MV Doulos

Last weekend the OM ship MVDoulos sailed into port in Alotau.

It had already stopped in a couple of ports in PNG, but I was glad to have the opportunity to see it! The Doulos has the worlds largest floating bookstore. They also have 300 staff and crew on board, who go out into the community each port they stop at. They visit schools and churches doing teaching and ministry, and they also do some community improvement projects. There are also seminar/conferences and classes offered on the ship.

People stood in line for a long time to have the chance to come on board and check out the bookstore!

We were all excited for the opportunity to visit the bookstore as we don’t usually have access to the variety of books that we would in our home countries, and it gets REALLY expensive to ship books! We started off by attending a Women’s Conference that was offered on board. It quite nice. They introduced some of the ladies on board who were dressed up with traditional clothing from their home countries (I think they said about 50 nationalities on board!) and then there was a time of singing, a skit, and a woman from the Netherlands shared about some of her experiences in her 6 years with OM and how important it is to take time to invest in other women—older and younger.

Then we got to go on a tour of the boat…even down into the engine room!

We ended with a trip to the bookshop, which was quite good sized and just packed with people!! I was a little daunted from too much browsing just by the crush of people, but did find a few things to take home with me. We also found a nice unabridged English dictionary that VITAL has been needing, but haven’t been able to find/ship here, so that was really awesome.

Thanks to Karla Sligh for these pictures! I was so sad to discover that I had forgotten my camera!