Numbers, especially when they reach six and seven digits, can lose their meaning. So it is with the humanitarian work of Mercy Ships.  The internationally-renowned nonprofit has dispensed cost-free, life-altering medical procedures to impoverished populations around the world since 1978.

That care is planned and orchestrated from their International Support Center, which is just across the Smith County line in Garden Valley.

A single number, however, will be the focus of Mercy Ships this year. According to Jon Fadely, vice president of marine operations, the operative number for Mercy Ships is one. 

“We don’t treat numbers or medical conditions on the Global Mercy or the Africa Mercy,” Fadely explained. “We treat individuals.”

He described an environment where the caregivers aboard Mercy Ships look first into patients’ eyes, not at their disabilities. 

“We communicate with those suffering, that ‘we see you,’ that they are important, that they have value, and that we share in their humanity,” Fadely continued.

Among the world’s most impoverished populations, where people may come to Mercy Ships at great personal risk, the recognition of the patient as a precious being can be on par with actual physical healing. 

Fadely has been a master (captain) on four Mercy Ships hospital ships. He explained that this recognition of shared humanity stems from the community of crew and caregivers that develops on each ship. 

“We learn patients’ names, we listen to their stories, we pray with them,” he said.  

Mercy Ships is an endeavor that attempts to capture the best of mankind: selfless service rendered with dignity. Although the focus on the individual is a simple concept, running a hospital ship manned with international volunteers in the far reaches of the world – and in some of the most challenging circumstances – is an incredibly complex undertaking.

Mercy Ships is now undergoing a second reset of how it deploys the two current hospital ships, the Global Mercy and the Africa Mercy. Continued development in the third world has caused Mercy Ships to factor in global maritime trading trends when scheduling their humanitarian missions. 

Fadely described the many competing requirements that any nation must face when scheduling a Mercy Ships visit. With a typical mission duration of ten months, the logistics and sustainment of a hospital ship visit are significant, both for Mercy Ships as well as the host nation. The nonprofit organization is continually examining ways to ease the execution and improve the timing of a Mercy Ships visit.

“When we began, much of our initial efforts came as a result of input from missionaries working in nations in great need of medical care,” said Fadely. “Around the year 2000, we began to benefit from agreements between Mercy Ships and host nations. We signed executive protocols with countries, which ensured our visits had full host nation support.”

The process of scheduling is an intricate dance. Fadely explained that it involves five basic steps.

The first question to be answered is, ‘Where will the ships go?’ Once a host nation is determined, the next fundamental question is, ‘What medical care do they need?’  This is balanced against the desires of the host nation in a traditional needs-versus-wants analysis. Mercy Ships then details exactly what medical care they can provide to address those concerns.

“At this point,” Fadely explained, “we create a surgical schedule.” 

That schedule will delineate the sequence and type of care the ships will provide. Lastly, the non-profit must solicit for and schedule the requisite medical and shipboard expertise required to execute the surgical schedule.

Overlaid on this process is the ever-present logistical challenges of manning and safely operating a specialized ship, and of outfitting the hospitals contained onboard. Most of this planning is done in Garden Valley, but there is also close coordination with the 16 Mercy Ship offices worldwide. Food supplies are handled through the European Distribution Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Few operations directors have the insight that Fadely brings to this job.  A son of missionary parents – Fadely spent his formulative years in Liberia – Fadely’s life brought him back time and again to a path that led to Mercy Ships. The sequence of life events is so compelling as to dispel the thought of coincidence. The guidance he received, and the events that unfolded, could easily fill a book.   

It was however, Fadely’s (and his wife, Angie’s) willingness to act on the messages he received that shaped his life’s work. 

As he put it, “If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat.”

Jon and Angie raised their children on the hospital ships Good Samaritan and Caribbean Mercy.  For the kids, it was all one great adventure. 

Angie volunteered first as a shipboard laundress, then a purser (ship representative/liaison), and eventually a human relations chief.  She continues to provide human relations expertise at the mission center in Garden Valley.

Around 2,500 volunteers serve onboard the ships each year. The organization is continually recruiting personnel with knowledge of technical shipboard tasks, teaching, administration, food service, maintenance, or medical specialties.

Throughout his 33 years with Mercy Ships, Fadely has spoken with many of those volunteers. One of the most frequent comments he hears is a simple, “This is what I went to medical school for.”

Visitors and first-timers often comment that “there is something special about this ship.”

There is indeed something special about the whole endeavor – an international volunteer organization that operates two large hospital ships and provides services wherever they are wanted and needed. 

As Fadely quoted from Psalms 107:23-24, “Some went off to sea in ships, plied their trade on the deep waters. They saw the works of the LORD, the wonders of God in the deep.”

There are two foreign flags flying adjacent to the Stars and Stripes at the entrance to the Mercy Ships facility in Garden Valley: the green, white and blue horizontal stripes of Sierra Leone, and the white, red and green tri-colors of Madagascar. Why? Because the Global Mercy is presently on mission in Sierra Leone on the coast of West Africa, and the Africa Mercy is hard at work in the port of Toamasina, Madagascar.