Update april/may

Dear friends

Here's a short work update. I am not that good in keeping up this blog as most news is more relevant for Dutchies. Anyhow.. trying to give you a short update:

Still working with Mercy Ships Holland in media /communications, and volunteer network (my 11th year!).
Living close to the office with my husband. Married life is good and we are busy with all kind of things, in the house, church and for missions. We are going to South Africa soon, for this and are exited about it. Never a dull momment :)

Anyway. About my job at Mercy Ships:

Still working with media and liking that.
Soon we will on TV here in Holland several times, It's my job to help the media prepare for it as a liaison to ship and the crew here in Holland.

Next week the French edition of the Life Guide will be presented to the Dutch consul of Togo here in Holland. This bible will be for the people of Togo. I am part of the team that pioneers this unique project (health for Life) in which we develope a Guide for people in developing countries to receive more info on prevention of aids/hiv, and other diseases along with a new testament in which they can read about Gods love. I am the Project coordinator for Mercy Ships and loving this project that is so close to the people and also to my heart. It's a lot of thinking, talking and organizing things like the presentation of the first copy, feeding back recent info to the coordinator(s) onboard and in our international office, talking about distribution, to who, when, why, feedback on the Guide itself, etc..
Hope soon we will hear stories of people that have been blessed by the brand new edition, we worked several years on to realize.

Most of my other work is communication to our volunteers, working with my new communication worker Carolina on press releases, media, website etc, communication in general (accumulating news/foto's/for email news etc). Recently we organized the third alumni day for MS volunteeers, was great again. I pioneered this in 2008 and now it almost seems to become a yearly thing, which I think we should do as we can show our workers that way that we appreciate them.

Also going into schools to do presentations about Mercy Ships, with my collegue Rahel. We have fun with it. Contacting the schools ourselves and planning the date, presentations powerpoints,etc.
Lots of fun

Want to know how we are doing personally? Let me know! I am also on facebook!
Geertje (geertje.ramsoebhag@mercyships.org)