Dear Friends

On Good Friday, March 29, 2013 the newly purchased YWAM Marine Reach ship M/Y PACIFIC HOPE and her crew sailed on her maiden voyage from Hakodate, Japan to Manila, Fiji and Vanuatu before returning to her home port of Tauranga, New Zealand.Thanks to the generosity of many people in New Zealand and other countries, the ship was able to be purchased, dry docked and made ready for ministry. There is still a lot of work remaining to be done to prepare the vessel for ministry.

The ship will eventually carry volunteer medical teams of doctors, nurses, dentists, optometrists and ophthalmologists to the island nations of the South Pacific.  Hundreds of patients will receive their eyesight back through cataract surgeries and thousands more will be given reading glasses and dental treatment. The reason for all of this is to show the love of Jesus Christ to the poorest of the poor.

For me personally, I feel that I went full circle because I arrived at Hakodate 22 years earlier in March 1991  while working as an able seaman on an American research ship. I left the ship before I was scheduled to and took a fast train from Hakodate to Tokyo to sit that night under the cherry blossom trees with Sachiko, my future wife. Seven months later in October we got married in Tokyo. And I still have a vision to see a ship ministry like this based in Japan.

Thanks and God Bless,

Bob Bastable