Logos 2 - family van Vliet

Home sweet home....

2008-08-05T01:16:00.003+02:00

but we do miss life on board the ship and all our friends there!!!

We arrived home in Norway safely after a good flight from Barbados and a 2 week stay in the Netherlands. It is good to be home in our own place, good to see our friends again, good to visit our own church and good to sleep in our own beds ;-)
BUT... we had a great time on board the Logos II and definitely miss it!

We're now still unpacking the boxes that were stored during our trip, which is hard to get ourselves motivated for, since the weather here has been great since we came home!
Just a little while after we came home, Leon (who we met on the Logos II) and his friend Tineke, visited us. We had a nice time with them, played a lot of games.
After they left, Herberts parents came to visit us. They will be here for 2 more days before they return home. They've been on the beach with the kids and have been on outings by themselves.

In 2 days from now, Reka (also from the Logos II) is moving to Norway!!! That's so exciting. We're looking very much forward to having her around.
We didn't tell the kids yet, and we hope the surprise will be biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig :-))
All the kids really like Reka a lot when we were on the ship, she was with us on many of our outing and we had great fun together. I think the kids are going to love the idea of having her around!

Bedtime now! Goodnight

Heading towards the last island

2008-06-08T20:41:00.000+02:00

And like with most of the things, will also this trip come to an end. After living on our floating home, we're almost heading home again.
In an hour from now we'll sail from St.Lucia to Barbados.
On wednesday, the 11th, we'll fly from Barbados to Curacao and from there continue to Amsterdam. We'll then stay in the Netherlands until the 2nd of July and then finally fly home to Norway.
We look forward to finally going home again, but it is with mixed feelings we say goodbye to all our dear friends on board.
Some of them we might not see again, some of them we'll definitely keep in touch with.
It's actually a bit strange to think about leaving the Logos II... this has been our home for the last 4 months, we're now used to the community life, always having friends around to talk to, always somebody around to have a cup of coffee with... I'm afraid I might feel lonely back home in Norway :-(
But, I do miss my friends at home and look forward to see them again! So it's time for us to leave the ship and find back our life in Figgjo.
We definitely think we've changed and our lifes will be different after we come back.

I'm sorry for not writing so much lately. Ask us and we'll tell you everything about our time here!

In Barbados, we'll probably not have internet the first couple of days (we'll arrive around lunchtime monday) and since we leave on wednesday early in the morning, I don't think I'll have another possibility to write on this blog.

God bless you!

Van Vliet family
With love

ships life

2008-05-10T22:05:00.000+02:00

Got a question about how life on board is... that's a good one.
Hm.. lets give it a try.

So far we like most parts of living on the ship. Of course, there's not a lot of privacy here... or lets say NO privacy.
Yes, we do have our own cabin, but every friday is cabin inspection, which basically means that a couple of people that are assigned to do cabin inspection can go into your cabin and check if everything is clean and tidy. The reason they do this is to make sure it's safe and for hygienic reasons (like no food or drinks that are open, so they attract all kinds of bugs). That is understandable, you don't want all kinds of stuff crawling around on the floors of the ship, but what I personally think is wrong is that f.ex. one of our friends got a note in her cabin that they had been there for cabin inspection and she got a 4 (on a scale 1-5 of which 5 is the worst) because she hadn't made her bed!!!!! Her cabin was clean and normal tidy, just her bed was not made, what a nonsense.
So far we haven't had a note in our cabin yet, so either they haven't been here or it was clean enough, which I doubt, since our bed isn't made most of the time and lots of toys normally are on the floor.
So, the only private place we have (our cabin) isn't really private either, since anybody with a master key could walk in whenever they 'want' or feel they need to do an inspection.

Next, we always have to wear shoes everywhere we go. Which is not easy for this family, as 5 out of the 6 members of our family normally are barefoot. The big kids and the mommy have already got used to wear shoes, but Krister kicks his shoes off wherever and whenever he wants, so we are often looking for his shoes and if we do find them, it's still a challenge to make him put them on, he's like mom.. doesn't like anything on his feet.

The next challenge is ALWAYS having people around you and having to work with people you just don't match with. It's a fact that you just can't be friends with everybody, although we try, but some people are just a bit harder to get along with then others.
Do you know the DISC system? If not, check here. In the DISC-system Herbert is a high D, and high D's often have problems working together with a high C. If you know this system and know what you and your colleagues are, it's actually easier to deal with it, because you know why there are struggles getting along.
Fortunately we get along with most people on board, there's just a few we haven't really talked or socialized with, and I can only think of 1 person actually who we really don't get along with and who I think doesn't like us either. But I know there are more people on board having issues with this person, so I know it's not just us.

A possitive thing, which - when we leave - will turn into something 'negative' is that we now have a couple of really great new friends, who we have to say goodbye to soon :-(((
I'm really going to miss a couple of people here, I'd just wish I could take some of them home!

For me there's also the challenge of being a fulltime mom on a ship. At home it's not always easy to be an @home mom, but at least I got to go out visiting friends, go shopping, having friends over, kids having their own friends and toys, me having my things to do in our home, Herbert being around a lot so I could go out without taking all the kids if I need to.
Here I'm even more fulltime mom than at home.
With Herbert working 6 days a week and us having a family day on his day off, it doesn't give me much 'time off'. On most islands I can't go out alone with the kids because of the safety. And, I don't even think I want to go out by myself with the kids, because it's quite a lot of work going to a beach for example with 4 kids, so that makes it more a outing for them and not so much for me. Easier for me to just stay on the ship.
Another thing is that I always need to be 'around'. The kids can't really go anywhere without me being there. Marthe and Eskil can go to the dining room or Herberts office without me, but
Krister has to stay with me, unless Marthe or Eskil is staying with him.
And then Bente, who we always have to take with us everywhere. I don't have a playpen or something to put her in, just on the fundeck where we have a bed she can lay down and play in.
Ofcourse I can put her on the floor, but she is rolling over a lot, so I have to stay close to make sure she doesn't hurt herself.
So most of the time... wherever I want to go, it means dragging the kids with me up and down the stairs. Even going to the bathroom can be hard, since Krister will normally follow me. Good thing Marthe and Eskil are big enough to take care of their baby sister for a little while if I have to do something.
The last 2 weeks have been easier for me, since a new chief mate with his wife arrived, and the wife (Eveline) loves being with the kids and has done school with them every morning from 9.30 - 12.00. She takes all the kids to the fundeck, where the little ones can play (Krister and Jean-Mari), Marthe and Eskil do homework and learn english from Eveline, and Bente plays and sleeps in her bed there.
The kids like Eveline, and she has already teached Krister some colours in english. Some days ago Krister showed me a blue pencil and told me that it was blue! In english! And yesterday he asked me in dutch-english "mama, waar is de yellow nou?" which means.. "mama, where is the yellow?" saying the word yellow in english, since he doesn't even know the colours in dutch or norwegian :-)
An everyday sentence for Krister now is also: "Jean-Mari, come on!" and since Jamaica he says things like "Ja mon!" :-)
So, with the kids in school in the mornings, I can do other things. I either help out in the bookfair, help out in the laundry, or do ministry like school programs.
This really makes life on board the ship a little less boring, because I've really had some days I wanted to go home.

Other challenges:
* family time when you live together with 90 other persons
* time as a couple when having 4 children and Herbert often working evening shift and having the cabin (where 2 small children are asleep) as your only private place.
* church.... we miss our own church! the churches here are just... well... different. In which different means: loud, bad quality music, looooooooooong meetings and just not our style. We would want to go to church every sunday, but just don't always have the energy to go there, but rather just stay on the ship having a quiet brunch when everybody else is in church.
* being on the ship without really having a possibility to go off without anybody else joining because of crime on the islands.
* trying to keep our cabin tidy when everything we own is in this cabin which has the size of a bedroom.
* entertaining the kids without friends their age around
* trying not to complain about the food :-) Our cook is really creative, but we have so few ingredients on board, so after 3 months on the ship we'd really really like something else to eat.

Then, something we're looking forward to. Tomorrow... sunday... we'll go to church and after church an indian family with 2 girls (12 and 9) from that church is taking us home with them, serving us indian food and spend time with us and giving the kids an opportunity to play together.
We haven't met them yet, the pastor of their church was here a couple of days ago and he arranged it after I spoke to him about us wanting to meet a local family with kids the same age.

Have a good and blessed sunday!

ice ice and more ice

2008-05-08T20:44:00.001+02:00

This afternoon, going for a walk, we discovered an ice cream bar with just the best ice cream ever :-)
They have lots to choose from, and it's hard to choose since it all looks delicious.
They have flavours like 'chocolate chip', 'white chocolate', 'belgian chocolate', 'chocolate & coconut', 'walnut & hazelnut', mocca, pistache and many more. Also all kinds of sorbets, like strawberry, mango, passion fruit etc.
They also have milkshakes, different kinds of coffee, cakes and home made chocolates.
So we had an ice cream and enjoyed it outside. I'm afraid we often have to go back there, especially since it's only a 1 minute walk from the ship.

That was just it for today, nothing very exiting really.

Oh, almost forgot... this morning was the official opening of the bookfair on this island and we had a lot of VIP's. I was helping out serving and talking to people. Some of us had their national costumes with them, I don't even have a national costume, besides my wooden shoes, but I decided not te wear them, since it looks kind of stupid under a nice asian looking dress :-)))
We had costumes from Russia, Asia, Indonesia (2), Dominican Republic and Scotland.

Gotta go now. We're having prayer night upstairs. The big kids are already there, the little ones are in bed and it looks like they are asleep.
My biggest kid (Herbert) fell asleep as well :-)))
Tonight after prayer night we have a babysitter, so we're going for a walk with 2 of our friends.

St.Kitts - Antigua

2008-05-08T02:38:00.000+02:00

Our visit to St.Kitts was short and after a 6 hour sail yesterday (the 7th of May) we arrived in St.Johns, Antigua.

First a little update on what we've done in St.Kitts. Because of the short stay (friday-wednesday) we haven't done very much ministry on this island, but Herbert has been to jail saturday afternoon to share the gospel. He thought that was a good experience and he now also likes to do more ministry, which is a good thing :-)
Saturday evening was movie night on board. They showed a movie called 'the climb' (if I remember right) and it was open for visitors as well as crew members. After being there for about 10 minutes, we decided we'd rather have our private family movie night and went to our cabin to watch a movie together with the kids.

Sunday we went to the Wesleyan Holiness Church. Gareth Bolton, an OM-man, has been on board the Logos II for about 2 weeks, together with his wife Malou. And he has done teaching on Eclesiastics for the ships crew members. We had one session almost every day, either morning or evening. And on Sunday, he was the one preaching in this church we went to. We were a group of 6 adults (Gareth and Malou, Herbert and I, the Norwegian Stein Are, and the Hungarian Réka) and our 4 kids. We introduced ourselves in church and Réka told something about the ship and our ministry. Gareths preaching was very good and we were glad we went there with them.
After the church service the pastor and his wife took us to the church's outreach where they served us lunch. They had all kinds of food, and also mangos which grow all over the islands here and are ripe now. They showed us the best way to peal and eat a mango, which is not an easy fruit to eat without getting yourself dirty.
We were back on the ship around 2.30 that afternoon.
Sunday night was we had another event on board that was called 'youth explosion'. We first wondered why they named it that, but after a little while we understood. It was really an explosion, WHAT A NOISE can people make. A local church organised it and was in charge of the program, but it felt like it never ended. There was lots of singing, dancing and talking, most of the time VERY loud! But, we survived also this night :-)

New day, new chances (and challenges). In the evening a family night was planned. Again, a local church had organised it. We thought a family night was about spending time with other families and do fun things for kids and adults, but that is obviously not what they think a family night is. The pastor asked us (Herbert and me) to talk about family life and how to raise children and keep your marriage working. Not that we are so good or experienced, but well... we're one of the 2 families on board, have been married for a zillion years and have almost a handfull of kids, so they guessed we should know something about it :-)
First the worship team started, after that the pastor spoke for a couple of minutes and then handed the microphone to us. I introduced our family and told a bit about the ship / ships life and what we do on board. After that Herbert spoke about marriage and raising children and referred to the '5 love languages' of which Gary Chapman wrote about in a book.
After Herberts talk the pastor started a discussion and it was actually quite interesting to talk about this subject with the locals.
After most people had left, the worship team continued playing and singing a bit and then I started singing with them, together with some of the other crew members. We actually sang for about 30 minutes or something like that before they started packing their things and had to leave. We had a great time! Always wanted to sing the Hillsong song "our God is an awesome God" in Reggae style? Travel to the Caribbean, find a church with a good worship team and have fun! :-))

Tuesday Herbert worked in the evening, which means having time off during the day. We decided to go on a luxury day to the Marriott hotel! A volunteer from the Peace Corps told us that we might get in for free to use the swimming pool in the Marriott, since we work as volunteers/missionaries. Unfortunately we had to pay for a day pass, which we did buy, because it was about time we did something fun for the kids. We have been swimming in the pools the whole day. There were 2 pool areas, and the one we were at hardly had any people around it, so we basicly had the whole pool to ourselves. There was also a outdoor jacuzzi which was big enough to swim in actually!
With the day pass came a room, so we had a place to keep our things, to change and to shower/bath. The room was very luxurious, about 5 times the size of our cabin on board here and the bathroom contained a jacuzzi! We showered, but the kids were in the bath tub for a while before we had to go back to the ship.
We had a great day!

Wednesday we left for Antigua.

So far we haven't seen anything of this island yet, but we might go out for a walk tomorrow to explore the port-area.

Now I really have to go to sleep, it's waaaaay past bedtime!!!

Good night
God bless you!

Basseterre, St.Kitts

2008-05-03T20:09:00.003+02:00

Yesterday, the 2nd of May, we arrived safely in St.Kitts after a smooth and great sailing from Jamaica. Nobody was really seasick and just after leaving Jamaica we had a bunch of dolphins swimming right in front of the bow!! We all went out after the captain announced it, and I took lots of pictures and also 2 videos. Amazing, what an experience!!!

We will be in St.Kitts until Wednesday and so far it looks like a beautiful island. Wish we could stay here longer, so we'd have time to explore the island.

Herbert is in prison today, doing ministry with a group from the ship. Tonight we have a movie night for the locals, tomorrow church and a youth meeting in the evening and monday night we'll have a family-night on board the ship for local families. Since we're one of the 2 families on board, we'll be involved in the program.

sailing off to St.Kitts

2008-04-28T11:54:00.000+02:00

This afternoon we will sail to St.Kitts. It will be a 3,5 day sail. Hope and pray we won't get to seasick!
I have put some more picture on our picture site.
I'll be writing a new blog once we've arrived in St.Kitts friday.

God bless you all, and please keep sending us messages and email. We're also VERY happy to get letters and postcards, especially the children! Letters, postcards or packages can be send to the head office in Germany (for address see one of the earlier blogs) and it will be forwarded to us or brought to the ship by someone visiting from Germany.

With love from Jamaica

SOS childrens village

2008-04-26T22:40:00.001+02:00

Last thursday 6 of our crew members went to the SOS childrens village (an orphanage). We took lots of things with us, like a book for all the kids, balls and clothes.
We had a program planned.
All kids came to one of the class rooms and we did the program there. We introduced ourselves, did a drama, sang songs, did a life jacket game, prayed with the children and told them about our best friend Jesus, gave them cookies and sat down to talk to them. The kids were age 4-16 I guess. We really had a great time! The kids were all very excited, which made it hard to get them to be quiet and listen, but most of the time it was ok :-)
I put some pictures from this visit to the orphanage on our picture site, but I just have to show you one of my favorites here:

No problem mon!

2008-04-16T23:30:00.001+02:00

We're in Jamaica :-))
Friday, april 11th, we arrived in Montego Bay, Jamaica. This island looks different then the other islands we've visited so far. The first thing we saw right before we arrived was an island with lots of green and mountains. The kids said they already felt at home here, since there were mountains on this island :-)
Friday evening we went out to the yachtclub with a group to celebrate the birthday of 2 of our crewmembers, Collette and Stein Are. The yachtclub is about 20-30 min walk from here and is a really nice place to sit and relax. They also have a playground and swimmingpool, and they told us we are welcome to come back with the kids to swim.
Anyway... we had a very nice evening and were back just before the gate closes at 11pm (which we by the way didn't know).
Saturday the bookfair opened and already the first day we had about 1500 visitors, not bad for a first day, even though we know that for Jamaica it's a "slow" day being a weekend-day.
Also, in this port, a gospel flow team came over from USA. Gospel flow is a way of 'entertaining' the visitors while they are waiting to enter the bookfair. On a busy day people can be waiting in line for several hours! So on those days we have 'crowd control', which is a team that litterally control the crowd, make sure they don't start pushing each other and things don't get out of hand.
Then we let in around 250-300 people at a time and they first enter our main meetingroom, where they buy drinks if they would like and sit in an airconditioned room. For 15 minutes we (the gospel flow team) then share the gospel with them, both through video's, drama, songs and a short preaching. After the 15 minutes, they leave the meetingroom and enter the bookfair, and we get ready to let in the next 250-300 people.
We did the gospel flow on sunday after church and did that until 8.30 in the evening!!! Herbert took care of the children, so I could participate in the gospel flow. It was just me from our crew + the team from USA and I was exhausted at the end of the evening, but it was really great doing this, and I learned so much from doing this!!!
For monday we had planned to go out to the city center to hand out flyers and talk to people, but just as we were ready to go and walked down the gangway, a group of schoolkids arrived to the ship. And even though they didn't ask for a program (they were just gonna visit the bookfair) we asked the teachers if they were interested (which they were) and went back in to prepare a program for the kids :-) It was very spontaneous, but we had a great time.
There were quite many kids, I'd guess about 60 or so... We did some songs, dances and games and told them about Jesus.
Yesterday we had 1 school program planned. At 10 am about 20 kids would arrive and we would do a program. They arrived around 10.30 and there were more than 20 kids, probably closer to 40. But, we had fun and we're able to get the kids quite involved and have them pay attention and receive the message. We thought we were done when they left, but no.... a group of teenagers came in, all around 14-15 years old, and thought we had a program for them. Oh well.. since our team was there already, we might as well continue :-)
I hadn't really done a teenage program before, so Richard (teamleader of the group from USA) did about that whole program. The message was really good and he managed to keep their attention, even though it almost seemed they lost attention after a while, but then he did a 'trick' that really caught their attention again, and then he prayed with them and gave them a challenge to read the John's Gospel (little book they get for free when the leave the ship) and actually read 1 chapter every day and don't wait until tomorrow, but start today! The devil's favorite word is tomorrow, because if we postpone things, we are likely to not do it at all, and of course he doesn't want us to read the Bible! So... start reading this 1st chapter of John's today!
Many of the teenagers seemed quite involved and ready to read it that evening.

In the evening we had a dinner at the yachtclub. The whole crew was invited for a dinner either monday or tuesday. The food was good and the company was very nice. Towards the end of the evening Marthe got a bit bored and she know I had a John's Gospel in my bag, so she asked me if she could have it. Of course I gave her the book and she told me "mom, I'm going to read the 1st chapter tonight!" Isn't that great?! She had really understood and remembered the message Richard gave and she really wants to live her life for and with Jesus!
By the way, Marthe is very involved in all the childrens programs. She is part of the team when we do programs and shows the kids a dance to the song 'Jesus You're my superhero' and knows the dance better than we all do :-) She also knows all the drama's now, since she always wants to be there when we practice.

Oh, Marthe got a 'job'. She's not allowed to really work yet, but she got permission to help out in the bookhold and bookfair whenever she wants. She's been working for a couple of hours now and really liked it. She gets to be part of the team together with the adults and not only be one of the kids. She needs that time with the adults.
The bookhold manager was really pleased with her help, she did a good job :-)

Today, wednesday, we again had a spontaneous school program. A couple of schools turned up at the same time and we did a program for around 70 kids! Good thing we always have some videos we can show, some games and dramas we all know, so that already fills up 15-20 minutes.
Aniina asked me if I can MC (which is do all the talking) a couple of the school programs next week. Herbert will know his work scedule for next week by the end of this week, so then I can have a look at when I can do the school programs.
I'd never have thought that I would do all this, leading worship, leading childrens programs, do gospel flow, but it almost comes natural! God really blesses me and takes away my fear for things I thought I couldn't do, and I learn so much from our time here!

Ending todays blog with Philippians 4:13
I can do everything through him who gives me strength

special girls night out ;-)

2008-04-10T01:31:00.000+02:00

Last night the ship had to be on anchor, since some container ships had to off/onload where we are berthed. At 5 o'clock the ship would sail just a couple of hundred meters outside the harbour and stay there overnight and come back at 6 am next morning and open the book fair again.
At 4.15 pm one of the girls from the crew told me that the captain had given permission to some of the crew members to go on shore before the ship would leave and stay on shore until 9 pm. At 9 pm he would then send a life boat to pick up the crew members!
There were only a few that could come, because of the limited space in the life boat ofcourse, so I immediately went up to the captain to ask if Marthe and I could go on shore. He asked Marthe if she thought she could climb up the ladder on the side of the ship, because that is where we had to climb up from the life boat ;-) Marthe thought she could do that, so the captain allowed her and me (and some others) off the ship!
But.... we had to be gone by 4.30!!! Which means that we, by the time finished talking to the captain, had 5 minutes left to get our stuff and get off the ship!
I quickly went downstairs to tell Herbert that we were going NOW (he already knew that we were maybe going and it wasn't a problem for him to stay on board with the boys and Bente), we grabbed our sunglasses and put on shoes that would be easier climbing up a ladder with, and off we went.
We were together with 4 other girls named Reka, Jan, Collette and Sharon.

We first walked around in town and bought a bottle of water, since only one of us had water with her and the rest hadn't had the time to think about taking water.
Then we sat on the shore side to see the ship leave ;-)
At 6 pm we went to a nice fish restaurant for dinner. In the background we saw the ship on anchor, nice view!
We took loads of pictures during the night, both nice, beautiful, funny and crazy pictures ;-)
So, at 9 pm, we were at the place we would be picked up. It was quite cool to be picked up by a life boat.
Johann, the 2nd mate, was in constant contact with the captain on the walkie talkie. The captain was a bit concerned, but everything went OK, except from the part where the life boat engine died 10 meters before we reached the stairs... hehe. But, with a rope thrown to us, we managed to get close enough to the ship to go up. By the way, we didn't have to climb the ladder, they had taken out the normal gangway. That was really cool... lot easier to go up and it looked really funny, a gangway on the side of the ship in the middle of the water ;-)

Today around lunch time we went to the beach with Collette (uk), Jan (usa), Conny (germany), Nico (germany), Hans (NL) and Kees (NL). Herbert had a day off from work, so we could all go together.
The beach was great. Lots of tourists, but still enough place for us to sit. The water was just so warm that it was like being in the bathtub.
We had a great time and even Herbert went in the water and that says enough ;-)

At around 4 pm Herbert had to be back on the ship to work in the finance office and tonight, after having the kids in bed, I helped out in the book fair.
We had a long line of people waiting to get on board to buy some books! It was very very crowded and extremely warm inside the book fair.
I first ran up and down with drinks for all the crew members working in there, and later I helped out putting the books back in the shelves. It's unbelievable how big a mess those people can leave behind!!
But, there were also to many people in the book fair at the same time. That makes it also very easy to steal unfortunately :-(

OK, time for bed!
Herbert is still in the finance office counting money, but I really need to go to bed now!

Goodnight

Cayman Islands

2008-04-07T23:55:00.000+02:00

This morning we arrived safely in Georgetown - Cayman Islands.
The trip from the Bahamas to Cayman Islands went with ups and downs.... literally! Herbert got very seasick the first evening we were sailing :-( That evening we had a fancy dinner, because 2 of the crewmembers, Ebbo and Vera, had their 40th wedding anniversary. The dinner was very good, but far from all crew members got to enjoy it, since many people were not feeling well.
Herbert first spent some time up on the fundeck, trying to cool down and hoping to feel better, but that didn't help much, so he went to bed.
Getting to bed is quite hard, since our cabin is all the way up front, right behind the foredeck, which makes it a VERY bouncy place to be.
But, Herbert fell asleep and I was upstairs at the dinner with the kids. Krister obviously didn't feel good either, since he was very quiet and just wanted to lay down on the floor or chair. Already before the dinner started, he fell asleep and I brought him to his bed.
Marthe and Eskil really enjoyed the dinner, Eskil thought the big waves and the ship moving so much was actually quite cool :-)
I wasn't really seasick, but I didn't feel very good either and was very tired.
We all went to bed early this evening.
The other days were a lot better, also Herbert felt better then.
We got another cabin both for us and for the kids to sleep in during voyage, since none of us could be in our cabin without getting seasick.
Marthe and Eskil got a cabin in the middle of the ship, an outside cabin with window. Herbert and I got a the second officer - cabin upstairs right behind the bridge :-) Ofcourse also with a window and the cabin was bigger then most cabins, so we had enough place on the floor to make 2 small beds for Krister and Bente.

Sunday we had to stop the engines for many hours, since we otherwise would be here to early, we sailed to fast in the beginning I guess. And to give us a cool experience, the captain let us jump of the ship and swim in the ocean!! There was also a lifeboat with some crew out on the sea, just in case something would happen.
We were just doing ministry workshops, practicing some drama, when it got announced that we could go and swim, but since I had the kids with me I couldn't go swimming :( Herbert was working in the galley (which is the kitchen), he was doing the cooking that day, so I couldn't hand over the kids to him to go swimming.
But then suddenly Herbert appeared, he was done cooking and also wanted to go swimming. So off he went, my husband that hates water and doesn't like swimming, jumped of the ship and swam in open sea somewhere between Cuba and Haiti, just a couple of miles south of Guantanamo.

Oh, and a little bird sat on one of our lifeboats and after a while Herbert wanted to give it some water, since it obviously was very tired (not strange since we were far away from land, so it must have been flying for quite a while). But the bird didn't have the strength to drink and died right in front of Herbert. Ofcourse everybody on the ship now says Herbert killed the bird, but in fact he said it was quite sad to see an animal die. The little bird was dropped in the ocean after his terrible death.

This morning we were supposed to arrive at 6 am and since Herbert had to set up all internet and telephone connections, he was ready to work before 6, but... the captain got a message that the pilot (a guy that comes on board before entering the harbour area to manoeuvre the ship into port) was not coming on board until around 8.15! So we had to sail around the island for 2 more hours!!
I had already gone out of bed with the kids (even woke up Marthe and Eskil) to get to see the sail inn, but then it was so much delayed :-( I was very tired the rest of the day.

Today the kids and I and Jamie (one of the crew members) went for a little walk in town, since we're berthed in the middle of the downtown area.
Nice to explore a new island again, but to be honest... all islands look kind of the same and it actually starts being less interesting.
The kids are most interested in finding a beach, I just wanted to find a supermarket.
The supermarket we found and we bought some things, the beach has to wait for another day, or maybe we'll even skip that in this port, since we'll only be here for 4 days and Herbert will be working the whole day every day.
So, unless someone else wants to go to the beach with me and the kids, we'll probably not go, cause it is quite a lot of work for me to get to the beach with 4 kids, especially since there is no beach in close walking distance.

Thursday the 10th we will sail to Jamaica. We expect that to be a very busy port, so everybody will have to work hard.
I helped out in the bookfair this evening, since it seemed like the whole island came over after work.

By the way, it was around 38-40 degrees Celcius today, which is around a 100 Farenheit!!
Believe me... it's HOT!

I'm very glad we now have a little kids pool on the fundeck so the kids (and the mom) can cool down :-))

Bedtime now, it's 7 hours earlier here than in Holland and Norway, for those who wonder. We finally have a mobile network connection again, but it's expensive for us to receive phonecalls. But an sms is always welcome, as well as email and comments on our blog.

Prayer requests:
* pray for the people in the bookfair that they will be able to handle the amount of people that come over every day
* pray for Herberts work in the finance office and the IT office
* pray for the school children here on Cayman Islands, some of our crew members will do school visits in the coming days
* pray for our children to enjoy also this port and for them to cope with the hot weather

With love,
The van Vliet family (or as we are called on board now: the von trapp family - for those who have no idea who they are, check online for Sound of Music ;-) )

birthday party

2008-04-03T20:25:00.002+02:00

Tuesday was my birthday. I was served breakfast in bed by Herbert and the kids. That was really unexpected. At home we normally give each other breakfast in bed, but I didn't expect to get it here... so that was really nice.
At 8 am we had devotion time upstairs and there the whole crew sang Happy Birthday to me. I got some presents from some of the crew members and got some cards.
We had a nice day. I used the afternoon to bake some cakes, and we ate them yesterday, the day after my birthday. Cheesecake is a lot better after a day :-))
In the evening yesterday we had a party upstairs on the fundeck, we had a great time and lots of fun.

Have to go now, we're sailing in 30 minutes and internet will go any minute.

Write more next week hopefully (as soon as we have internet there). Sailing to Cayman Islands will take us 4 days.

Bye for now and God bless you all!

pre-birthday shopping ;-)

2008-03-31T22:20:00.001+02:00

Today Herbert had his day off and we went shopping for my birthday tomorrow. Herbert wanted to buy me a saxophone and guess what.... we found one for a good price!!! So that will be my birthday present. No, I don't know how to play the sax, but I guess I'll figure that out as well :-))
I also bought a beautiful bag with 'see through' pockets on the outside to put pictures in, and on the bag it says: "God will be with you wherever you go".
Tomorrow after lunch I will help the cook to bake my birthday cakes :-) This afternoon I bought some of the ingredients, normally we don't have to buy that ourselves and we don't have to bake ourselves either, but I like to bake so I want to help, and I want a cheesecake and he didn't have any cream cheese, so I bought that.
Tomorrow night we have praise and worship evening on board, so that will be a nice end of my birthday I think!

At home my birthday would already have started, since it's around 3 o'clock at night there, but it's still monday evening, the 31st, here.

Haven't taken many pictures last couple of days, since we had to buy new batteries first, but we will probably take some pictures tomorrow, so I'll try to put an update of pictures on the website tomorrow.

With love from the warmer climate :-)

Todays program

2008-03-27T23:00:00.002+01:00

This morning we had a school program planned. A school group with about 60 kids were coming to the ship and we had planned a program with dance, games and songs. They were supposed to be here at 10 am, we had a meeting to discuss details and were ready at 10 am and waited for them. It started to get later and later, and at around 10.15 one of the girls called the school to ask where they were, and it turned out the school thought the program was going to be next thursday!! Well, next thursday we've already left Nassau, so they can't come then! She checked here e-mail if she had been wrong about the date, but the schools confirmation was really for today, so the school just didn't check the date and thought it was next week.
So there we were, the whole team all 'dressed up' for the kids program and there was no program :-(

After lunch we (that is a group of 10 persons from our crew) went to an orphanage. Last tuesday we had about 25 kids from the orphanage visiting us and we did a great program, including a tour around the ship and a lunch on board with a gift for every child. The kids were between 5 and 14. I asked the manager if they have small children as well and she said they have a baby/toddler group. I then asked if I maybe could visit that group of the orphanage with a couple of crew members and she asked me to call her to set up a date to come out and visit them.
So I did, and we went there this afternoon.
She came to pick us up with a mini buss with just enough place for all of us, and after arriving at the orphanage she first showed us around. The place really looked nice! It's quite modern and this was not a real poor orphanage. It's good to see that the kids have a nice place to be.
After the tour we went to the baby/toddler group, they just woke up from there afternoon nap. We got to help giving them lunch and played with them, sang and danced.
We had a great time and the kids loved playing with us.
There was 1 little baby girl, around 12 months old, they I noticed. I asked to feed her and they let me. Afterwards I took her out of her chair and she just wanted to be close to me. Whenever I wanted to put her down, she would crawl straight unto my lap again and lift up her hands.
The little girl obviously came from a home where she's been abused, since she was very blue on one side of her face :-((( Many of the children are not really orphans, but have been taken away from home because they get abused or just can't live with there parents for another reason.
It's really really sad, but good to know they have a good place to be, a place where people take care of them.
When we left, I had to put down the little girl and she wanted to stay with me and started crying. It broke my heart and it was really hard for me to leave :-(
I keep thinking about this little girl.
Marthe also came with our group and really liked being there with the little children.
My 'dream' (or at least something I've always thought about) of working in an orphanage or having an orphanage somewhere has only got stronger.
I can really picture us in a foreign country sometime in the future doing mission work again, but just in another way.
I don't think we will continue working for OM, but we definitely want to do something like this.

It's bedtime now, will put todays pictures from the orphanage on our picture-site (vliet.net/logos2) tomorrow.
We have community devotions at 8 am tomorrow which I'd want to go to.
So for now... good night... and please leave us messages or send emails :-)

Address

2008-03-22T22:07:00.003+01:00

If you would like to send us mail the 'old fashioned' way, you can send it to:

van Vliet family
LOGOS II
Alte Neckarelzer Str. 2
74821 Mosbach,
Germany

Mail is being forwarded from the Mosbach-office to the ship.

Would be VERY nice to get postcards or letters sometimes!! Especially for the kids.

And just a little reminder that my birthday is April 1st ;-)

Maria

Nassau..

2008-03-20T02:59:00.002+01:00

Well - we've now arrived in Nassau. The kml file for Google Earth can be downloaded from http://vliet.net, and it'll show our sailing path (basically some straight lines, so whatever).
The whole trip went pretty smooth, except for the last mile or so - we hit a wave which made the boat tilt over 20 degrees a few times. So all the books in the book ex were on the floor. The Kitchen was a mess, and the Mess .. was also a mess. But two hours of hard work by all the people in the book ex made it look like nothing happened.
I'll find some pictures later and put them up.

Nassau looks pretty nice so far. Mostly for the sun, water, beaches and trees. This part seems very tourist-like with most of the tourist coming from (huge) cruiseliners and staying for only a day or two. Enough to go buy a t-shirt and a hat and do a horse-carriage-ride thing.

Maria learned some new card game - we'll see if we get to import it to Norway (I haven't a clue how it works but it's sort of a quasi-social game... lots of people doing lots of things simultaneously - it's called ligretto).
Oh - I'm supposed to take over *horror* - we'll see if I'm able to write more tomorrow :-P

Nassau

2008-03-19T19:16:00.003+01:00

Yesterday afternoon around 5 pm we left Freeport and this morning at 9 am we arrived safely in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas.
I think everybody was happy for arriving in Nassau, at least there are things to do around here ;-) The ship is berthed in the middle of the city center and the kids and I have already taken a little walk to some shops.
Several of the crew members were VERY happy to see the Starbucks right across the street!! Finally a good and laaaaarge cup of coffee :-)))

The trip from Freeport to Nassau was quite OK, don't think anybody was seasick this time.
I've just been lying awake from around 5 am, not that I wasn't feeling well or anything, I just couldn't sleep of the movement of the ship from the high waves.

Right before we entered the port here this morning and most crew members were on deck to look, we had 3 very high waves and it felt like the ship was about to tip over! Eskil was afraid we would really tip over and Krister just thought it was fun.
Afterwards, the whole book fair was a mess.... books had fallen of the tables, tables had fallen over and some were not usable again afterwards. CD's also had all fallen out and many CD boxes are damaged.
Bente was in bed sleeping and Herbert went downstairs to check on her immediately, but she was OK and still asleep :-)
But, our (and everybody's) cabin is a big mess... cabinets have opened and lots of stuff has fallen out.
I'm very glad Bente wasn't sleeping in our bed, because there was lots of stuff which had fallen on our bed.

Just bought a new caps for Marthe, only 4 dollars and she is happy with it, so I'm happy as well :-)

Attention all on board...

2008-03-18T04:01:00.002+01:00

This message we hear the captain, or someone else on the bridge, say quite often, at least once a day, and the last 2 days the full message was:
"attention all on board, there is free ice cream in the coffee bar" That's always a nice message to hear when you're all sweaty ;-)

Commenting..

2008-03-17T01:45:00.001+01:00

It's now possible to respond and write comments to the articles. So please, feel free!
Det er nå mulig å skrive kommentar til innleggene. Så gjerne benytt sjansen!
Het is nu mogelijk kommentaar te geven op de artikeltjes. Dus maak hier gaarne gebruik van!

Sunday evening, march 17, Freeport

2008-03-17T01:38:00.003+01:00

Hi all,
A short update - things've been quite busy here and there's been a load to learn and to do here.
We left Bermuda with approx. 80 people on board, and it looks like we'll be leaving Freeport with ca. 90 people on board.
The sun is getting hotter here, but lucky for us, we have a fan in both of the rooms - I'll move one to Marthe and Eskil's room later. Since we're pretty much the only ones with one, I'm a bit suspicious about those quarters - I guess it'll get a lot warmer once we go down to Cayman Islands etc.
Freeport, Bahamas, is a strange place - buildings and businesses are scattered all over the island, so you really can't get anywhere without a car.
A little over two years ago, two storms hit the island, and many many trees just wouldn't hold and broke off halfways. Needless to say, also many buildings were damaged. Most are therefore single storey buildings.
In Bermuda we already saw mostly cemented roofs - here some of the roofs aren't, and those are usually the damaged ones.
But Freeport hasn't been rebuilt entirely, and tourism still hasn't recovered entirely - the current population is about half of what it used to be.
That is of course also reflected in the turnover of the books. So far, this has been pretty slow.

It's a good thing the Logos Hope will take over after the Logos II. Running a professional book fair certainly is .. a challenge with the Logos 2.
The other day, a few containers were unloaded - and that is manual labor without any possibility to use a pallet truck or anything.
All boxes of the entire 20-foot container with bible covers went through a small hole of 40 by 60 cm. Not my kind of storage :-P

Yesterday evening we got to watch Shrek here on the ship. Good fun for the kids with popcorn and everything.
We've moved up to the fun-deck now (fun for kids, lovely temperature for me).
There's a mild breeze and the climate is pretty perfect so far.

The voyage to Nassau from here won't take long so I think it'll be during the night.
I'll see if we can visit the casino - even though Bond probably did visit the Casino, it was not in the movie. But lots of other places in both Nassau (located on the New Providence island) and Jamaica are featured in various Bond movies, so we'll have to take a go at it in style :-) OK, without the Walther PPK.

That's it for now. Check http://vliet.net/logos2 for more images. We'll continue to upload.
All the best. God bless you,
<< Herbert & family

another goodbye

2008-03-14T20:33:00.004+01:00

Today the Hill family (Cindy, Timothy, Ellen & James) left again, that was really sad. It would have been so great if they as well would have stayed on board, but... Timothy was just here for some book affairs and has to get back to work back home and the kids also have to go back to school.
We had some great days together with them, going to the beach, having lunch at McD, having fun on the fun deck, good talks in the evening, cups of coffee/tea... it was really nice having them here.
Right after lunch today they left, it's a long drive for them, they won't be home until sunday!

By the way... this is the closest we've been to the USA ever. It's 'only' 5 hours by ferry or 45 min by plane to Fort Lauderdale.
If only we had an american visa I would have taken the kids to DisneyWord or SeaWorld for a couple of days!
Being so close and not being able to go there is a bit irritating, but well... we might fly to the States once to visit Cindy and Timothy and drive to Orlando with them and the kids.

Promised Marthe to go to some tourist shops in the area (there is a cruise ship here today, which means the few shops around the harbour are opened today ;-) )

Ciao for now

Freeport Bahamas

2008-03-13T01:02:00.003+01:00

We have arrived safely in Freeport, Bahamas. We just haven't had an internet connection until now, so that's the reason for not having updated my blog.

About Freeport.... well... it's a harbour faaaaaaaar away from city, beach, shops or anything else. It's just harbour with lots of containers and other ships. Quite boring actually. Since the cruise ships also dock here, the taxis are all tourist prices, which means expensive, and with expensive I mean they're about the same as Norwegian taxi prices!!
Yesterday we've been to a beach with a group of people (8 all together) and we told the taxi driver that we were not rich tourists, but we're missionaries from the book ship and that there's no way we could pay that. The first taxi driver we spoke to did us an offer we still thought was to much, the second one offered us a good deal ;-) He drove all of us in his taxi minibus to the beach for 15 dollar, and picked us back up at the beach in the afternoon and drove us back for 15 dollar again, that's about 2 dollars each one way... not bad! (and he even was in time to pick us up! well done for a Bahamian ;-)) )
We had a great time at the beach. Even though we'd been told that the beaches in Freeport are not that nice and that we could better wait until arriving in Nassau next week, the beach was just beautiful! Right next to a beach resort, so there was even some music and things to look at on the beach. The sea is just amazing here!! The colour is a beautiful green/blue, also here in the harbour and it's just tempting to dive right off the ship ;-)

Today we've been on the ship doing home schooling (or should I call it ship schooling?). There's another family from the USA who is going to stay here this week. They have an 8 year old girl (Ellen) and a 5 year old boy (James). The family is really nice and this morning the kids all did homework together. And in between we had lots of fun on the fun deck!
For tomorrow we've planned on going to the beach again with the other family. Herbert will have the afternoon off so he can join us.

Today another container with books just arrived and most of the staff is taking boxes out of the container and moving them to the book hold. Lots of work.
The book sale is a bit slow here in Freeport, but that's not strange seeing how far we are from where people live. In Bermuda we were docked right in the middle of the city center, but here we are in the middle of nowhere.
But, yesterday we had the opening and the media was there as well, so it should have been announced in the local newspaper and on the radio today, so we're hoping for more visitors tomorrow.

The kids still like being on board the ship I think. Bente is being terribly spoiled, everybody wants to hold her and hug her, they all love her :-)
Natascha tells Krister every day: "mimi, ik hou van jou" (in dutch! for the non dutch speaking, this means "mimi, I love you") That's so cute, but the only answer she gets from him is "nee" or "nei", poor girl, doesn't get any love back... hehe...

Well, time for a cabin clean up now, since our cabin is not really big, it quickly gets messy, so tidying up every day is absolutely required. But well... don't really have much else to do around here, so why not ;-)
This week it's our turn to clean the toilets and shower rooms in our department, but that isn't really much work either.

Will ask Herbert to put some of the latest pictures on the site tonight!

With love to all of you and God bless you!

The van Vliet family

nederlands - norsk

2008-03-06T15:12:00.003+01:00

Lieve mensen, laat het even weten als jullie problemen hebben met het lezen van onze engelse blog. Stuur een mailtje, dan mail ik je terug hoe het met ons gaat zodat ook jullie op de hoogte blijven :-)) We hebben maar begrenst internet toegang, dus de tijd op het internet wil ik zo effectief mogelijk gebruiken en vandaar dus 1 blog voor iedereen in het engels ipv zowel een engelse, noorse als nederlandse blog te schrijven.
Maar, mail wordt altijd beantwoord, al is het misschien pas na een paar dagen af en toe, afhankelijk van waar we zijn.

Kjære venner i Norge, dere som har litt vanskeligheter å lese vår engelske blogg, gi beskjed!! Gjerne sendt oss en epost, så mailer vi tilbake for å fortelle litt om oss selv.
Vi har begrenset internet tilgang, så den tiden vi har på nettet, vil jeg heller bruke til å skrive på vår engelske blogg, slik at de fleste kan følge med, istedenfor å måtte skrive både engelsk, norsk og nederlandsk.
Men, mail får alltid svar, selv om det kan ta tid :-)

To our english speaking friends, this was just a message in dutch and norwegian for those who don't read english, to explain why I write in english (trying to be effective, time saving, because of limited internet access).

With love from Bermuda!

Our pictures

2008-03-06T15:09:00.001+01:00

A quick link to our picture-site, so they're easy to find...
vliet.net/logos2

last day

2008-03-06T03:10:00.002+01:00

One more day in Bermuda and we'll sail of to Freeport, Bahamas.
Today I went to Horseshoe Bay Beach with the kids. Herbert had to work, so he wasn't with us. We took the bus to the beach and were together with some of the other crew. On our way back we took the bus alone, since the others went to the other side of the island first.
We (or at least I) were quite sweaty when we came back on the ship, because traveling alone by bus with 4 kids, is quite a job and not something I'd like to do every day ;-)

But... we had a good time on the beach. Marthe actually went swimming, even though the water was not really warm (it is, of course, winter here ;-) ). Eskil just went into the water walking, but didn't swim, and Krister went for a dive... (well ok, he fell... twice).
After about an hour, he sun came out and it was really warm, and they call this winter??? ;-)))

We made a couple of pictures today as well of course which Herbert promised me to upload to vliet.net/logos2, so check there for the pictures.
That's a lot easier for us then uploading a couple of pictures into this blog.

And, if you read this blog, pleeeaaase write comments :-)
It's so good to know that people actually read what we write.

This might be the last blog for a while now, since we're sailing tomorrow. We'll be at sea for about 4 days before we reach Freeport and will probably not have internet access right away either.

God bless you all!

With love from Bermuda

Update Hamilton

2008-03-04T02:08:00.002+01:00

After have been here for a couple of days, we're starting to get used to life on board. The kids know their way around now, so we don't have to be afraid they really get lost ;-)
Marthe and I have already been working in the Book Fair, which was really nice to do. I've also been working in the galley (which is the kitchen).
It's nice to do something whenever someone else takes care of the kids.

Tomorrow Herbert has his day off and we plan on going to the aquarium. At 4 pm we'll have to be back, because we'll then be picked up by a local family to come visit them at their house, so the kids can play. They really seem very nice, so we're looking forward to that.

Saturday evening we had a youth meeting on board the ship where lots of local youth was present. We sang a song that is being translated in many different languages and everyone who know the song in their language could sing a solo. I sang it in Norwegian, since I don't know the Dutch version.
The chorus in English is: "You are great, You do miracles so great, there is no one else like You, there is no one else like You" (if anybody knows the song in Dutch, please let me know!)
In the youth meeting there was a pastor and he asked me and some others to come to his church on Sunday and sing the song there.
So yesterday we've been to Cornerstone church here in Hamilton, and I sang the song ;-)

Hamilton - Bermuda

2008-02-29T20:15:00.003+01:00

Dear friends and family,

We arrived safely in Bermuda! Yesterday, thursday, we left from Schiphol airport in Holland to London Gatwick. Our plane was supposed to leave at 11.55, but left finally at about 13.30. Arrival in London around 13.30 local time ;-) (around 1 hour flight to London).
Our plane to Bermuda left at 14.30, so we had 1 hour to catch our flight, which was really not to much at all, since security in London is just crazy... we had to take of shoes etc, all of us, so it took quite a while to get through security and get to our gate.
But, we made it to the gate in time and made it to Bermuda at well :-)
The kids looooved the big plane. They got a gift-pack with a little book, coloring things and a little toy, really nice.
But after 3 or 4 hours it was not all that exciting anymore, they got tired because it was starting to be late and they had enough of sitting.
We had a little baby bed for Bente, which was great. Only thing was that I had to take her out of her bed while sleeping quite a lot, because of turbulence. As soon as the seatbelt sign went on, I had to take her out, and that happened a couple of times during the flight, of course every time she was sleeping and woke up when I picked her up :-(
And finally, when all the kids just had fallen asleep, we landed in Bermuda.

On Bermuda airport we had to fill out forms for customs and it took a loooong time to get through customs, but also there we finally got through. All suitcases were already there (ofcourse, since it took us about an hour to get through customs - that is before the luggage pick up), and when we came out with our luggage a taxi driver was waiting with a 'van vliet family' sign, and he drove us to Hamilton, where the ship is.
Put the kids to bed almost immediately, since it was already after midnight (our time) and they were very tired!
I went to bed when it was about 11 o'clock Bermuda time, which means 4 at night for us, and Herbert even later!
Bente was awake a couple of times during night and Marthe, Eskil and Krister were all up and dressed at 5 in the morning!!
I think it might be an idea putting them to bed just after dinner tonight ;-)

We (that is, the kids and I, since Herbert was in a meeting with the IT guys) already went for a little walk in the center of Hamilton, where we found a great shop with children's clothes, where we definitely are going to shop later ;-))

Well... that's all for now!
Please leave us a message, send a mail or some other sign of live... we love to hear from you all and know that you read our blog.

With love from Bermuda
the van Vliet family

New cam and printer

2008-02-12T17:48:00.001+01:00

We just bought a new digital camera and a little printer for 10x15 cm pictures :-)
Great fun finding out how this camera works! Will read the manual in the plane on our way to Bermuda, enough time there when we probably cannot do much else then sitting there and reading anyway.
Ofcourse we bought the cam and printer to take with us on board the ship. The printer is mostly so we can immediately print out pictures of people we meet or the other crewmembers to
put on our 'prayer wall' ;-) We started collecting pictures of everyone who wants/needs to be prayed for and put them on a board in our bedroom so we will be reminded praying for those people! So if you want to have your picture on our prayer wall... let us know!

The camera by the way is a Canon Power Shot S5 with a Canon Selphy printer which prints directly from our camera or the pc.
We already printed a picture, taken with our camera, and it came out great, so we're happy so far :-)

Getting ready

2008-02-10T20:20:00.000+01:00

We're now getting ready for our adventure on board the Logos II in the Caribbean.

Tuesday the 26th of February we will be leaving for Amsterdam. We will then stay with our family in Holland for 2 days and fly to Bermuda on the 28th of February.
The Logos II is planning on arriving on Bermuda the 20th, so it should be there (in the Hamilton harbor) when we arrive.
The 3th of March the ship will sail of to Freeport, Bahamas.

We are now packing most of our stuff (except for our furniture) because we are planning on renting out our house here in Norway.
And if we don't rent out our house anyway, well... it's always good to go through your things and throw away lots of stuff you haven't used for a couple of years ;-)

Logos II - our story

2008-02-10T20:00:00.000+01:00

How did we get the idea of packing up all our stuff and do volunteer work on board a ship for 4 months with 4 kids age 0-10??

Most people think we're crazy, we think we're just blessed getting this oppurtunity! :-)

Herbert is a board member of OM Norge, the Norwegian department of OM International. Some of our friends, Markus and Evie, have told us a lot about OM before Herbert joined their board and told us how great it would be for our family to join one of the OM ships :-)
But, normally if you sign up for volunteer work on board one of the ships, it is for 1 or 2 years, and Herbert didn't seem to like the idea of 'jumping into the adventure' and spend so much time on board a ship where he is not in control of what can happen!
So we actually did not talk about it for a while, until Markus send us an e-mail on new years eve that the Logos II would be sailing out to the Caribbean for one last time on a book sale project for only 6 months and that they needed an IT guy, so that we could be spending winter in the Caribbean this year.... hmmm... tempting ;-)
We started discussing it, praying about it, started talking to the project manager and other people within OM International and finally both we and they wanted us to join.

Lots of back and forward about the date we would be sailing out and how long we were going to be sailing with them, and now finally the dates are set.
We'll be leaving in the end of this month and will be sailing with the Logos II until mid/end of June.
The ship has been in Holland in the end of January and Maria and Bente have been on the ship preparing the cabins, meeting the crew and take lots of things on board so we don't have to take so much with us later on.
The ship is currently sailing and we'll be flying over to Bermuda to meet the fleet there!

Our new home for the next 4 months!

To read more about the Logos II, take a look at www.logos2.org