Home
Sometimes it’s hard coming home. Not because I don’t love the people here. I do. Deeply. These are the streets that raised me, the people who held pieces of my story long before I knew where my life would lead. But something in me no longer quite fits the life I once knew. It’s as…
How was your day?
How was your day? Such a simple question.Such a small sentence.And yet sometimes it feels impossibly heavy. My throat tightens. My mouth feels thick. The words sit there, but they won’t come out clean. What do I say? “It was good.”“It was fine.”“It was okay.” But that isn’t the truth. I smile, but it doesn’t…
I Am Here, I Am Everywhere
Every day is different. Some days, the beauty feels buried, hard to find beneath the weight of suffering. On those days, my eyes seem to catch only the pain, the loss, the unanswered prayers. And then there are other days, days when beauty insists on being seen. Days when God feels so close it’s as…
An Empty Tank
So many feelings, everywhere, all at once, swirling inside me like a storm I can’t outrun. They rise and fall like waves: sadness, anger, frustration, helplessness. I feel them all, pressing, pulling, choking. They settle in my stomach like stones, heavy and unmoving. I carry them with me through the hospital, behind my eyes, in…
Nurse Mentoring in Sierra Leone
As most of you know, I’m Ayla, and for the past two and a half years I’ve been volunteering as a Nurse with Mercy Ships. For most of my time with Mercy Ships, I was serving on board the ship in the hospital as a nurse and I truly loved it. There is something incredibly…
Shoes of LOVE
Today, I received a gift that humbled me in a way I can barely describe. There are moments in life that stop you completely, moments that make you pause, breathe deeply, and feel the presence of God so powerfully that words fall short. Today was one of those moments. For the past two years, my…
A Story of Love
With everything happening in the world, from wars and famine to the everyday rise of depression and loneliness, I know it can feel hard sometimes to see the good. The weight of it all is so heavy. The headlines, the heartbreak, the broken systems, it can dull our vision. And I think it’s become a…
Radical Individualism
I came across this term recently, Radical Individualism, in my small group. At first, it was a phrase that felt foreign, like a sociological idea I’d never really thought about before. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized how deeply familiar it actually was. Because, in truth, it’s become the very…
Time Away
Sometimes the most necessary thing you can do is step back, create distance, breathe, and refill your cup so that you can return with strength, clarity, and a heart ready to pour out again. This summer, I was blessed with the opportunity to do just that. And yet, as much as I longed for rest,…
Processing
On returning to the ship after what felt like one of the most challenging field services for so many of us, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about processing. Coming back, I’ve had conversations in passing with friends, over coffee, in the dining room, cozied up in my cabin, where we ask each other: “How…
Strong Like Water
Isaiah 43:2 “ When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.” Lately God has been inviting me and challenging me to rethink what it really means to be strong. Not the kind of strength that comes from pushing through…
The Hard Days
They say grief comes in waves, and I think that’s true of the hard days too. Working at Connaught sometimes feels like riding a roller coaster blindfolded. There are moments of hope and breakthrough, but lately… it’s felt heavy. Really heavy. The last month has been filled with some long, difficult days that seem to…
Threads of the Same Fabric
Every day, I find myself trying to hold two truths in tension, joy and sorrow, love and loss, each one vast, vivid, and deeply real. At Connaught, my days are steeped in contrast. I see deep love and deep grief, joy and devastation, celebration and mourning, often all within the same hour. It’s a place…
My Baptism
The day I was baptised is etched into my soul with a kind of permanence that words can barely capture. It isn’t just my favourite day from last field service; but it’s the most sacred, soul-stirring, and transformational day of my entire life. There are rare, moments that reach deep into the core of who…
Walking between Two Worlds
I walk between two worlds now. Not fully belonging to one or the other, just hovering somewhere in the middle, in this strange, sacred liminal space that I never quite expected to become my reality. One foot on the ship, one foot off. Half in the shiny, air-conditioned world of floating steel and structure where…
Celebrating the SMALL things
Life on the ship is full of big, beautiful moments. We celebrate the miraculous transformations. Children taking their first steps after life-changing surgery. A mother seeing her daughter smile again after a cleft lip repair. A man once cast out by his community because of a giant tumour, now walking back home with dignity and…
Guinea – The Stillness in the Hills
This past week, I had the gift of traveling to Guinea with my friend Audrey. We visited a hospital nestled in a small village near Mamou, about five hours from Conakry. The community there is called Bowalwann, which, fittingly, means rocky, a name that couldn’t have been more appropriate. The landscape was breathtaking, rugged and raw,…
The difference between You and Me…
A few days after an exhausting and emotionally charged couple of weeks at work, I found myself lost in reflection. The weight of everything I witness, the stories etched into the faces of my patients, the stark realities of healthcare in Sierra Leone, it all settles heavy on my heart. One of the challenges in…
First Time Home
The week after that Easter, I flew home for some PTO, carrying with me something far greater than just my luggage, I carried my newfound faith, a transformation so profound that I knew I couldn’t keep it to myself. Before I was baptized, I wanted to share this part of me with my mum. Not…
Embracing my Faith
Throughout my first ten months in Sierra Leone, my faith became more than just something I was learning about, it became something I was living. I had stepped onto the ship as someone still unsure, still holding onto pieces of my old identity, still battling the lies that had shaped me for so long. But as…
Education, Training & Advocacy
From the moment I stepped foot on The Global Mercy and heard about Education, Training & Advocacy (ETA),then known as Medical Capacity Building, I knew, without a doubt, that this was the end goal for me. I had always loved bedside nursing. There was something deeply rewarding about the immediate impact of caring for a patient, about seeing the transformation…
Alpha Course
Something that truly helped me in my new faith was doing the Alpha Course. At the time (and probably still now), I was still navigating the overwhelming reality of what it meant to believe, to surrender, to call myself a Christian. I had stepped into this new world, this new identity, with trembling hands and an unsteady…
What is Nursing like on Mercy Ships?
The hum of Africana music drifts through the air, a rhythmic melody that seems to pulse with the very heartbeat of the ship. It fills every corner of the ward, blending seamlessly with the laughter, the clapping, the joyful shouts of patients and caregivers alike. Their voices rise above the beeping monitors and the rustle of nurses moving through…
My First Bible
I will never forget the moment I got my first Bible, the excitement, the joy, the overwhelming sense that I was holding something sacred and life-changing in my hands. It felt heavy, not just in weight but in significance, as if the very pages contained something I had been searching for my entire life. It…
Coming Back to the Ship
Coming back to the ship felt like returning home, though finding the right words to capture that feeling seems almost impossible. It wasn’t just familiarity, it was something deeper, something that reached into the core of who I was. A comfort I had never known before, as if I had finally stepped into a space…
A little bit of Travel…
Leaving the ship was harder than I ever imagined. It wasn’t just about saying goodbye to the work, although that alone felt significant, to walk away from patients whose courage had inspired me, from a team whose dedication and faith had shaped me. It wasn’t just about the people either, though those goodbyes were gut-wrenching,…
The Beginning
I will never forget the moment I first saw The Global Mercy in all its glory for the first time. The sight of it took my breath away, the sheer size of it, the pristine white exterior gleaming against the backdrop of the endless sea, and the unmistakable air of purpose that surrounded it. It…
AYLA IN AFRICA 