Keep Calm and Dream Big

‘Keep calm and dream big’ are the words printed on my favourite t-shirt.

A friend gave it to me last Christmas and I simply love the words. ‘Dream big’ is something we encourage each other to do in this place that I work. 

 ‘It always seems impossible until it is done.’  This is a famous quote by Nelson Mandela.

I have been thinking about these quotes a lot recently. Dreams just seem to get bigger and bigger. The impossible becomes possible and we just reach higher and higher. The ceiling becomes the new floor.

It is four years since I handed in my resignation to Bristol Children’s Hospital. It was a big dream and a seemingly impossible leap of faith to become a volunteer and live without earning a regular wage. Over the last few years we have dreamed bigger and bigger (and yes I do mean ‘we’ not ‘I’ – ‘we’ is my friends on board and back home who have dreamed with me).  We have developed the Mercy Ships Medical Capacity Building program and you can watch a 2 minute video called Lasting Impact, by clicking on the tab above (next to the Tab that says 'Home'). This describes some of our activities that the team and I have spent much time dreaming about. Those dreams, and seemingly impossibilities are now a reality.

But then the dreams just get bigger. Last November I was at a conference in Boston. It was a long way to travel from Madagascar for less than a week, but I knew it was an important opportunity. And it was there that God gave me another big dream idea to make surgery safer in Madagascar – teach the World Health Organisation (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist in all the Regional Hospitals.  My team, known as ‘the checklist team’ have been going now for one month, on a:

“twenty-city tour of Madagascar, visiting each region to come alongside the surgical teams in those regions and work together to improve surgical safety across the country. This training is in partnership with Harvard Medical School and Lifebox a charity committed to putting a pulse oximeter in every operating room and improving surgical safety worldwide. This simple tool (pulse oximeter), along with the other critical steps included in the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist have been shown to cut operating room deaths and complications in nearly half! .......The three-day training structure includes sessions focused on empowering surgical teams with the knowledge that safe surgery is possible, and in their very own hands. They will work together to adapt the WHO checklist to fit their specific needs and environment; a critical step encouraged by the creators of the WHO Checklist! Other sessions include Lifebox training and counting of surgical swabs, needles, and instruments.” (taken from Mercy Ships blog by Krissy Close)

No-one has done this before. At times I thought my dream was crazy, too big….but now it is happening. The beauty of the ‘checklist’ is that it empowers surgeons and anaesthetists and nurses to change something themselves. It is a low cost initiative, simply using what they have in a better way. They don’t need to wait for more money, new medication or equipment; the power to change and make surgery safer is truly ‘in their own hands’. That brings hope and inspiration into dark, hopeless places which are undoubtedly under-resourced and could do with new medication and equipment and more staff. But such is the inequality of surgical healthcare in our world. So being able to make a difference yourself with what you have can be very hopeful, and inspiring to many.

I am grateful that I don’t have to dream on my own. I am grateful for all of you who dream with me, support and encourage me in so many ways. These are shared hopes and dreams. Dreams for a better day. And part of another dream I blogged about shortly after I first arrived in Africa with Mercy Ships, this was July 2012 and if you scroll down this page to the bottom on the left-hand side you can click on 2012 and the July button to read that story.

Here's to dreaming big. Keep Calm and Dream Big, because as Nelson Mandela said 'It always seems impossible until it is done'.

Sowing, reaping and inheritance

Most of us are familiar with the idea of sowing and reaping. You reap what you sow. You get out of something, what you put in. But inheritance is different. When you inherit something you get what you didn’t earn. With inheritance, something comes to you because of the work of another.

Often, in our generation today we are consumed with ourselves. We are concerned with what we can achieve now or in the future – but not the distant future – the near future, our lifetime. We don’t mind sowing, if we get to do the reaping. This is the consumerism of our generation. However, I believe we need to think beyond ourselves. We need to think in terms of legacy and inheritance.

Now, I find that an altogether more exciting prospect. To think I could be involved in something bigger than me, that will outlast my lifetime. Or that will at the least, outlast my involvement in the project. I love the idea that I can build a foundation upon which others will continue to build. That someone other than just me, will profit from my work. I love the idea that I can work hard and enable others to stand on my shoulders and achieve greater things. 

I believe we were all created to live that way. To dream big and to let others carry on the dreams. To let God do things in and through our lives which outlast us. And I believe that when we do that we create unstoppable momentum. Because it just gets bigger and bigger. Even Jesus said, in John 14:12, that we will do even greater things than he did. Because he wants us to stand on his shoulders, and reach higher, because we take his inheritance and use that as our foundation. Last year’s ceiling, becomes this year’s floor.

And as I look back over the last few years of laying the foundation of Mercy Ships Medical Capacity Building Program, this week marks the start of a new stage on our journey. Different people will be standing on my shoulders and launching out on new initiatives. Daunting and exciting at the same time. One of these new initiatives is an ambitious goal to teach the World Health Organisation (WHO) Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC) to all the regional hospitals in Madagscar. I leave today to go with the team to the first hospital in Fenerive Est.  I will help them with the first one, then they will stand on my shoulders and reach higher and take what I started and make it better. I will try and share reports from them (on a tab on this blog), week by week as they empower others to make surgery safer in Madagascar. The WHO SSC has the potential to reduce deaths and infections after surgery by almost 50%. Now that is something worth aiming for. An inheritance that brings hope and healing, that transforms individuals and serves nations one at a time. A dream that is bigger than us and that will far outlast our lifetime.

Ships are designed to float

I have been pondering a question these last few days... If you drop a piece of metal in water it will sink. So why does a huge piece of metal, weighing more than 100 hundred tonnes, float? 

Why? Because it is designed to. 

A ship is designed to float. 

A design, so carefully created, that the vessel looks beautiful, streamlined, almost elegant as it sits in the harbour or sails on the high seas.

But out of the water it is a different story entirely. No longer beautiful, the Africa Mercy looks ill at ease. 

Large, cumbersome, incapable of doing what she was designed to do. Her motors and generators can't work. She relies on others for electricity and water; and few of her usually self-reliant systems work.

She was designed for another environment. Ships are designed to float. The dry dock might be designed for the ship, but the ship was not designed for dry dock. Ships are designed to float.

I live on a hospital ship and I spend a lot of time docked in African ports watching other ships come and go. Mostly I see cargo ships and some of these have their own cranes, others are loaded with huge containers. In Madagascar and the Canary Islands I have also seen a lot of cruise ships – huge, luxurious creations. Different ships each with different designs depending on their purpose.

Rather like people. Different people designed for different purposes. And different times need different people. It was said that Winston Churchill was a great leader in war-time, but less so in peace-time.

Yesterday the 'refloating' process began. The dry dock filled with water, and the Africa Mercy returned to her original environment, not dry dock but water. It was a process that took nearly all day. 

The bible tells me that each of us is designed by God. That he has plans and purposes for us. Do you know that? Do you live like that? Do you embrace who God made you to be? Do you embrace your destiny, at such a time as this, and live as you were designed to live? 

Photo credits: Mercy Ships or other crew members photos from Facebook.