October 22, 2001
Wayland student anchors her faith on floating mission
EMILY HOGUE gets into a sticky situation with peanut butter aboard the Caribbean Mercy.
___By Teresa Young
___Wayland Baptist University
___PLAINVIEW--After just four weeks aboard the ship Caribbean Mercy in Honduras, Emily Hogue came away with several valuable life lessons.
___The Wayland Baptist University junior learned God can work through someone who serves behind the scenes rather than on the front lines. And she realized how fortunate she is as an American.
___She also learned she's not as big a fan of peanut butter as she once thought.
___Hogue spent a month on the ship docked in Honduras on mission with Mercy Ships, a division of Youth With a Mission. A renovated cruise ship, the Caribbean Mercy houses 150 people and includes dining areas as well as large areas for medical clinics.
___The native of Lovington, N.M., said volunteers from all over the world staff the ship, from the captain and crew to the physicians who treat patients.
___Her first few days aboard the ship were filled with learning experiences and lots of prayer. Although she had offered to be placed wherever she was needed on the ship, her initial reaction to being placed in the ship's pantry was not positive.
___"I wanted to help, and I didn't care what I had to do to get there," Hogue said. "My outlook was to be able to work and evangelize. But I wasn't able to leave the ship because of gangs and being female. I was pretty disappointed, but God asked me early on, 'Is it OK if it's just you and me this summer?' and I said it was."
HOGUE with a child encountered during the mission trip to Honduras.
___In the pantry, Hogue would receive food prepared in the kitchen area and put it on plates to serve the mission workers on the ship. One of her duties was scooping peanut butter out of industrial-sized boxes.
___That chore turned her off to peanut butter for awhile.
___While she was working in the pantry, medical teams held clinics in the cities, often traveling by car and then walking to more remote locations. General medical checkups were given in the cities, and cataract surgeries were being performed in the ship's hospital area. An eye clinic near the boat handed out glasses to many in need.
___Hogue was able to travel with a medical team only on a few occasions. But in those times as she entertained children who had come to the clinic with their parents, she saw the faith of many.
___"Everyone who came through the clinic got Jesus shared with them, and there had been hundreds of salvations," she said. "When a person would get saved, they were so excited they would be shouting out the salvation prayer."
___Even so, the reigning Miss Wayland admitted her biggest lessons came from serving in the pantry and having long conversations with God.
___"I learned that developing my relationship with God was more important than just doing things," she said. "The doing had to come as an overflow. I also realized I was helping out by serving the team who was going out. And I became so much more appreciative of my family and how much I have."
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