The Doulos

Hmm... It's been almost three weeks since our visit to Doulos. I didn't blog about it earlier, so I better do it now before I forget. No wait! That experience was unforgetable, so i don't think I'll be doing any forgeting anytime soon.

Well, for those of you who don't know, the MV Doulos is a ship. A really old ship. How old? Try the oldest ship in the whole world. It is a mission ship that sails all around the world. The crew consists of about 350 people. Millions of people come aboard to see the ship. There is an on-board book store with half a million books. In short, It's a really cool ship!!

So we left for Doulos at about 7:30 A.M. in five buses and a van. I went in the van. The van ride was not much to talk about so we shall skip right to the arrival. The van arrived about 1 hour earlier than the buses because they took the wrong turning or something like that. I went with Yoshua aboard the ship and the first thing I saw - the bookstore. "May I look at those books?" I asked.

"No, you're late for 'Inside Out'," Yoshua replied. (The Inside Out™ program is a program in which a few specially selected people get to experience life aboard the Doulos.)

Knowing that because of this program I wouldn't get to see the bookstore, I was bitterly disappointed. I guess I didn't really know what to expect going for that program. The flyer had asked us to prepare ourselves for hard work and since the program had restricted a visit to the bookstore, I thought Inside Out was bad! Boy, I couldn't have been more wrong.

Yosh brought me up to where we were suppose to meet for the program. There were only 4 people out of the expected 40+. We waited for awhile, had some cake, and then went on tour of the ship. When the four of us got back, more people had arrived, but none from Kluang yet. We blew up balloons for the game that we were going to play, waited, and waited some more. Then we decided to blow balloons for those who hadn't arrived yet. We did this, and then finally 19 people from Kluang decided to turn up. Haha. Not very exciting, is it? And all this time I was thinking: I could be in the bookstore, darn it. With the time spent waiting, I could have done something actually useful.

So we played the little game and listened to a speech on how God can use anyone. Lunch time, now this is where all the excitement began. The food was good and we listened to the interesting stories of one of the crew members. I think she got a little carried away with the tales; we were late to come back after lunch. This turned out to be a very, very good thing. I was originally assigned to stick price tags on books. But because I was late, I was reassigned. Fireman!! Sweet, isn't it? Divine intervention. Only three people got to be firemen - me, daniel sher and some other guy from some other town. We followed our group leader, Jonathan Wittfield, to the room where they kept all the paint and other inflammable stuff. We got changed into our work clothes. So cool! I haven't got a picture of that. Sorry. But we looked cool. It was like a one piece blue suit with steel plated shoes.

Jonathan explained to us about all the fire equipment and safety regulations. We went to check out the fire station. We waited. No fire. Hahaha. Obviously not. It was time for a little work - painting. We painted a large, rusty, red water pipe along the side of the ship. Because the pipe was abit out of reach, we had to bend over backwards on the railing and paint. Painful but fun. Jonathan was extremely patient with us. The some other guy from the some other town kept dripping paint, Ishh.. Jonathan just calmly walked over and cleaned it up with thinner. He did this at least twenty times in that short span of time, but he never complained. He didn't seem to mind at all.

After painting we cleaned up the brushes, washed our hands in thinner, and changed out of our work clothes. Everyone was so friendly. One of the crew members brought us some coke. It tasted different. I looked at the can - made in Netherlands. How cool is that? It tasted so much better than Malaysian coke. We took some pictures together and left for the meeting hall again. Then I realised I had left my badge with the work clothes. So I went with John Lim back to get it. I was stopped at least five times because I didn't have the badge with me. Apparently not just anybody is allowed to walk around the ship. The badge is power! After I got it back, I wasn't stopped anymore.

Later we wrote our feedback. Everyone I knew wrote good things about the program. So did I. We attended a youth meeting and watched some presentations after that but we had to leave early to travel home. I went in the bus this time. And guess what, I slept all the way back.

So those were my adventures aboard the Doulos. I really hope I get to go back there again at least one more time before they scrap it for parts. It was a good experience. The crew were really friendly, but I didn't get to meet the captain though. Maybe I will get to one day. just maybe.

The MV Doulos August 12, 2006.