K-Love Pays a Visit

This week we were privileged to have two staff members from K-Love on board with us - to see what the mission of Mercy Ships is all about, and phone into the stations and blog about the work taking place in Togo.

Amy (left), Jessica (right) with momma of a cataract patient baby they met and witnessed her seeing for the first time this week. 

These gals, Amy (morning show DJ) and Jessica (publicity manager), were very jazzed up about being here and had some incredible experiences.  Here's a link to the KLOVE blog to hear some from their perspective.

 Lots of cataract surgeries took place this week as we had Dr. Glen Strauss back on board for a short time - who has worked with Mercy Ships for many years developing and perfecting the cataract removal surgical techniques that make this such an effective surgery.  You can read the story of one little girl on the K-Love blog.  But also we had a family arrive with not one, not two, not three or even four children with cataracts, but FIVE children with congenital cataracts born in the SAME family.

Kokou, the second boy from the left, wore dark sunglasses when we saw him at the Hope Center on Friday afternoon as I led a group of Junior High students (and 1 high schooler) in an elective class of "Blessing Others."  The children (and I) wondered if he was blind, sitting their in the dark, Stevie Wonder glasses.  But, then he asked for a coloring page and some colored pencils and created a lovely work of art about JOY.  As he played soccer with one of the boys, we quickly realized how much this nine-year old's life had changed in the course of two days since his surgery occurred on Wednesday.

Another perk of the K-Love visit was streaming music!  I never thought I'd be so excited to hear K-Love! I mean, I love K-Love, but at home I listened so much that I knew all the songs by heart.  Because streaming music and video takes up so much bandwidth and we have 400 people sharing one internet source, all streaming sites are blocked for usage (YouTube, radio stations, other videos, etc).  So, to have our IT department be willing to open up K-LOVE streaming in the cafe during the day was a little breath of fresh air!  New songs! New music!  Hoorah!

Many of you may have heard Amy talking about Mercy Ships on the airwaves.  We are also very grateful for this exposure.  K-LOVE has a listener base of around 7,000,000 people - what a great way to find potential recruits for the MANY positions we need to fill in the coming months, as well as raise funds to cover operational costs and crew fees for the 400 volunteers that live onboard. 

We pray that God will use this time to raise up the people and the resources that he provides to accomplish his work here.  It is great to partner with other organizations that share in His heart for seeing people to come to know His awesome power to save, restore, and heal.