Edeles in Munich: Amy´s stories....

Hello friends, it is time that I tell you a little bit of the excitements in my life lately....

But before I talk about myself I want to show you a friend of mine whom I met here on the ship. And even though I don´t understand fully all the wonderful and complex things that are being done here on the ship, I think these pictures speak for themselves:

This is Amadou, before he came to us on the ship! He was found in the bush by some people from the ship, and he was close to dying because of this tumor that was slowly suffocating him!

I have to say that I like Amadou a lot better now after the surgery - and you can see in his smile how incredibly thankful and happy he is!

Here you see me and my mommy sitting in front of the entrance to the 6 operating rooms (the British call them "theaters" :-) ) where so many lives have been transformed already. Here on this bench the nurses and doctors offer prayer to every patient coming for surgery - well aware that they can only do their best, but God has to do the rest!

Today is my turn to enter them!!! You want to know why? You don´t see any tumors etc? Well, it was nothing dramatic at all compared to all the African people who usually enter this door:

I had to have 3 fillings in my back teeth, that somehow got damaged and disfigured through a fever when I was small and these teeths were built in my gum.

This friendly man is dentist Dr.Dag from Norway - who was one of the 3 or so dentists here in Liberia - for 3 million people!!! 4 days a week he worked at a clinic outside the ship where many many people lined up daily for help - mostly pulling teeths! But there were also terrible and lifethreatening infections due to not having access to a dentist! We can be so thankful in our countries for having access to medical help!
Dr. Dag is also our crew dentist - and was willing to fill my teeths! But because I am so young he had to do it under full anaesthesia - so I went through the whole procedure of surgery (the hardest was to see David eat breakfast and not being able to have anything! The rest I don´t know for I was put to sleep...)

But everything went well - and in the recovery room was Mommy and Daddy and two nurses.. and....

... Doctor Bear waiting for me to wake up! Thanks to the biggest Doctor of all, my daddy in heaven, who watched over me!

Now I tell you something else that was very exciting when I woke up yesterday and came out of my bed:

The whole cabin was beautifully decorated!

Can you believe it - I am a big girl now! Yesss, i am 3 years old - and I had a wonderful birthday! I want you to see how much fun we had!

For example unwrapping big gifts sent over aaaaall the way from Germany....

.... and turning them into a big princess castle!

And who of you can say that they had a real firedrill practicing for emergency situations on sea (that will hopefully never happen) on their birthday? You would probably have to hire a special-event-company for that and pay lots of money - and I got it for free (smile)

I helped Mommy decorate my birthday cake (and she wondered why I wasn´t very hungry at lunch time anymore... :-)

And in the afternoon I had a fun party with 10 kids and some grownup friends on Deck 7 - with temperatures I will probably never have on my birthdays again (unless I stay in Africa!)

Honoring the time of the year though we had fun "winter" games:

.. like being blindfolded and having to stick a carrot nose on the snowman...

... or trying to fetch a chocolate snowman from a line ...

.... only being allowed to use our mouth and not our hands!
(Thanks for the package from Germany with these special goodies!)

Of course there was more sugar! And even though it is not allowed to light candles on the ship, my mommy got special permission from the captain to light REAL candles for me to blow them out! The wind wanted to help me too much though - so we had to guard the flames for I wanted to do it now I had the special chance!

We had other great games and fun in the sun - so to end my winter-summer-birthday we had a untypical special surprise game untypical for december in Germany: