A week of very hard news

The Logos Hope is currently in St Lucia for our annual week of rest & spiritual refreshment or Sabbath Week as we call it.
We have been looking forward to this week for a long time - a chance to relax a bit, have some quality Bible teaching and recharge our batteries.
However, it has proved to be a difficult week with 2 pieces of news particularly hitting very hard.
On Tuesday, we heard the news that STL - the largest Christian retailer and distributor in the UK, where I worked for 7 years, was effectively bankrupt and had been put up for sale. A year ago they installed a new computer system that proved to be a disaster and have seen much of their business collapse. The global economic downturn has just made the situation worse and they have now run out of money. We still have a number of good friends who work there.

Then on Wednesday came the news that our sister ship the Doulos, my home for 5 years, will not be able to sail after 31st December this year. The Doulos is in drydock and has been undergoing a special 5 yearly survey to get the certificates required to keep sailing. However the work required to get the certificates has proved way to much and would require some €10m and 6 months of work, so the decision had to be taken to end the ministry of the ship.

This news has profound impact upon us on Logos Hope and we will have to see what it will mean in the coming weeks and months.
We would appreciate your prayers for everyone at STL and on the Doulos at this time, as well as for us in the Logos Hope leadership as we see how to respond.

Here in St Lucia, we have faced challenges this week in getting water, as the town ran dry, but after a couple of days without showers and laundry, we managed to organise regular deliveries by trucks.
We are looking forward to a ship outing to the beach tomorrow, and then on Sunday it is Heather's birthday. We plan to go to climb the Gros Piton - one of the famous peaks here in St Lucia, with our ships family.
Then on Monday we sail to Guyana - our first ever visit to South America, where around 180 of us will be involved in teams onland - more to follow on that.