Life Guide and Volunteer Network

Below the English version of a newsletter I wrote aug. 2006. It will give you an impression of my job... hopefully I can put some less outdated info here soon... I am still working on the projects mentioned in the letter. Happy summer. The weather is not great here :( Geertje

Rotterdam, June 2006

Dear Friends,
After a busy week a quick hello from Holland (Rotterdam) before the summer holiday.This week the ambassador of Ghana Mrs. Grace Amponsah-Ababio received the first Life Guide of the 5000 which will be distributed via Mercy Ships this coming year. In the last two years I had the privilege to work with the directors of the two partner organizations in development of the Health for Life project and I was the contact person for Mercy Ships in this. I was responsible for compiling parts of the text and field information as well in co-planning the development of the project. A funny moment was when a new helper joined us. He was called Harry, a doctor with Africa experience and when I asked about the surname I realised that it was the husband of Namkje Kanis. Namkje was the first missionary who was sent to China from my homechurch in Sneek, so that way you discover that it is a small world after all!

Nervous
On behalf of the three partner organizations I had invited the ambassador of Ghana to receive the first copy of the Life Guide. This resulted in a few kind of ‘tense’ days because I had only invited her a few weeks prior because we didn't know the exact date of when the Life Guides would be printed. Normally VIP's don't come when the invitation has been sent on such a short notice a few weeks before, but we thought we would try. I was a bit nervous and praying that she would come as we could really use the publicity and…. she came together with assistant and driver!

Volunteer network launched
I also have been very busy to restart our Dutch Mercy Ships volunteer network because earlier attempts of others years ago to keep the old program running died a silent death so to speak. 24 June we organized an Orientation Day for the first 20 interested people. Corrie (my collegue who works here on Monday's) and I coordinate this network and we have now 10 new definite new ‘helpers’ who join Mercy Ships Holland in PR work, like manning info booth or doing presentations in school or churches, collect goods or motivate people to help with finances or to help in joining us.Corrie and I strive to have these volunteers in every provence of our country.It is fun to do because everybody is our office is involved with this, so I get to work with all of my collegues and all of the new volunteers. So, that was it for now. Wishing all of you a very good summer, thank you for supporting me.

Love, Geertje.