Lonnie Curl, Pastor of Lamb's Chapel in Florence, SC, accompanied one of his church members, Onni Hytti, on a recent visit to Logos Hope. An OM Ships' technical manager, Onni was there on ship's business.

They flew into Antigua in order to board the ship before she set sail for St. Kitt. When the customs official asked Lonnie the purpose of his visit, he replied "To visit the Logos Hope ship." The lady said, "I know that ship! I wanted to go myself but I haven't had a chance." Explaining that the ship would soon be leaving Antigua, Lonnie encouraged her to come that afternoon when her shift was over.

In the taxi driving to the port, the friendly driver asked, "Why are you here?" Lonnie answered, "To visit the Logos Hope." The driver said, "Oh, I have been to the ship myself two times and bought some books!"

Once on board, the two split up. While Onni was working with technical systems and personnel, Lonnie was also working: one day in the Book Hold, one day in the Book Fair, and one day in the International Cafe. Whether unloading crates, stocking shelves or pouring coffee, he enjoyed getting to know some crewmembers, as well as greeting visitors to the ship.

He was also invited to speak on the life of David to the ship's company on Friday night and Sunday morning, as well as to the marine division crew on Saturday.

Lonnie and Onni did get to spend some time together off the ship, sight-seeing and speaking to people. "Everybody we talked to seemed to know about Logos Hope," Lonnie said. "A lot of them had already been on board, buying books or taking a tour. They really looked forward to the ship coming!"

"What touched you most during your visit?" I asked him. He thought for a moment, then told me about meeting a member of the crew just back from furlough. Thomas, his wife and daughter live on Logos Hope, and he just signed on for another two years  of service. Lonnie was deeply impressed by the commitment of both Thomas and his wife and the sacrifice they are making to live in such small space and to raise their child onboard an ocean-going vessel.

He also was touched by the fact that crewmembers work such long hours, have little privacy or personal space, yet know they are in the right place doing the right thing in their lives.

This was a short visit for Lonnie Curl, but perhaps one with far-reaching and long-lasting consequences - Lonnie was invited to re-visit Logos Hope some day, to minister to the crew again through working alongside, preaching and teaching from the scriptures. He is praying about that possibility.

Here are a few other photos of Pastor Lonnie Curl and some of his activities  while onboard the ship.

A well-illustrated walkthrough of panels, the newly-installed Journey of Life exhibit on Logos Hope depicts the story of the Prodigal Son in a modern day setting. In just ten days, 17,700 visitors went through the display. Jennifer Bernard (Trinidad and Tobago) observed two men there who seemed impressed by the pictures and workmanship on the wall. As the three discussed what the pictures meant, one of the men told Jennifer how depressed he was, opening the door for her to share the gospel of hope with the visitors. That is exactly what the display is for!

Here is a photographic walk-through of the exhibit, plus a collection of the panels that tell the timeless story of the Prodigal Son. Many thanks to the photographer on board Logos Hope for supplying these great images.

Dad with boys and bike.	Dad divides up.	Boy rides away toward the big city.
He soon spends all his money.	Not the job he wanted!	He walks home sadly, not sure how he'll be received.
Father welcomes him home with open arms and a big hug.	Beautiful images tell the story in a walk-through of the exhibit.

OM Ships in Florence now has its very own guest house in which to welcome out of town visitors.

The house has been named the Thomas Guest House. One of our longest-serving engineering officers, Dave Thomas (UK) joined OM in 1969 when the vision for ship ministry had not yet become a reality. Over the years, he and his wife, Joy (USA), together with their children, served on Logos, Doulos and Logos II, as well as at the OM UK office where Dave was the Director.  More recently they served at the Ships head office where Dave was the Technical Manager. 

Logos and Logos II were the ships Dave was especially linked to, even though he also served as Chief Engineer on Doulos. Logos II in more ways than one was ‘his’ ship, a ship that he re-built and renovated ‘with his own hands’.

It was commitment that characterized Dave: commitment to the ministry of OM Ships; commitment to his own family, especially when he and Joy cared for and subsequently lost their special son; commitment to his engine room team and especially to many individuals, longing to see them involved in ministry and to see them developed as individuals.

As an engineer Dave was not only committed to keep the engines going, but his commitment to the spiritual aspects of the ministry was real. Many who worked with him were impressed with his ability to solve problems and find unconventional ways forward, as well as with his perseverance and his determination.

Dave died suddenly on board Logos II on Monday, 19th May 2008 following a heart attack.  He was serving as Chief Engineer during the final visit of Logos II to ports in the Caribbean.  Joy continues her faithful service with OM, now based at OM UK. The Thomas Guest House has been named in honor of Dave and Joy Thomas' faithful service and commitment to Jesus.

In February 2010, a team of young people from The Kings Academy in Florence, South Carolina, served aboard Logos Hope in Jamaica for a week. Here is a report from Team Coordinator Rosalyn van Baaren to the parents following their trip:

I had the privilege of spending a week with your child. As parents, you may be wondering how the Missions Week on board Logos Hope went from my perspective. The purpose of the Ships ministry is to share the life-changing Gospel to thousands around the world. The ship’s crew and staff do this through bringing "Knowledge, Help and Hope." As a team we had a very busy week and it honestly feels as though we were away for ages.

Before we went, my prayer was that God would impact your child’s life in a special way. Being away from home and their normal environment provided a unique moment in which God could speak to them. On the ship, I would often go through the list of names praying for them, as I’m sure you were also doing back at home.

All different and all unique - some extroverts, some introverts, some easy going, others sensitive - they are a great group of kids! Although some did not know each other very well before the trip, they really did get to know each other much better. They worked well together whether on deck, cleaning pipes, peeling veggies, or even going off on Evangelism day when Ashton needed Benji to pull a bunch of kids off, who were using her as a climbing frame!

I was very impressed with the quality of these young people. Our time on board often included hard work with stressful and stretching experiences, but they all hung in there and pressed on. Being in this intense environment onboard did bring out some (growing) issues in their own lives, but the tears were tears of victory and joy. I believe they show much promise for the future and you have many reasons to be proud of them.

Wick Jackson was a member of a Vision Team from Florence, SC that visited Logos Hope in early 2010. Here is his account of a visit the team made to a Jamaican children’s home, the Westhaven Center for Emotionally and Physically Handicapped in Jamaica.

As we rounded the curve on the rough Jamaican mountain road, the tall chain-link gates seem to open automatically, leading us into the Westhaven Center. Spying our car, a young man let out a piercing scream that would have delighted Alfred Hitchcock. He galloped way too close alongside our taxi as it slowed to a stop. I took a deep breath and got out of the car.

 Our nervous group looked around at those disfigured children who could not walk or run on their own. The screamer had made his way to the other end of the compound letting out screams as he went. Everyone knew that visitors had arrived and several residents headed for us. A few employees also coming our way helped us to relax a little. They had children hanging on them as they approached to welcome us. One young man had a huge smile, twisted legs, arms he couldn’t control, and a Frisbee in his right hand.

 As I approached, his head snapped back, hard enough to make the two ball caps he was wearing almost fly off. In one jerky motion he shoved the large white Frisbee under his left arm and stuck out his right hand. All five fingers on that hand looked as if they had a mind of their own. When his hand came forward again with a jerk, I was able to anticipate where to catch it in mid-air, and did. To my great surprise, he spoke in a clear quiet voice and said, “Hello, my name is Keno. What is yours?” I held on tight to his hand, looked him in the eyes and told him my name, saying “It is a real pleasure to meet you.”

 Trying to position his body, he asked, “So why are you here?” I said that we just wanted to visit. “Would you please take me over there?” he asked, motioning toward my group with his chin.

Florence, South Carolina businessman Jahn Hultgren (Hultgren Tree Service) served onboard Logos II as a project worker on her last Caribbean tour, and he and his wife Colleen worked onboard Logos Hope as part of a short-term missions group in Ireland several months ago.

Jahn says that both times, he was touched at the overwhelming favor the "Book Ships" have with local residents in the ports they visit, a reflection of God's hand upon the amazing ministry of OM Ships.

Jahn Hultgren was born to a farming family in South Dakota and, along with his large extended family, attended the local Union Creek Lutheran Church. Just after he graduated from high school, Jahn made a commitment to Christ, and found with his new faith a heart-felt desire to share Christ with others – a desire that has never wavered. 

After high school Jahn attended the University of South Dakota, becoming involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. At college Jahn met and fell in love with Colleen, and the couple was married the summer following Jahn’s graduation. He graduated in 1984 with a major in Political Science. 

After sending a resume to Inter-Cristo, a computerized Christian job service, The Florence Wesleyan School in Florence, South Carolina offered him a teaching position in their Christian school, which he accepted. Jahn and Colleen left the family farm in South Dakota with all their possessions in a Plymouth Duster and small trailer made from a pickup truck bed. They moved 1,400 miles by faith, without knowing anything about the school or town they were moving to. Jahn imagined that they would be living in the Appalachian Mountains. Imagine his surprise when he saw first-hand that Florence is as flat as a pancake in the coastal plains, and that the high school was held in a double-wide mobile home!

The Hultgrens planned to stay for nine months and then return to their family in South Dakota. Although the school closed after teaching there one year, the couple liked the community and established roots in Florence due to their involvement with the believers there. Twenty-five years later, they believe that they are living in Florence by God’s appointment according to Acts 17:26 :  “…he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live…” They have one daughter, Amber, 23 years old. Colleen works as a nurse at the McLeod Hospice House.

From 1985 to 1987 Jahn was the lead singer for a Christian rock band, Fortress, a ministry of Cross Ministries, and became an active participant in the group’s prison ministry. In 1989 the couple began attending the Church at Sandhurst, where one-third of the budget is dedicated every year for missions and sharing the Gospel throughout the world.

After a year of teaching in the Christian school, Jahn enrolled at Francis Marion University and earned a Master’s degree in Education. He taught school for a total of six years, including four years at The King’s Academy and a year at West Florence High School. He also started Hultgren Tree Service in 1986. Their tree trucks can now be seen all over the city, where his crews specialize in hazardous tree removal, aesthetic pruning and tree preservation. After major storms such as hurricanes, Jahn and his crew may be called upon to travel as far as Florida to assist with clean-up operations. 

Greenville native Nicholas Stewart had a dream growing up – to play baseball. After high school, a baseball scholarship brought Nick to Florence to play for Francis Marion University, where he hoped a successful career in college sports would result in a baseball career, maybe for a major league team.

Emily’s college focus was on academics, not sports. Born in Florence, South Carolina, she lived in several countries around the world with her missionary parents. After high school, she began her college studies at Columbia International University in Columbia, SC.

Committed Christians, both Nick and Emily participated in Campus Outreach and both took summer jobs at Disney World in Orlando, doing Disney merchandising during the day, street evangelism and Bible study in the evenings. There they met, got to know each other, and fell in love. Emily transferred to Francis Marion University for the rest of her academic studies, earning a degree in Elementary Education. The couple has been married for one and a half years now.

While still in college, one day Nick and Emily were invited to a cook-out at the OM Ships office in Florence. It wasn’t a recruiting event. There were no speeches, just good food and conversations. No fancy presentations, just answers to questions like “What is OM Ships, and what do they do?” Their interest piqued, the couple gathered reading materials and DVD’s and did some research.

More prayer, conversations, questions and answers followed. Emily even traveled to the Logos Hope as a member of a short-term team doing practical chores during the ship’s refitting process. By college graduation in 2008, they knew what the next steps in their lives would be.

Nick and Emily applied and have been accepted to join OM Ships, preparing to serve onboard Logos Hope for two years. They attended the Outbound Conference in Tyrone, Georgia, one of OM’s training programs. Currently in the process of raising financial support, they plan to attend the OM Global Orientation (GO) Conference in August, after which they will join the ship.  

In the meantime, Emily is doing substitute teaching. Nick is working in the Florence OM Ships book shop, getting familiar with inventory that is basically the same found on the ships. He hopes to put this experience to good use in the book store on Logos Hope. While Emily is open to any assignment whether in accommodations, galley, or book store, she hopes that during their stay she may also be able to work with the ship’s children. Nick and Emily don’t know exactly what the Lord has in store for them after that, but they suspect that ministry – and missions – will be in their long-term future.

25 year old Raphael Braun, a native of Gummersbach, Germany, is serving a three-month internship at the OM Ships Partner Ministries office in Florence, South Carolina.

He recently graduated with a Bachelors degree in Theology from Brake Bible College in Lemgo, Germany. After his internship with OM Ships he will attend the Macro Media Academie (Academy of Media) in Germany to begin studying to become an Events Manager. After 12 months of classroom work he will serve an 18 month internship, obtaining hands-on experience with many forms of events from concerts to conventions, including seminars, workshops, and fund-raisers. His goal is to eventually put his skills and education to work with a Christian ministry.

Although Raphael became a Christian at age 10, he traces his serious commitment to Christ to five years ago when he realized God had a definite plan and a purpose for his life. He was introduced to the ministry of OM Ships by his grandfather several years ago, did some personal research on the ships ministry and began investigating the possibility of serving an internship in Florence.

One of his favorite scriptures is one chosen by his seminary graduation class, Philippians 1:6: "Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

A favorite quotation is attributed to Winston Churchill, who in addressing a class at his own college during World War II exhorted the students to "Never give in! Never give in! Never give in!" That is still good advice today.

It took many miracles

Here is an excerpt from a Port Report of Doulos' 1980 visit to Callao, Peru, written by Lawrence Tong immediately following the visit. God performed many miracles to make this port visit a reality!

Pre-Arrival Excitement

If ever a country was ready for the ship, Peru was. Economic porverty, a recent change of government, student unrest, continual strikes and demonstrations combined to make these frustrated people very spiritually receptive. Churches had been growing at a remarkable rate. Believers had gotten excited. News of the upcoming ship visit was met with much enthusiasm.

In two days most of the conference tickets were distributed. In the closing days before the ship arrived there was a rush on the few remaining tickets. Long queues at the Christian bookstore extended out the door and down an entire block with people begging for any ticket. New conferences were squeezed into the already packed port programme until every available free space and time was booked.

The final pre-arrival days also brought great pressure to finalize needed permissions. Almost every permission eventually granted resulted from a dramatic and unexpected breakthrough. Port officials at first refused the requests for a 24-day stay and visiting hours to 9 PM. But new port officials, taking over with the new government, called a high-level meeting and reversed the earlier decision, granting each port request.

The permission to sell books was a fight to the finish. Existing laws prohibited anything to be sold from ships. Government officials were unbudging on making any exceptions. Up to a week before Doulos arrived, the book permission was locked in a hopeless bureaucratic maze. Then events changed suddenly.

Unrelated to the ship visit, the Ministry of Finance voted to repeal a repressive importation regulation of the previous government, which had obvious  benefit for the Doulos. Then a high-level official moved into action and personally asked the Minsiter of Finance to bypass every rule and give the ship total freedom to carry out its programme and sell everything they wanted. One day before Doulos arrived, the permission was in hand.

The response of the press went beyond all expectations. A front-page article and large photo appeared in the nation's largest daily. To the utter surprise of the line-up team, the article also stated the ministries of Culture, Economy and Education were all co-sponsoring our visit. That very day a press conference took place, with radio, TV and newsmen present. That night the ship was featured on the nationwide 7 PM news roundup. Many articles followed.

The action begins

Then the ship arrived. And the action really began! At the last moment, the Minister of Education decided to attend the opening. Despite hardly a day or two notice, leading officials and diplomats came as well, including the ambassadors of mainland China, Switzerland, Canada, and several other countries. A few days later, without prior warning, the newly-elected President of Peru came on board one quiet Sunday morning. Following a brief tour, over a cup of coffee he invited a delegation of 25 to visit the palace. Visitors to the (book) exhibition averaged 10,000 daily, topping all previous records. Despite a depressed economy, sales daily were highest ever, not counting the previous port of Guayaquil. Crowds were restless and often crashed the gate. On weekends four buses were in constant motion ferrying the crowds back and forth.
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The highlight event was the longest-ever prayer meeting held with local people. More than 500 jubilant saints prayed and worshipped all night, from 7 PM to 6:30 the next morning. Some even stayed around for the 10 AM conference that followed.

All these years later Lawrence still remembers the many miracles that God performed to make the visit happen, and all those that happened while the Doulos was in port. He says, "It was a port visit to remember." Indeed!

Gerdien Koppenaal (Netherlands) is "on loan" to the OM Ships office in Florence from the Logos Hope for six weeks, working in the local warehouse and the new Coles Crossroad location as the literature division is transferred from Waynesboro, GA to Florence, SC. She has served with OM Ships for nearly two years, working in the book fair onboard Logos II for the first year and Logos Hope since that time.

Gerdien was born in South Africa where her parents were serving as missionaries. The family moved back to their home in the Netherlands when Gerdien was 4 years old and she first learned of OM Ships when one of the ships visited the Netherlands several years later. After college graduation she worked as a secretary at TransWorld Radio for a year. She applied with OM Ships to join Logos II early in 2006 and officially joined the ship's crew in 2007.

During the summer of 2008 Gerdien traveled to Waynesboro to assist in the literature division. She accepted the invitation to come to Florence in January 2009 when the warehouse facilities were being transferred from Georgia. She is considering a one-year extension of her service with OM Ships in order to continue serving in Florence, working with the books and other materials to be sent to the ships. Welcome, Gerdien, to Florence!