Over the past few days I completed the next step in my Mercy Ships journey, chaplaincy. This started with an email informing me of an assessment I needed to complete and then to organise a video chat to discuss the findings. This was something sent to me by one of the Member Care chaplains. Their job is to look at how Mercy Ships cares for all of its volunteers and members of the Mercy Ships community, how we who volunteer can care for ourselves and how we can all care for each other. This is an important part of serving as we will all be living in very close quarters with each other.
The first step of this was to complete the Taylor-Johnson Temperament Analysis. This was just your run-of-the-mill personality test where I had to respond to some questions explaining how strongly I agreed or disagreed to certain statements about how I respond and act in different circumstances. This didn’t take too long and was a very straightforward process.
A couple of days later I had my video chat with the chaplain where we discussed my results and came up with strategies for growth in the areas that needed growth. We also discussed how I think I will handle to unique living and working situation that Mercy Ships brings. It was helpful because the chaplain I spoke with had been on the ship I will be on and has been in the same port in Madagascar. This meant that she had so different insights into things I will be able do and be involved in that will be ways I can care for myself and not allow burnout and stress to overwhelm me.
So the chaplaincy step is now completed. Moving on to the next step which is finance. Hopefully I will hear about all of that in the next couple of days.
Girl On Board 