Part 3 – Caring for Your Team

One of the things I was asked to do when I came on board was to help “gel” the Finance team. That meant different things: gentleness and a listening ear for our ship Finance team instead of telling others what to do, strengthening collaboration with our shore‑based colleagues, and improving our relationships with other teams on the ship. A year ago, some of those relationships weren’t as collaborative or servant‑leader oriented as they could be.

I came in with the opportunity — and honestly, the privilege — to lead as a caring, kind, loving, and gentle manager. That doesn’t mean there weren’t things that needed to be healed or changed. There were. But I also knew that one of my main responsibilities was to build people up. And I had the opportunity (and challenge) to slow down, listen, and care. For a fast-paced person, that can be hard.

Building Up and Encouraging

As a leader, one of the greatest joys is to encourage your team — it is fun, enjoyable, and a joy. To tell them “you’re doing a good job.” To help them with questions, or sometimes to not answer their questions, but instead respond with, “How would you solve that?” or “What do you think we should do?” Or sometimes even, “That sounds tough. What would you like to do about it and could you come back with a proposal?”

Those kinds of questions communicate something important: you are smart, you are capable, and you don’t need to wait for permission from me or anyone else to do the right thing — as long as you’re acting in line with the mission and values of Mercy Ships. That includes being customer‑centric, caring for crew, day crew, and patients, and building collaborative bridges across departments.

However…us Accountants aren’t always known for customer centricity or collaboration — the stereotype is that we hide behind spreadsheets. But here on the ship, that looks different.

Encourage and Challenge

Part of caring for the team is also challenging them. Not with the overused “do more with less” line. I don’t believe in that. I mean the kind of challenge that says, “I believe in you. You can be more efficient, more structured, more creative. You can rethink processes to save time, reduce errors, improve quality, and inform others better.” You can apply more of your own skillset and thought process.

One example: day crew stipends. For years, we paid about 300 day crew every two weeks using spreadsheets. It took 10–12 hours, and when we paid them, there was no pay statement. Day crew don’t have email addresses, and they work all sorts of shifts (day, night, weekend, etc.). Most of the time, they just wanted to know: “Was I paid correctly, and is it in my mobile wallet?”

We didn’t empower managers to answer these questions, and Finance was always reactionary. So we restructured the process, cut payroll time to 3–4 hours, and added automated stipend statements emailed to each manager, including who worked, how many shifts, how much they were paid, and savings choices.

Suddenly managers were empowered. They could answer questions. They could celebrate savings with their day crew. And they didn’t get blindsided.

From Tasks to Deliverables

We also worked on a small but important shift: from tasks to deliverables. A task is “pay the bill.” A deliverable is “pay the bill and tell the requester it’s paid.” That simple confirmation builds trust across departments and prevents a lot of guessing and frustration. That “small” change built so much trust not just across our onboard Finance team, but across the ship and the organization. Again, small, iterative steps.

Accountability as Care

Accountability isn’t punishment — it’s care. We all forget things. We all drop balls. Accountability says, “I care enough about this work, and I care enough about you, to help make sure it lands.” Sometimes that’s a difficult conversation. Over time, those conversations build dignity and trust. By saying “I’m holding you accountable to this” we’re saying “I believe in you and know you’re capable.” To ignore it and do it yourself takes away their dignity.

The result isn’t just better processes. It’s a healthier, more joyful team — one that cares for and prays for one another, and one that’s better equipped to serve the hospital and the mission of Mercy Ships. It is more fun, too.

Part 2 – The Value of Good Habits and Simplifying to Allow Opportunity

When I first walked into the Finance Office on the Global Mercy, it didn’t take long to realize that some of our processes were clunky. Actually, “clunky” might be too kind. Many of them were slow, frustrating, and flat‑out inefficient.

Paying bills can take days with the back and forth. Running day crew payroll ate up more than a day. Handling deductions or insurance fees could stretch on and on. Every cycle, we’d spend hours bogged down in the same steps, repeating the same frustrations.

Being around finance systems for a long time, both in nonprofits and in tech companies, one thing I’ve been taught is that inefficiency eats away at more than just time. It eats away at morale. It makes people feel like they’re spinning their wheels. And when you’re a volunteer — when you’ve left your home, your career, and your family to serve on a hospital ship in West Africa — you don’t want to feel like your energy is being wasted.

So early on in our first year here, we made it our goal to simplify.

Why Good Habits Matter

Before getting into the technical fixes, I need to explain why I cared so much about habits. Because this wasn’t just about saving hours on a spreadsheet. It was about changing the culture of our team.

If you’ve ever been part of an overworked team, you know the default mode: heads down, just get through today, don’t think about tomorrow. When you’re that busy, you don’t stop to ask, “Could this be done better?”

That’s why good habits matter. Good habits create margin. And margin gives you space to breathe. Space to think. Space to notice when others need help. Without that margin, we never could have said yes when the hospital came knocking.

Cutting Down the Big Time Sinks

Take day crew payroll. Every two weeks, we pay about 300 day crew — Sierra Leoneans who work alongside us in everything from hospital wards to deck operations to the galley. Before, the stipend process took 10–12 hours. Each cycle. We’d sit in the office for a full day, sometimes two, checking and rechecking spreadsheets, transferring information, typing things in by hand.

Afew a few months of retooling, we cut that process down to three or four hours. Same work. Fewer headaches. Fewer errors and challenges, too.

Or take insurance fee deductions for a subset of crew. What used to take two days now takes about five to six hours. That’s not just time saved — that’s a day of someone’s life every month, freed up to do something else.

Even journal entries were streamlined. We used to type every single one manually into our accounting system. Painful. But we already had the data in Excel. All we had to do was reformat it and import it. Suddenly, what took hours took minutes. This reduced the risk of errors, too.

Beyond Efficiency: Building Up the Team

But it wasn’t just about processes. It was about people.

Simplifying gave us the freedom to invest in the team. Instead of always being buried in tasks, we could think about growth. I could encourage them to take ownership of projects, to learn new skills, to pursue continuing education. Sometimes that meant giving them more responsibility. Other times it meant stepping out of the way and letting them run with it.

I wanted them to know Mercy Ships had their back — not just as accountants, but as people. That meant celebrating wins, encouraging them to take classes, and reminding them they didn’t always need my permission to make improvements.

How Simplifying Creates Opportunity

Here’s the bigger picture: without those improvements, we never could have helped the hospital the way we did this year. Those “small” improvements during our first year created the margin to help the Hospital to second year.

If I’d been underwater, buried in paperwork and 12‑hour day crew stipend days, I wouldn’t have had the time or energy to notice their struggles, much less offer to help. And if our team hadn’t built a track record of success — real, measurable improvements — no one would have trusted us to jump into hospital processes.

But because we had margin, we could say yes. Because we had success stories, we could point to them and say, “Look, we’ve done it here. We can do it for you.”

That’s why good habits matter. Not because they look neat on a report, but because they create opportunity — opportunity to serve beyond your department, opportunity to step into someone else’s burden, opportunity to make a difference where it’s most needed.

The Irony of Spreadsheets in West Africa

Some of you might be thinking, “Why spreadsheets? Haven’t we moved beyond that?” In the U.S. or Europe, there are countless cloud systems that automate payroll, reporting, and scheduling. But in West Africa, things are different. Internet is slow and unreliable. Power can cut out. Cloud systems that look great in marketing brochures just don’t work here. Or they don’t serve the currencies or needs of the country.

Excel works offline. It’s shareable. It’s flexible. And everyone has at least some familiarity with it. It’s not perfect, but in this environment, it’s often the best tool we have. And when you learn how to really use it, it’s powerful.

So yes, a lot of our work has been in spreadsheets. It might sound nerdy. It might even sound boring. But those spreadsheets free up time, reduce stress, and help people go home earlier. And that matters.

Looking Back

At the beginning of the first yer, our team felt the workload and laundry list of tasks. Processes dragged. Everything was reactive. By the end of the year, we had space. We had margin. We had stories of success we could point to and say, “We made things better.”

That shift changed our trajectory. It gave us the ability to help the hospital. It gave us credibility when we offered ideas. And it reminded me of something I’d nearly forgotten: sometimes the most missionary thing you can do is simplify a process, so someone else has time to breathe.

New Jobs, Same Mission

 While I gave a brief explanation in my last blog post about teaching science this semester, I wanted to explain more. 

At the end of last school year, the science teacher on the ship had to go home unexpectedly due to family circumstances. In the Mercy Ships world, it is very hard to find a new teacher, get all the vaccines, training, etc and start in August. I had a quick conversation with the principal before we left and told him I had tutored science classes when I was in high school and college and would be willing to help however I could. About a week before we arrived back on the ship I got a message from him saying no science teacher had been found and was I serious about helping for a semester in the academy. He explained that the students would be enrolled in an online science class and I would be tutoring them through that, making sure they stayed on track, explain things further, update parents on progress, etc as I don't have a teaching credential and can't actually teach. After talking it all over with Jeff and praying about it, we decided it was a go! It is 3 mornings a week and leaves plenty of time for working in the hospital. We are 5 weeks in and so far so good. I'll be done in December and will return to physical therapy everyday again. 

View from my science classroom

Not only am I doing 2 different jobs on board, but now Jeff is too! He is still Finance Director and in charge of all of the budgeting, banking, etc on the ship, but he can now be found in the hospital as well! He has been helping different departments in the hospital be more efficient in how they use data, systems, spreadsheets, and all of that stuff I will never understand! Ha! He has been in more hospital meetings about how many beds are available, tracking patient information, and how we best use the resources we have. It's fun that I will see him in the hallways down in the hospital sometimes now too! 

In other news, the kids are doing well. Now in 9th, 6th and 4th grades (WOW!) and enjoying the small class sizes and fun activities onboard. All of the kids loved the "Hospital Open House" where they could see firsthand what happens in the hospital. 

Once again, thank you for all of the love and support, notes in the mail to say "We miss you!" and texts just asking about our day. We appreciate it all more than we can say. 

J^2, L, S^2

Part 1 – Open Eyes and Listening Ears to Serve

When we arrived back onto the Global Mercy six weeks ago, I (Jeff) already knew the hospital teams were busy. People would say things like, “They’ve got too much,” or “That team is working until 8:00 at night.” I heard those comments last field service too.

But here’s what I didn’t know: why. Why were they staying so late? Why did it feel like the hospital was always underwater? And honestly, even if I did figure out the why, I wasn’t sure if I had anything to offer. After all, I’m the finance guy. My day job was on Deck 8 — spreadsheets, budgets, bank accounts, petty cash. Important, but not exactly what you picture when you think of “bringing hope and healing.” 

Still, if there was a way I could help, I wanted to.

It Started With Excel

So I tried something simple. I put out a message to the crew along the lines of:

The Finance Office is going to be open on Thursdays and Fridays this month to host Excel Office Hours. Stop by if you’ve got Excel questions. We won’t do the work for you, but if your spreadsheet isn’t working the way you want, or you’ve inherited one that is hard to understand, or you’re just stuck — we’ll help you think it through.

Honestly, I figured a handful of people might stop in with random questions. What I didn’t expect was that this would be a doorway into the hospital.

One day, a nursing manager showed up. She told me about a spreadsheet her team used and how it was slowing them down more than it was helping. I said, “Sure, I’d be happy to take a look.”

Now, I already knew her team was slammed. They were leaving late almost every night, trying to juggle too much. I’d also heard from others about some of the challenges they were facing. But this was the first time I was pulled directly into it.

Calling in Reinforcements

I’ll be honest: I’m not the best Excel person on the ship. Not even close. Thankfully, my team includes people who are much, much, much better than I am. So I pulled them in, and together we started working with the nurse manager.

It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t some shiny new cloud system. (By the way, cloud systems don’t always work well here anyway — internet and cell service can be spotty when you’re up country. Offline spreadsheets are often the most reliable tool in West Africa.) It was still Excel. Still rows and columns. Still formulas and cells. But these got the job done.

Small Wins That Weren’t Small

The changes we made don’t sound huge on paper.

• An admin assistant saving about 30 minutes a day on reporting.
• A system that flagged 80+ duplicate entries with one click.
• Restructuring sheets so it was easier to track patients coming in from up‑country.
• Cutting patient transportation planning from one month to one week.

It all sounds pretty nerdy. And, well, it is. But here’s the thing: it mattered.

Those 30 minutes meant one less task at the end of an already long day. Catching errors early meant fewer late‑night scrambles to fix mistakes. Restructuring meant less time trying to piece things together and more time focusing on patients.

And maybe most importantly, it showed the hospital volunteers that a completely different team noticed their struggle — and cared enough to do something about it. 

Why This Matters

If you’ve never been around hospital work on a Mercy Ship, it’s easy to think the mission is only about the big things: surgeries, training local doctors, equipping hospitals. And yes, that’s true. But those big things are built on thousands of small things.

For the hospital team, it’s the small things that pile up: reports, rosters, bed tracking, scheduling. When those processes are slow or messy, the stress builds. When they’re made just a little easier, the difference is felt immediately.

That’s why we’ve come to believe that even something as nerdy as an Excel formula can play a part in “hope and healing.” It frees up time. It lowers stress. It gets people back to what matters most (the patients).

Open Eyes, Listening Ears

I didn’t have a master plan for helping the hospital. I just noticed that people were stretched. I listened when they said, “We’ve got too much.” And then I offered what I had, even though it didn’t feel like much. It started with just one thing, then became another, then another.

Sometimes service looks like someone from Finance sitting with a tired nurse manager, opening a spreadsheet, and asking, “What if we tried this?” It might not look like much, but when you see the relief on their face, or when they realize they can leave work 30 minutes earlier, you understand: it’s not small at all.

We're Back!

 We are back in Sierra Leone! 

First a little wrap up of the past few weeks....

We left the ship in mid-June, had some great family time to rest and enjoy being together and then met back up with the ship in Cadiz Spain. The Global Mercy (our ship) had been undergoing maintenance and was finally ready to welcome us all back on board!

Thankful for all the people who worked on our ship while we were gone!

It was completely different walking up to the ship this year compared to last year. This year it was like coming home. Not "home home" as the kids call it (Auburn) but still home. We were excited to see friends, sleep in our beds and get back to work and school. There are a few new families on board, so it has been good to welcome them and help them getting their footing in their new adventure. 

Berdien and Hanne (from the Netherlands) with Sadie and I while we were sailing into Freetown

We left Cadiz on August 3rd and sailed until August 12th through some beautiful yet rocky waters. I personally saw dolphins, flying fish, a sea turtle, a shark and a whale! Our last day at sea was the kids first day of school. What a busy day! 

At sea sunrises and sunsets are unreal! 

We are now back in the routine of school and work. In a crazy set of circumstances including the science teacher leaving unexpectedly at the end of the last school year I am stepping into teaching 6-8th grade science onboard! It just 3 mornings a week and will leave time for me to still be in the hospital doing physical therapy. It will be fun to serve the ship in a completely different way and use some science facts that have been stuck in my brain for 20 years! ha! 

I found this book in the science classroom. Not my favorite part of science!!

Patients will start coming in the next week or so. Right now the gangway is being set up, mooring lines tied and crew that didn't sail here are flying in. Its exciting to be starting afresh, cleaning the hospital and getting ready to transform lives. Mercy Ships social media has started to have some of the pictures of my patients from last year, so now I can share them! 

Check out this "after" picture of my girl Aminata! Those once bowed legs are SO straight. Even better news is that her and her auntie accepted Jesus as their Savior while here. PRAISE GOD!!!

Thank you for partnering with us so we can do this transformative work. It is an absolute blessing to be here watching lives transform and being a small part of God's big picture for the world. 

J^2, L, S^2

The End of Our First Year!

 WHEW!

We have just ended our first field service in Sierra Leone! The hospital is closed, the final paperwork is being done and people are flying out everyday to head out for a time of rest. The team that stays behind (called the patient selection team) will be traveling around the country for the next 6 weeks finding patients who need our help for the next field service. The work truly never stops. 

We have a million stories to tell, and try to give a glimpse into life here, but never can completely. I can only share with you approved patient photos due to patient confidentiality, but we would like to give you a small taste of what life has been like our first year here. 

Please enjoy this 7-minute recap video

We will be getting some much needed rest while the ship has its annual maintenance done. We will try to update this blog as much as we can during this time, but please understand we also need time as a family and to process this time in Sierra Leone. 

Thank you again for your support. It sounds cliche but really could not do it without you. 

Love, J^2, L, S^2

Emotionally Exhausted

 Most of the time I pretty positive on this blog. There are many amazing things our family is able to experience while serving with Mercy Ship in Freetown Sierra Leone and we are truly thankful to be here. But as I say almost daily to myself or to others "This place has the highest highs and the lowest lows". 

Friday was one of those lowest lows kinda days. Not that anything specific was truly terrible, but just a lot. I'll explain....

Friday started as a normal day... wake up, eat breakfast, kids off to school, etc. I get to rehab at 8am for our daily devotions. I know this will be a little different as 2 of our therapist are leaving this weekend... one at noon on Friday and the other 1pm Sunday. In a team of 7 people, losing 2 is a lot and I'm sure we will be talking about that at devotions. The therapist in charge of devotions that day (the one leaving Sunday) had asked a patient to come and give his life story during our devotions time. As you can imagine, all of our patients have a story of resiliency in hard circumstances. While it was a good story to hear, I was already feeling the heaviness of what my patients live through on a daily basis. 

Next up was my 8:30am patient. It was a 5 year old girl who was having her last appointment with us in rehab! She came to us in January to fix her bowed legs and we got to celebrate her discharge home!! I was fortunate enough to do her assessments before surgery, see her every appointment between and now do her discharge assessment. The hours I have spent with this girlie and her mama can't be counted. She is one who was very shy/scared/quiet when I first met her and now walks into the rehab gym like she owns the place. A fabulous tradition here is each kid picking their favorite song and we all dance to it at their last appointment. We danced, prayed for her and gave parting hugs. Both the patient and mom hugged me with tears in the eyes and she waved to me as she walked around the corner to leave. Gah! My heart breaks once again. 

Next patient was at 10am. This is a 12 year old boy who is living at home and coming to see me every 2-3 days or so for rehab. His mom is a single mom with 3 kids and she has to take off of work every time he comes to see me, but she is happy to do it to help her son longterm. Friday she brought me 2 big loaves of bread as a thank you for helping her son. I found out that is her job... she stands on a street corner selling bread that she bought from a bakery. She gave of the little she had to say thank you to me. Humbling to say the least. She would not accept money for the bread stating "It brings me joy to bless you as you have done so much for my son". Gah! Heart broken again for the third time in one morning. 

Next was lunch time. Thankful for a dining room to feed me and see all 3 kids in the middle of the day. After that kind of morning it was easy to squeeze them all, say how much I love them, and love seeing them. Down to the dock now to say goodbye to a PT I have known for 12 weeks. She was the only other PT from the USA so we had a special bond. I gave her a hug and we will definitely stay in touch, but once again, not a dry eye to be found. 

I don't write down these stories to be pitted or for you to say "Oh you are so amazing!". I write this is 1) Remind myself when I read this years from now what my morning looked like 2) Show you all the good and the bad. Like I said, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. We ride a roller coaster of emotions here, but I am thankful for each twist and turn. 

We love it here. Truly.