Seasickness, Getting lost, and Getting ready

The seas have been rough! Our first morning out many faculty & staff were sick - including me - in spite of meds. We were assured that most people adjust, and we seem to be. More people are making it to meetings now and look less like zombies. Seasick meeds are free & the doc is carrying them around in his pockets! The sensation of continually rocking is strange - like a balance ball the I can't control & is never still.

The ship is confusing & labrythine! Wandering the halls trying to find which elevator goes to a particular deck or where a room is, is common. I keep getting half way down a hallway and then turning around to go the other direction. Despite all the rocking, it's surprisingly difficult to know which direction we're moving and where the front of the ship is from the lower decks.

While fighting seasickness, we've also been trying to get ready for the students, who begin arriving tonight. There have been a lot of long meetings about procederes, etc. We had a lifeboat dril before we sailed the first night. And we're trying to learn what our jobs are on tris floating campus.

We arrived in Halifax this morning, though it's too foggy to see anything. It was a surprising relief when the engines stopped! We have meetings onboard most of the day, but will hopefully have some time in port this evening. If nothing else, we need to stock up on snacks, now that we know wat we can and can't get onboard and how expensive it is!

The NetsForLife camping is growing! We have another $140 dollars from members of St. Anne's in Stockton!
We'll start counting nautical miles tomorrow evening when we sail from Halifax and begin the (rocky) passage across the Atlantic to Spain.
If you want to join the campaign, leave a comment. You don't need to leave the amount if you don't wat to. But be sure to go to NetsForLifeAfrica.org and make your donation. You can place "Nets at Sea" in the business line!

Traveling with a Purpose

In 3 weeks and 2 days I will leave Stockton to head to Virginia (via Houston) for Semester at Sea! I'm spending August through December traveling around the world as a residence life staff member and coordinator of religious & spiritual life for 650 college students from across the country. We will visit 11 countries (not counting the US) over 108 days. It's going to be amazing and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!

I love to travel and this is a dream trip. I don't want it to be only about my having a good time, though. I've been thinking a lot about the places we'll be and what our visit might mean to the people we'll meet. As a scholar and practitioner of mission I'm hoping to learn a lot about how to respond to the disparities between rich and poor in more effective ways. I don't want to wait until I get back, though. I can't carry medical supplies or cases of Plumpy'nut. But I know that I can take you - at least virtually! So, starting today I am collecting pledges of donations to NetsforLife based on the number of nautical miles we sail.

NetsForLife is a program of Episcopal Relief & Development and a host of other partners that is working to prevent malaria in Africa, largely by providing mosquito nets to people who don't have them - much less the anti-malarial medications I'll be taking. It's an easy fix for a disease that kills a million people every year - most of them under the age of 5.

Our voyage will be about 21,000 nautical miles. A pledge of 1 cent per mile for the whole voyage would amount to $210. So, start thinking about what you can pledge! During the voyage I'll post our progress in the box on the right and we can watch the pledges grow - for the whole voyage or portions of it between ports of call. If you're ready to pledge now, say so in the comments section and encourage others to do the same. I'm going to pledge 1 cent per nautical mile for the whole voyage. Who wants to match it?!

An Appeal for Haiti from the Sisters of St. Margaret

The Episcopal Church and the Sisters of St. Margaret (an Episcopal religious community) have concentrated on helping all the faithful in Haiti since 1927. The Sisters run programs with the elderly and do work with the poor people throught the area. They also are involved at two schools the order founded, one specifically for the handicapped and the other for children within the neighborhood.

The Sisters of Saint Margaret’s mission in Haiti has never been more needed.

The most recent news received is that Sisters Marie Margaret Fenelon, Marjorie Raphael Wysong, and Marie Therese Milien are alive. They have lost their convent, but are committed to continuing their mission of working iwth the elderly, poor, indigent, and young.

Your urgent support is greatly needed. An unfathomable catastrophe like this in a place that has already known so much hardship is a true tragedy. We are asking for your prayers, donations, and service.

Faithfully yours,
Carolyn H. Darr, SSM Superior
Adele Marie Ryan, SSM Asst. Superior

Donations to the Society of St. Margaret may be made online. Please send donations by mail to: The Society of St. Margaret, 17 Highland Park St., Boston, MA 02119-1436. For updates and more information about the Sisters’ work in Haiti, go to ssmbos.org

The Sisters of St. Margaret are an Episcopal Religious Order of women called to glorify God and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ through our worship and work, prayer and common life. Their commitment to God and to one another is expressed through vows of poverty, celibate chastity and obedience. The Sisters maintain a presence in Haiti, and the three working there have been accounted for. They are staying in a tent on the football field at College St. Pierre (which was heavily damaged). Above is a picture of the convent before the earthquake.

Update

We heard yesterday that the children from St. Vincent's are safe. And there are reports that the school was not as damaged as first reported. The sisters are unsure which reports to trust. The women from the Foyer, the sisters' home for the elderly indigent are safe. Several of them are with the sisters at the fields of a nearby college. They have food and water. It is too dangerous to be inside the damaged buildings as aftershocks continue. It sounds like all of Port au Prince is living and sleeping outdoors.

Continue to pray. And give all that you can.

Episcopal Relief and Development

I have spent much of the day frightened and grief struck over the devastation in Haiti. The entire Episcopal compound around the cathedral was destroyed, including the convent of the Society of St. Margaret. I was a postulant at St. Margaret's in Boston ten years ago, and I know two of the three sisters in Haiti, who are miraculously alive and uninjured. There are still hundreds of children from St. Vincent's School for Disabled Children and Holy Trinity School, both started by the sisters, unaccounted for. Haiti is a diocese of the Episcopal Church. These are our neighbors as truly as the people who live on my street. They are our own.

Pray for the people of Haiti. And give what you can. At this moment every dollar will be needed. Episcopal Relief and Development works through local diocesan leadership and has a strong relief infrastructure in Haiti. They have already provided money for Haiti and are prepared to be there indefinitely. Because of the support they receive from the Episcopal Church, 92% of every dollar given will go to Haiti.

Haiti

Ten years ago this month I became a postulant in the Society of St. Margaret. I decided that

A cop, a rabbi, and a dog were in Montana...

This is too good not to share!

Andrew Gerns at The Lead, found this for the first full day of Hanukkah:

Did you hear the one about the Montana cop, the rabbi and the dog who speaks Hebrew?

Eric Stern describes what happens next:

In Montana, a rabbi is an unusual sight. So when a Hasidic one walked into the State Capitol last December, with his long beard, black hat and long black coat, a police officer grabbed his bomb-sniffing German shepherd and went to ask the exotic visitor a few questions....

...Hanukkah has a special significance in Montana these days. In Billings in 1993, vandals broke windows in homes that were displaying menorahs. In a response organized by local church leaders, more than 10,000 of the city’s residents and shopkeepers put make-shift menorahs in their own windows, to protect the city’s three dozen or so Jewish families. The vandalism stopped....

...The menorah was lighted and Hebrew prayers chanted, while the officer watched from a distance with his dog. He figured he would let it all go down and then move in when the ceremony was done. The dog sat at attention, watching the ceremony with a peculiar expression on its face, a look of intense interest. When the ceremony was over, the officer approached the Hasidic rabbi.

“I’m Officer John Fosket of the Helena Police,” he said. “This is Miky, our security dog. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Miky (pronounced Mikey) is a surplus police dog trained by the Israel Defense Force to sniff for explosives and was purchased by the State of Montana for the price of a plane ticket and a crate. Fosket was handed a card with phrases like like “Hi’ sha’ er” (stay!), Ch’pess (search!), and “Kelev tov” (good doggy)" but all too often Miky would stare at Fosket waiting for a command that made sense.

But with the help of Rabbi Chaim Bruk, Officer Fosket has learned to pronounce the tricky Israeli “ch” sound, and Miky has become a top dog, even working with the Secret Service when the President came to town.

"So all is well in the Jewish community here," Stern says. "Because the Hasidic rabbi is helping the Montana cop speak Hebrew to his dog."

The full story is from the New York Times.