A Day in the Life of an OR Sterilizer

Hi people,

I have been too busy to update you all but now I will tell you why.

I work Monday through Friday from 10am until 7pm down on deck 3 of the ship in the OR sterilizing room. I like it a lot actually, plus I have weekends of:)

Here's how it works. When the surgeon is finishing up in any of the ORs, which are down the hall from us, the nurse brings us the trays of equipment that were just used. We take them and clean the blood off to get them ready to go in a special washing machine. Once we have run a full load in there we take them out, dry them off, reassemble each surgical tray by making sure all the needed instruments are there, wrap them in layers of cloth like a present, and put them in the sterilizer. After they come out of there each tray and instrument is now sterile amd ready to be used when needed. It is a very detailed and time consuming process. I like it.

I am very impressed with how well run the Africa Mercy is. Somehow, really by the grace of God, the people here have managed to make a hospital, a bank, a school, a restaurant, a hotel, and a ship all operate smoothly together with people from 33 different nationalities onboard coming and going each week. And all this is done from a different country every year! As you can imagine it is no small task but like I said I am impressed. In the midst of all this the focus is still on God. He is the only one who could pull all that together and turn it into something that glorifies Him.

I have not had much opportunity yet to leave the ship. I walked around town last saturday and on sunday went to a wonderful church called Word of Faith. I love worship in Africa! Tomorrow I am going to a chimpanzee sanctuary which should be interesting. I just want to be outside. The one downside of where I work is that it has no windows and neither does my cabin. I ate my dinner outside on deck 7 tonight and the sun was so bright on the water it hurt to look at it. Still it was beautiful.

I will let you all now how the chimps are:)

Isimbi Johanna