This Month:
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INDIA:
A group of missionaries who refused to leave .... |
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TURKEY People lined the streets to applaud as a group of "peace walkers" ....
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GUATEMALAAn unexpected reunion on a medical missionary ship ...
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SWEDEN Candidates for a fast-response crisis relief team ....
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UNITED STATES: A Christian relief group leader met with national security advisors ....
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| - | BRAZILFast-moving roller hockey is helping former street kids.... | | - | WORLD An attempted murder and a mock funeral highlight .... |
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| YWAM Ministries |
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YWAM International
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Mercy Ships International
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University of the Nations
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3. G U A T E M A L A :REUNION SHOWS HOW "MERCY CARE" TOUCHES LIVES FOR GODAN UNEXPECTED REUNION brought home the power of "God's love in action" to missionary nurse Becky Bynum.
The last time she saw Patricia Morgan was as an 18-year-old patient on the ward Bynum was helping nurse on board the flagship of the Mercy Ships fleet, the floating hospital Anastasis, during its visit to Jamaica.
That was, until eight years later when Bynum arrived in Guatemala with the Caribbean Mercy, a sister ship to the Anastasis. Among the local missionaries there volunteering to help the visitors with translation was...Morgan.
While in Jamaica, Anastasis surgeons has performed three facial and eye operations to tackle Morgan's neurofibromatosis, a disfiguring condition which causes tumors to grow uncontrolled. The teenager's face had become so deformed that she was shunned by friends and even family.
But the ship surgeries, followed by a fourth performed at a hospital in the United States, corrected her features - and touched her heart. She became a Christian while in the hospital ship's ward and subsequently decided to become a missionary herself.
"I lived in a world of rejection, but the people of Mercy Ships reached out and loved me," she said after being reunited with Bynum during the Caribbean Mercy's eight-week outreach. "This was a love that drew me to Jesus. It is a love I want to share and devote my life to."
She has done that since 1993, serving with Youth With A Mission - Mercy Ship's ;parent organization. Based in Guatemala City, she works among children of families from a poor community. During the Caribbean Mercy's stay in Santo Tomas Cabezas - which ended last month - Morgan helped translate for the visiting crew, and befriended patients.
Blinded in one eye by her condition, she was able to "be a real encouragement" to patients at the ship's eye clinics, said Caribbean Mercy spokesman Steve Golla.
"Her life is such an encouragement to the ministry of Mercy Ships," he added. "It is a living example of the way mercy care can be used by God to touch people's lives in a special way."
Mercy Ships was founded in 1978 as the maritime division of Youth With A Mission, to take the "two hands of the gospel" to the developing world by twinning evangelism and health care.
 The Caribbean Mercy
 The Anastasis- Photo available on request.
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