~Excerpt from Chronicles of Narnia "Voyage of the Dawn Treader"
My classmates invited me to visit a ship called the MV Doulos. It's kind of neat because they were riding on the subway and heard a group of people singing on the train. They're always meeting new people so my classmate D decides to ask them who they were and why they were singing on the train. It turned out that they were crew members of the Doulos ship.
The Doulos is the oldest active ocean-going passenger ship. Built 2 years after the Titanic it served as a freighter, cruise liner and is now a floating book shop that brings knowledge (books & different cultural knowledge), help (social services) and hope (Gospel message) to people around the Asia Pacific. The ship docks from port to port and the crew members are all volunteers who have decided to offer themselves to serve those in need.
So ...my classmates bump into these volunteer crew members and have a really good time chatting with them about the ship and about life. The crew even invites them to come on board for dinner and a tour!
Well when I got back from our Beijing trip, the first thing my classmate K said to me was "Yo hey! Do you want to come visit this boat with us?" I had already heard about the ship docking near Taipei in Keelung from church, so I immediately said yes! It was just so neat! Here I am...the only Christian in my class, and my classmates are the ones eager to visit this ship. God certainly works in miraculous ways.
So we visited the ship on Sunday and to our surprise there was a really really really really long line-up to get on the ship. Tour buses came to have a look at the ship too! Have a look!
Here I was thinking how interesting could a "Library Boat" be? But sure enough...people were lined up eagerly to visit the ship. We have learned since being here in Taiwan that Taiwanese people love lining up when it comes to FOOD, but it turned out the Doulos drew up quite a crowd too!
Because of D and K we got to bypass the crowds, but for me the blessing was in having the tour of the ship and talking to the crew members of the Doulos. It has been one of the biggest encouragements for me so far since being in Taiwan. For Ray and I, understanding why God brought us to Taipei is still a struggle. I mean we enjoy our time here and are learning a lot of Mandarin, but still, why Taipei. Why not China?
But talking to the crew members, and hearing how they ended up on the Doulos ship, and how God called them to be a part of this community (and it really is like a community because everybody has to contribute in some way: cooking, cleaning, steering, mechanics, teaching, photography...), and how blessed they feel knowing that they are in the centre of God's will in their life right now was really encouraging.
Not only that, here we were, all together, coming from different backgrounds (Nigeria, Egypt, Sweden, Canada) and we were all praying for the same people...my classmates. It made us all realize how small we all were in God's plans.
It reminded me of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where for the characters they didn't really know where the sailing would take them next each time. The wind guided them, sometimes even an albatross (guiding them out of the darkness), and when you depart from each port (for the crew members it was actual ports, but for me it has been Ottawa, Waterloo, Toronto...Taipei) you will miss it, probably shed tears, but there is always the anticipation and excitement of taking steps of faith and following the unknown that God has planned for you.
