Basic Training

Hello from the great state of Texas!! My time at home flew by as expected and I have been in Texas for almost 2 weeks now.

My time at home was spent hopping from place to place catching up with friends, spending time with family and even squeezed in a few speaking engagements. I was happy to see as many people as I did but it just never seems like enough time to say everything that needs to be said, or just spend time together saying nothing at all.

My first week here in Texas was spent on the Mercy Ships campus participating in what they call Basic Safety training. It is a series of classes that takes an entire week. The two major highlights are the fire training and the water training.

For the fire training we spent a few days in class learning about fire and how it spreads, and how to put it out. Mostly how to prevent it in the first place. We also were taught how to put on turn out gear properly also know as bunker gear. In addition we were educated in the use of SCBA equipment which must be worn so you can breathe in a smoke filled environment. That was not too hard for me since I am already familiar with breathing through SCUBA equipment when I dive. To pass from this class to the next required one last step. We spent the good half of a day here putting out controlled fires with the skills we had learned. We were required to know what equipment we needed to use and demonstrate our ability to use it. The last and biggest was a pile of pallets on fire in a shipping container. We went in the container in full gear and put out the fire. It was intense to say the least.

Our next challenge was water safety. We learned about emergencies at sea and how to respond to them including man overboard drills and what to do in the event we would ever have to abandon ship. It was a very interesting class and I learned a lot. The height of that class came at the local college pool. Here we were required to demonstrate our ability to put on our survival suits in the allotted time, swim in them and climb aboard a life raft in the pool. This is not an easy task when you are floating better than a blow up pool toy. It was quite the challenge. After passing through that test we moved on to jumping from the diving board in life vests and swimming across the pool. The final test was demonstrating our newly learned skill of flipping over a 12 man life raft alone. I was very worried about this test as I had really struggled to get in the raft in my survival suit. However it turned out to be much easier than expected and I flipped that big old raft over with no problem.

I am happy to be learning these new skills before returning to the ship full time. I do hope with all my heart to never need them. I will try to post some pics from these events in the next few days. In the mean time, Mom you can sleep a little better knowing I am fully approved by the US Coast guard to respond to and emergency at sea.

Thanks y'all for your prayers