A Bookstore Comes to Lae...

This wasn’t just any bookstore. This was the world’s largest floating bookstore! It came to Lae on a ship called the MV Doulos, or in English, the MV Servant. And that is what the 300 people on board the Doulos came to do, to serve. The Doulos is an old ship, built just 2 years after the Titanic. But while the Titanic sank, this old ship has kept on sailing to bring knowledge, help and hope to the nations of the world.

The bookstore stocks Christian literature, as well as general interest books about cooking, gardening, children’s books, etc. While the Doulos was berthed in Lae for the last month, it was encouraging to see many Papua New Guineans buy books…we hope this will cause more of them to love to read!

And not only did we get to browse for books right here in Lae, we also got to benefit from the teams that are sent out from the Doulos. One such team came to a settlement where we work, Biwat Compound, and slept there for two nights and ran children’s programs. Here they are, showing where they’re from—China, Switzerland, Mongolia, Japan and Germany!

And look at the smiles they put on everyone’s faces!

We also had a team go with members from our churches to the hospital to encourage the patients with the Word, prayer and some care packages, donated by Doulos. Another team went to Tent City to help finish off the church building there. We appreciated their building expertise as they fixed up some of the work that had already been done and then finished off the building alongside the nationals. We’ll soon post a photo of the finished building! For now, here’s one of the volunteers hard at work! (A good Canadian boy!) These teams made a lasting impact on the lives of the people here and we were thankful for them and their work!

Here's Karlyn, hanging out with Alosinda, while the rest of us worked!

We had good fellowship with some Dutchies on board too…actually, all of the food on the ship is shipped in from Holland, so they gave us some delicious strop waffles!!

This past Tuesday we said goodbye to our Doulos friends as they left for other parts of PNG, before moving on to New Zealand and Australia.

May the Lord bless and keep them as they sail and serve!