Executive Director Daslin (Small) Oueounou waiting for me. She had actually tried to call Zana to see if I had missed the flight.

I have kidnapped 2 of my daughters stuffed animals and I am journaling their exploits, so my daughters can feel like they are a part of this. Here is a picture of my captives being tortured by an African Grey parrot that can whistle “the pirates who don’t do anything song”:

My task here is to be very difficult. The port officials only want us to stay 6 months, while our new programs model calls for a 10 month stay. The difference in time represents 2,000 less surgeries, 4,000 less dental procedures and up to $5 million less money spent on medical training and infrastructure.




I am also charged with assessing 8-10 community clinics to find 2 that will receive our Strategic health programs and tie up a series of medical question left unfinished by the last team due to a 6 week medical worker strike.


I went to one clinic on my 2nd day and under a wood pile I could hear all this rustling. Now I know what your thinking, I should step back from it and leave it alone. Well your obviously not me I got a big stick and from a distance lifted up a piece of plywood and about 50 lizards jumped out running on their back legs and came right for me. Ok I’m told by my interpreter that 1. for a big man I’m very fast 2. for a big man I can sound like a little girl. Before you judge me, you should have seen these things. It was my Jurassic park moment of my life.

At the end of my first week, I met with the US Ambassador, Madame Gayleetha Brown. She is a wonderful diplomat, in the Teddy Roosevelt straight talk, big stick approach. She offered to sit next to me in meetings with the different ministries to assure them that it was in their best interests to facilitate our ships needs.

After several meetings with senior ministers, the President of Benin has decided to call a special meeting of all his ministers and I am to address this joint session and present our argument as to why we should be allowed to stay for 10 months.

I NEED YOUR PRAYERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This Thursday at 11am EST and 10 CST I will be addressing this special Presidential conference with the US Ambassador at my side. I need to convince these ministers that the benefit we offer to this community outweighs the costs of our staying on the harbor an additional 4 months. They have compelling reasons to not do this so I need the Lord to perform this miracle and that it is Him that they hear and not me.

If you could stop what your doing at that time for just a moment and pray for me I would greatly appreciate it.


If you could pray for my girls while I’m away that would be great. I am constantly reminded what an awesome wife I have, that would allow me to have these adventures without her. When in my heart I know she has the greatest calling to go. I think Jessie is second and Cailin and me tie for 3rd. It is hard when I’m doing what they love to do without them. I am greatly blessed as a husband and father.


Thank you for your prayers!


On a more funny or sad note, I can’t decide. Its probably best described as an African moment. I was touring a hospital, where in order to impress me they were having me look at every single room and closet in the facility. We suddenly found ourselves in an operating room. They gave me a scrub shirt and a mask that smelled like the last person who wore it had some bad fish for lunch. They then handed me a pair of flip flops so small my daughter couldn’t have worn them. As I tried to put them on they just turned sideways so I was just walking on the balls of my feet and then we enter the OR. As I enter all the doctors and nurses stop what they are doing to come over and talk to me and have pictures taken with me. Unfortunately they all abandon the patient they were working on. After 5 minutes, I ask if they need to finish with their patient. They just kind of shrug and turn back to the patient as if they were disappointed the fun was over. Please if I get hurt…..FLY me out of here!!!!! If necessary freeze me and send me home to be thawed and worked on.

Seriously, we really need to help these people their medical infrastructure is almost non-existent for their small capital let alone their entire country.

Thank you all for your prayers and support. We could not do this without you being in our lives.

May we be successful and that God gets all the glory!

Love you all.

In His service and yours,


Mark
a.k.a, Big-Big, or Big Belly Bossman

March 2nd, 2008:Follow Up To My Last Post

Hi,

I realize Yesterday's posting was a little dark so I wanted to remind everyone why I am here, it is for the children and mothers of this world that my family and I feel called to missions and specifically West Africa. The children live amongst the ever present darkness with smiles that could melt any mans heart. Most times they seek just the comfort of your hand or that you would want to know their name. A picture of them in my digital camera that they can see for themselves always brings laughter and surprise. The wedding of the Cokers that I attended was an amazing experience and I feel blessed to have been a part of it. The other couple from Mercy Ships Festus & Jessica met us there and we had a great time. The service was so loud I felt like I'd been to a rock concert but it was beautiful. The groom was dancing to the Lord during the wedding service and soon the bride was dancing before the Lord as well. Below are some pictures of my trip:

World Food Program Flight

The President Visits Liberia

The Coker Wedding in Sierra Leone

A Typical Village Meeting Place

February 27, 2008: Sierra Leone Assessment

SIERRA LEONE

Sierra Leone Is Very Mountainous and Very Breezy, Not Like Liberia. Praise God!

Our time in Sierra Leone has been different than what I expected. Since there war has been over for the last 11+ years, secret cults and organized crime has risen up amongst even the poorest community. In comparison to Liberia, it is a much darker place with evil acts

One community has only 3 out of 16 wells working. We found the 3 working wells under control of sub-chiefs who were extorting money from families to use the well under the notion that money recovered would be used to maintain those wells. As usual I am very suspect of these things so while my team was talking to some previous Mercy Ships employees I went on my own walkabout to see what I could find. I’m not sure if it was the Holy Spirit or God simply using my previous lifestyle as a tool, but I quickly found a palm wine party going on. The party was in the house of one of these sub chiefs. They were suspicious of me at first, but they offered me a drink of palm wine and I took it (faked drinking it). They invited me into their party which included the thugs who guard the wells and a couple of ladies-of-the-night who seemed to be plying their trade in the day as well.

Local "Poro" Mob Chief and his entourage

A local well controlled by the "Poro" who charge locals for water, even thought he well was built by an NGO for the community

It was here I found that these chiefs were members of a male secret society called a “poro”, the women’s societies are called a “sandi.” These societies are based on witchcraft and organized crime and are

responsible for the demonic hold on these people of west Africa. It is the “sandi” societies that force girls to have circumcisions in tents where many die from infection; they even force the girls to eat their own body parts.

Life is hard for children most walked an hour to school with no shoes

The traditional medicine men are brutal witch doctors. They use spirits to heal or curse people and are rich and important due to the fear they bring. One man, Numu, even showed me papers from the government saying he was licensed to cast evil spirits. We have heard from western health workers that these people have repeatedly killed any child with a deformity. What they tell the mothers is that their child is not “mortal” but in fact an evil spirit. They walk into the bush with the child and come back later with a viper, saying here is your child’s true form. Unfortunately, the child is never seen again.

This child was treated by a witch doctor and has a green paste and talsiman. He has Burkets Lymphoma and could be treated by our ship with a chemo treatment that has a 95% success rate, if we can get there in time.

The devil does not walk here, he dances! This country is held more in the demonic reigns, in my opinion, than even the home of voodoo, Benin.

I cannot emphasize the need for Christians to pray for the workers here, we are facing extremely dark powers as we try and help these people. At times I wonder why God has brought me here but when I see Him use my old lifestyle as a tool to find out what is going on under the surface I realize he has been leading me up to this my whole life. The chief had former military guys working as thugs fro him, they respected that I was ex-military with “powerful” tattoos on my arm to show what a great warrior I was. It was through this strange bonding that allowed me to win their confidence and learned what was really going on in the community. My role as Security Officer has honed these skills to allow me to approach them as a peer and find out what is going on so that we can effectively counter the works of the enemy.

My suspicions were confirmed when the sub-chiefs told me that they drink their profits from the wells every day instead of trying to maintain them. We must be sure to build wells only in safe places where the wells are controlled by religious schools or churches. This won’t guarantee they won’t be taken over by the “poro” but at least we will have a better chance at keeping them open to the public.

My meetings with the government officials have gone well and the Minister of Health for Sierra Leone is a former US doctor so we could really sit down and honestly address the scope of the problems here. I do not wish his job for anything. They are able to get the important supplies to clinic HIV and TB test as well as treatment, especially for pregnant mothers because the World Health Organization gives it to them.. But they can not get them basic antibiotics or ibuprofen. Most child deaths that we saw recorded was from respiratory infections because they had no way to treat it. We must see what we can do to assist this. If we build any clinic, it must be in cooperation with another NGO, because we have shown that the government s alone cannot support these clinics appropriately.

We have been eating sardine sandwiches while in the bush. On hot days it take a lot to choke one of these down along with our water that is the temperature of tea. The roads here are really rough as we have to travel through the mountains everyday. We have found a lot of cataract and max-facial candidates. The boy below has berket's lymphoma and will require chemotherapy. It is awesome we found him, this tumor has been noticeable for 2 months and is growing rapidly.

Sardine Sandwiches Are Tough To Choke Down In Heat

I have been blessed with meeting two former African crew members who are married and now living here as they try and start ministries here to bring light to such a dark place. I am actually going to a wedding today for one couple. The wedding was planned for last week, but they postponed it because it was clean up day. A day where all the roads are closed and each family must clean the area in front of their house. Well after all that the government also postponed the clean up day to today, so the weeding is on and we will need to take a 2-hour journey in the bush to get around the city to get to the weeding. It is guarantied to be a long hot day, especially for a big white guy like me. I will update tonight after I have returned from wedding.

The second married couple is Festus and Jessica. Jessica is a Mennonite woman from Pennsylvania who fell in love with Paul and the desire to reach his countrymen with the Gospel while on the ship. I have a great deal of respect and love for these two and the difficult task God has laid before them. I hope to continue to update you on their progress as they seek to engage the enemy on his home turf.

May Christ meet each of you every morning with a sense of purpose and joy of being in His will. Thank you all for being a part of our ministry, we could not do it without you.

February 17th, 2008: Liberia Assessment

I spent this first week in Liberia and then on following Sunday I will fly on a small single engine plane run by the World Food Program to Freetown, Sierra Leone.

Liberia has not changed much since I left it 5 months ago. The power promised to the city runs less than a mile and the water system only shows the improvements that Mercy Ship had done by the end of last outreach. These people are still in great need.

On a positive note, I got to visit our orphanage 3 times during my stay and I am so proud to see what has happened there. The work of our family and many other families from the ship and you our supporters have made such a huge difference in these children’s lives. When we first cam they slept on the mud floor with a roof that did little to keep them dry. There was no school, no church for them to worship, no means to cook and feed during rainy system. Now that has all changed. They have roofs that keep them dry, they have cement floors so they don’t catch parasites from the dirt floors, they have a church where they here the word of God twice a week, they have a place to cook and eat during the worst weather. The boys are learning masonry and the girls are learning sewing as possible jobs later in their lives. But most of all they know that there are brothers and sisters in Christ from around the world that love them and desire to have God do all that His will has for them. I can not tell you what a great feeling that is to be a part of this. For those of you supporting us, part of your donations has gone to build this haven for these children. I hope take great joy in knowing what the Lord has done with your offering. I am glad to say the girls who suffered the longest, now have the best accommodations and truly feel special in their living quarters.

We are in the last stages of building the last building to house the new orphan boys that the government has entrusted us with. As usual, the boys we have trained made over 500 mud bricks while we were gone and now only seek concrete to lay them and plaster over them so the rain does not dissolve their hard work. Amongst our families, we are trying to raise 8 thousand dollars to finish this building. That would include cement, roof, doors, mosquito screens, and beds with mattresses. If any of you feel like you would want to become a part of this, please let me know. I guarantee that the money will only go to the building and we will make sure to update all of you on its construction progress.


Orphanage School in Session

Orphans Getting Ride in Truck,

for most it was their first ride in a vehicle

Well back to the work at hand; we are concentrating our efforts in an area North West of Monrovia just past the orphanage you all helped us build. The first community is Royesville, it is comprised of 53 micro-villages having populations between 50 and 600 people. A horrible road and a bamboo bridge, which yes could hold me as I crossed it, link these communities. The people are the poorest of the poor. If someone gets sick, they must carry that person up to 11km in wheelbarrow to see a health tech. If they have cholera they would have to go to redemption hospital up to 20km away. Most can not afford the trip or the treatment (roughly 2-3 dollars)so they go home and call a traditional medicine man who will use leaves and spirits to cure the disease. You can guess how that story usually ends.

Yes, This Was My Indiana Jones Moment And Yes, I Do Hear The Movie Music In My Head When I Do These Things...Is That Wrong?

The second community we are working in is Tenegar, a predominantly Muslim community. The president requested we work in this are to ensure that the Muslims know that this Christian President is concerned for them as well. We actually found that there was more to this then we were told but I can discuss that in private at another time. For now we will use this opportunity to show these people what the love of Christ can do for them as people from around the world come to their village to build a clinic and wells and teach them better health, water, sanitation and agriculture practices. People who came simply because God asked “who will I send?” and they replied “send me!” We found a Muslim school that was using the bible as their reading curriculum, never doubt the way that the Lord may reach these people, they may do it themselves.

Our team met with the local Imam and Islamic leaders to discuss our plans and reasons to help their community.

The Bible Was Being Used To Teach English In Islamic School

Our Assessment Team
In these communities our 12 man team would sit down with the village chief, elders and imam to meet and discuss the needs of the community. We would sit under trees or in huts and hold council. It was a learning experience to say the least, I can feel my diplomacy training already kicking in.

Their water situation is dire. January through March most of their wells dry up and become useless. They are forced to seek alternate water sources such as creeks and rivers, which are also for bathing and their goats and chickens. Contamination of the water is guaranteed and huge outbreaks of cholera and typhoid persists during these times. I know you may be thinking, why we do not just teach them to boil the water. The problem is that they cannot afford the charcoal or wood to “burn” the water, so the drink it “raw.” In their mind, it is cheaper overall to risk cholera and seek treatment then to pay to boil their drinking water every day and even if they did boil it the men working in the swamp would still scoop water from where they are standing as they try and work the rice crops.

Wells are the only hope for these people to change their morbidity rates and allow them to become productive people. We also have to defeat the enemy here. As in most African countries, even the Christians hold on to demonic customs such as scarring and talismans and will quickly resort to witch doctors as a cheaper alternative or when modern medicine does not appear to act quickly enough. We as Christians must be in these villages every day to make a statement that there is a better way and it is only through the love of Christ that will break the bondage of the witch doctor and the evil that empowers them. We must be realistic. In the year that we are here, we may only truly change the habits and beliefs of a few people in each villages. But they will become voices of truth long after we have left and hopefully be the spark that brings the light of Jesus in to these people’s lives.

As you know, my job is to find how we can measure whether we are doing any good for these people in transforming their lives so that they may rise up and pursue God’s will for them and their people. It is hard for them to just live at this point. We have found that the rural clinics, which are funded by the ministry of health, keep awesome records each month of the type of diseases they are treating. It will be these historic records that we will measure the success of our programs against. We will come back a year after our programs are complete and see if we had any impact on the morbidity rates from malaria, cholera, typhoid, STD’s, HIV, TB and the whole cast of other diseases and parasites. I praise God that he allowed us to find these.

Praise God! They Keep Awesome Records For Us To Use At The Rural Clinics

As usual, there have been many “cultural” moments on this trip. Mark Wright who is my partner on this trip is quite skinny, since our names are both Mark and somewhat confusing, I am now BIG-BIG and he is small-small. My two skinny travel companions are amazed to see how many African women find me quite attractive with offers of marriage almost on a daily basis, they say I look “fine!” You will be happy to know, that these proposals are not going to my head as the appeal of my size is simply that they believe there will be enough food left over for them as well. We visited a village that built a track in the middle of the bush, to entertain and train the youth. Jeff King, one of our team members, decided to bless the new course with the sweat of some old out of shape white missionaries. He raced three boys around the 400-meter track and lost badly. Mark Wright raced an accomplished runner who easily won against him. But me I won my race. How you may ask, well the fact is I raced a woman. I was quite proud of this, until I found she was pregnant. Man just when I thought I was doing good, God reached down and offered me a little more humble pie ;-) I beat a pregnant woman, yeah that is simply hard to boast about. Oh well, it was fun and the children and pastor seemed to enjoy our pitiful display immensely, and we did not die from heat stroke.

Mark - OUT!

February 14th, 2008:Getting Ready To Head Back To Africa

Hi,

well I am headed back to Africa to perform our first assessment trip in West Africa. I am really excited that we will be able to bring Mercy Ships into a new era where we operate much like the other professional Christian NGO's. We will finally be able to measure what impact our programs have on our target communities to be better stewards of the gifts that God has given us. Please pray for me as I will be spending a majority of my time in these communities. As usual I will depend on the Holy Spirit to protect me from all the parasites that eagerly await my arrival. As usual, I am abandoning my girls while I go on this great adventure please continue to pray for my girls as they deal with the struggles of being without dad. I will try and keep you guys updated on the adventure. I will also need to finish my first thesis paper to close my first semester at grad school.

January 4th, 2008: Mark Begins His Masters of Diplomacy Program

Hi well I have started my Masters Program in Diplomacy and International Conflict Resolution from Norwich University.

I am excited that God is giving me a new skill set to serve Him by better serving the poor of this world.

Please keep Zana and me in prayer as this will challenge my already stressed time management capabilities as I travel to Africa 3 times each year for a month.