Annual Activities Report 2005       PRINTABLE .PDF FILE

PORT MERCY   1019 North First Avenue, Lake Charles, LA  70601  E-mail: info@friendships.org

Spirit of Grace in Haiti delivering fire trucks and ambulances.

2005 was one incredible year and it is our great pleasure to invite you to take heart in what has been accomplished over the past 12 months. Friend Ships has been able to take on these huge projects and complete them because of your help!

PORT MERCY - Lake Charles, LA

We started the year with an awesome mission to Haiti delivering hundreds of tons of goods including rice, beans, clothing, medical supplies (including $800,000 worth of medicine), furniture, hygiene supplies, Christian literature, 6 fire trucks, 3 ambulances and tons of heavy duty tarp material. These supplies were distributed to the government fire department, emergency services and sixty churches, orphanages and other private organizations.

We hosted hundreds of Pastor’s for a leadership conference, treated 5,000 people with medical, dental and/or eye services, children’s ministry, adult Christian ministry and lunch service.  We held educational programs including health classes and the ALERT team working with us gave an introductory training to a group of young Haitian men.

While the ship was in Haiti, the Lord opened a door to provide supplies for the next mission to Israel. When we returned to Port Mercy, we started to load.  The following items are now aboard Grace for an upcoming mission to help immigrants in Israel and poor Arab families:

• 20 semi-truckloads of furniture including beautiful beds, mattresses, wardrobes, tables, dining room sets, dressers, cabinets, shelves and desks.
• 20 semi-truckloads of new and used clothing including thermal wear, sweatshirts, jeans, rain-gear and shoes.
• 3 semi-truckloads of bedding, much of it new “bed in a bag” sets.
• Several semi-truckloads of paper products including styrofoam containers for serving hot food
• 54 hospital beds
• About 25 additional semi-truckloads of medical supplies, laundry soap, household goods, baby items, school and office supplies and other needed items.

The Port Mercy team worked on “Spirit of Grace” and accomplished many things to prepare her for the journey while our team leaders traveled to Israel to start making arrangements for the mission. 

We resurfaced the helicopter deck on “Hope”.

We received a donation of a new ship, “Shalom” and went to Galveston to retrieve her.

We traveled to California to prepare the ship Fearless to trade for Mersea and then traveled to Houston to prepare Mersea to come home. We brought her to Port Mercy but not for long. . .

Because, in late August, hurricane season kicked into high gear.  Hurricane Katrina hit with a vengeance.

We loaded Hope, then Mersea and sailed off for the New Orleans area where we spent ten weeks providing meals, roofing and chain saw services, prayer, emergency radio broadcasts, housing for hundreds of volunteers and distribution of food supplies, paper products, hygiene supplies, clothing and other needed items to thousands of families and individuals in desperate need.

We helped birth an outreach in downtown New Orleans and left it operating in the hands of other ministries before heading for home in November.

In the meantime, our own Port Mercy and Lake Charles community was hit by Hurricane Rita. We decided to put our own damage on hold in order to minister to the local community. At the same time we continued the outreach in the New Orleans area, our teams ministered in all the same ways to the Lake Charles community, providing tarp for thousands of homes, meal service, prayer, commodity distribution, radio broadcasting, chain saw and roofing services.  Our hurricane efforts continue to this day as we provide tarp for other organizations and churches to continue the work, provide food, mattresses and other items to the outreach in New Orleans and to the Greater Saint Mary’s church for the local community.

To give you an idea of the impact our efforts have made, here are letters of thanks we have received, click on the letters to enlarge to read.

In September, we responded to Hurricane Wilma by sending a team to Florida to provide meal service to needy migrant farm workers until their power was restored and also by distributing tons of tarp from our base in Roatán, Honduras to families affected by Wilma.

In the few weeks we have been back from hurricane duty, and with the help given to us by an awesome construction team, we’ve been able to make progress repairing our own damaged warehouses,  have made repairs to Spirit, fixed our fences, and prepared to install an outdoor dining area here at Port Mercy. 

In addition to all of the above, we have attended several conferences and tradeshows.  We spoke at many churches and organizations.  We did interviews with People and Charisma magazine and appeared on TBN and local TV and radio stations many times.  We passed the date of our 20 year anniversary but haven’t had time yet to celebrate it!  

Laced throughout all this, the Lord blessed us with many new pieces of equipment including:

2 ships. Shalom and a trade of Fearless for Mersea.  A beautiful 206 Bell Jet Helicopter. 2 tarp welding machines. A medical truck that will be prepared for eye surgery and three containers to be prepared for medical procedures. A bus to be used to transport and house disaster relief advance teams. Three new large tents and twelve small ones. Two semi tractors, one former movie industry rig with two 100 KW generators mounted on it and electrical support throughout the trailer.

Three refrigerated trailers to transport and house food. A “roll back” truck (pictured right) to pick up, move and drop 20’ sea containers, vehicles, etc. Three large barbeques and two hot dog carts. A mobile broadband unit and satellite television  for mission use. A 20,000 lb forklift that can lift and move sea containers. A radio broadcast transmitter and antenna for emergency broadcasting. Two passenger vans and two pick-up trucks and many, many other great things.

This year, we made a lot of new friends. We hosted hundreds of guest workers and groups during the hurricane outreaches. We worked in coordination with Trinity Broadcasting in Haiti and during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; with Joseph Project for the mission to Israel; with Alert Academy in Haiti and New Orleans; with World Vision, the mayor of Gretna and numerous other organizations, churches and government groups in Louisiana for hurricane relief.

Los Angeles – The Storehouse One Food Distribution Program continued to collect and distribute food each week, topping the 55 million pound mark since the programs birth in 1987.  The team there collected and sent many truckloads of food and other wonderful goods to help with us with our hurricane outreach. They loaded and sent out a container of supplies to help three mission schools in Nigeria.  The team organized, prepared and delivered several loads of supplies stored in Los Angeles to Port Mercy.

Roatán, Honduras - The Roatán team has held two sessions of Art School, training people to make souvenir items to sell to the tourists.  They have made our auditorium and housing facilities available to host many church seminars; given dance classes to the youth; fought dozens of fires; hosted church fellowship meetings and shared the food we have grown with the local orphanage. In addition, the team has installed roofs on more than 50 homes, churches and schools as well as providing tons of tarp for hurricane response following Hurricane Wilma. 

It has been one great year and the Lord has made it all happen.  Thank you Jesus!  You are an awesome God!

2006 This year promises to be exciting. At present, we are standing by for a possible mission to Cuba. If the door opens, we will deliver tons of tarp material to Caritas (Catholic Relief Services) there.  We are planning to carry on with the mission to Israel and are also hoping to run missions to Haiti and Honduras.  There are many improvements we hope to make here at Port Mercy. We have much work to do preparing our new equipment to be ready for use this year and of course, we will stand ready to respond in case our services our needed here in the U.S. or elsewhere in this hemisphere during hurricane season 2006. In June, we intend to host a training seminar here at Port Mercy to prepare those who would like to work with us in disaster relief.

Thank you friends for standing with us!  Together we can accomplish so much more than anyone of us could alone.

If you would like to donate to Friend Ships and have questions about estate planning, residual interest of a charitable remainder trust, death proceeds or cash value life insurance, gift annuity, proceeds received at maturity of a bond or retirement funds designated for Friend Ships, we now work with a financial planner who can advise you concerning these issues. Call, write or email our office for more information.

Current Annual Activities Report 2005

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Updated February 2006