Hello everyone and welcome to our first blog post as we prepare to head off to volunteer with Mercy Ships for the next two years!
Our travel blog (www.thegoodallsahoy.com) is now live and this will be where we'll post updates and photos. As new blog posts are uploaded we'll send out notification emails to let everyone know.
It was great seeing so many of you at the Bisham Abbey fundraising event on the 12th August and we we really appreciated the support and the words of encouragement. Our friend Dan Alexander (who was the magician on the day) did an amazing job and also a big thank-you to the team at Bisham for all their help.
For those of you that missed the videos, here are the two short clips that were shown on the day:
<insert intro video #####>
<insert Syplian video #####>
The last month has been pretty crazy as we pack up here in the UK and get everything ready for our departure. Clearing out the house and packing everything away into storage and suitcases has definitely been a challenge, but also highlighted that we were due a good clear out. Some of the more useless items we discovered were; horse riding boots, 3 different roof rack kits (including one for a car model we've never owned) and GCSE textbooks!
We've been fortunate to be able to send some boxes to the Africa Mercy in advance of our arrival on-board. These were packed out with lots of essential family supplies, i.e. Nappies, nappies, wet wipes and more nappies.
Judah of course was keen to contribute to the packing process ....
The car load of boxes was then driven over to the Rotterdam shipping office in Holland by Barney, who also got to meet the Dutch Mercy Ships team based there
When Noah was asked what we'd need on-board, he was convinced that along with the nappies, tupperware would be in short supply and so he helpfully took it upon himself to prepare a small selection for us!
We fly out from the UK on the 11th Sept and will be travelling to the US first for 6 weeks of training at the Mercy Ships HQ in Texas, before arriving in Guinea and joining the Africa Mercy at the end of Oct.
We're really sad to say goodbye to everyone for this season, however please do stay in touch and we hope you enjoy following our updates and hearing about what we get up to in Africa.
Lots of love,
Barney, Liz, Noah & Judah