Jamaica

Wow! Tomorrow it will have been two months since I left home. So, so much has happened in that time. I know that things back home have changed and I also know that I have changed a lot. Maybe not in ways that you can see (aside from blonder hair and darker skin =D) but on the inside I have changed.
I have now finished all my initial Deckie training and am trusted on my own! Scary Huh!! I said 'initial' training because we never really stop being trained while we are on the ship. This week is my first week of watch on my own. Now you're probably thinking what the heck is watch, so I will explain. In the Deck department there are two different schedules that you will work, normal day work i.e. needle gunning, wire brushing, painting and anything to do with maintaining the ship or you will be on watch. There are three different positions for watch, 1. Bridge watch - duties include responding to alarms systems, answering the phone, reporting emergencies to appropriate superiors and keeping an eye on mooring lines and gangways, 2. Gangway - duties include maintaining security on the quayside, making sure only crew members board the ship via the crew gangway, making sure that the mooring lines and gangways are secure and 3. Fire rounds - duties include walking the entire ship every hour watching for fires and possible security threats, assisting whenever called on by the bridge or gangway watch keeper, scouting out possible fires when notified but the bridge. Watch is kept 24/7 and the watch keepers do 4 hours on 8 hours off. For example this week I am on the 0800 - 1200 watch. I do 8am to 12pm in the Bridge, have 8 hours off then do 8pm to 12am on gangway watch. It's not physically strenuous like normal day watch but it very demanding because it's hard to get proper sleep while you're doing shift work. This morning we had safety drills while I was on watch which meant that I had to page over the entire ship. Who knew that a simple pa system could be so scary!! =D So life on Deck is always an adventure but God has really given me a joy for the work and it's a great team.

I was planning to tell you more but I've run out of time and rather than make you wait longer I'll just publish this and continue later. God bless!

Well here I am on board the Logos Hope and already 2 weeks into being a Deckie! Yes that’s right a Deckie!!! But first let me back track a little. I’m pretty sure that everybody knows that I spent 2 weeks in the heart of Jamiaca doing what’s called PST (Pre Ship Training) and also isolated from the internet, hence the lack of blog updates and contact with home. But if you didn’t know, now you do. PST was great! There was a group of 68 of us joining in Montego bay and we just had an awesome time learning new skills, making lots of new friends, enjoying the beautiful countryside of Jamaica and have COLD showers =D God really blessed me through this time with some beautiful friends and in particular my friendship with a lovely dutch girl named Femke.
FEBRUARY THE 3RD 2010!!!!!! The day that I finally stepped back on board the Logos Hope!!! It was absolutely amazing to be back on the ship again. The best way I can describe it is to say that I was on cloud 9 all of that afternoon. The sensation of being back on the ship that was so familiar and was my home at the same time as being fresh, new and full of excitement just blew me away. We arrived on board around 3pm and then spent the rest of the afternoon being familiarised with the ship and settling into our cabins. Oh, quick side note, I’m not sure how many of you have heard but during the Go Conference all of the girls in my PST were warned to be ready in case we were to be placed in a 10 berth cabin for the first couple of months. This isn’t a very nice situation and although I was willing to be placed there I was really hoping not to be and Praise The Lord I was placed in a 4 berth cabin in a section near a lot of my old ship friends. Anyway back to my story, that evening we had a party for our new PST that had joined the ship but I didn’t really get to appreciate it much because I was to busy catching up with all of my friends that were still on board. It was great to see and talk to so many of them but once again it was a bitter sweet time as many of my friends have now left and I may never see them again in this life. But to end on a high note many of my friends are also still there plus I have my new friends from PST and so many more people to meet that had joined the ship while I was away.
I won’t go into such detail for the rest of the week because 1. It’ll take too long and 2. It’ll bore you but I will let you know roughly what we were up to. For people joining the Logos Hope for 1-2 years or longer the first couple of weeks are filled with more TRAINING, this time called BST (Basic Safety Training). PST was more of a spiritual and personal training time and BST is the training that is required for all new crew joining a ship by maritime law. So in brief we spent 1 ½ weeks learning about what to do in emergency situations such as fire or the ship sinking, how to provide first aid and much more. To be able to work in certain departments on board the ship (for example deck and engine room) you must pass the BST exams. So now we come to where I started, after all of our training and exams the personnel team take our exam results, personal preferences, our medical conditions and the ships needs all into account and then decide where they will place each of the new recruits. My preferences had been 1. Book fair (inclusive of most of the Public Deck), 2. Deck, 3. Angels (simply because I did not want galley or engine). I’m not sure why I ended up putting Deck so high but before leaving for the ship I really opened myself up to God and asked Him to place where ever He wanted and in a position that would challenge me and He just seemed to be pulling me towards Deck. So the evening finally came when personnel gave out our placements and low and behold there in my envelope was a piece of paper telling that I was in Deck department. You should have seen the faces of all the deckie guys when they found out (Deck department is mostly guys, I think there is now 6 girls to 20-30 guys), I should have carried a camera around. For those of you who don’t know Deck work (hard physical dirty work) is totally out of character for me but I know that God has placed me there for a reason and I also know that even though it’s going to be really, really hard to begin with God will give me the strength to serve Him 100%.
In closing now I’d just like to ask you to pray that God gives me strength and endurance for my new work, that I become more self disciplined and set up good habits now early on in my commitment and also that I can continue to reach out to others both friends on board the ship and visitors coming on board.
God bless, Rosanna