FAR14.3: Logos Hope and A Nice Surprise

Do you ever get that happen, where you have to go to some kind of event, and you’re not particularly excited or thrilled about it, but then it turns out that you have an absolutely excellent time and are probably a little better for having been there?

Yes? Well, that’s what happened to me.

Our bandmaster asked us whether we were able to play at the arrival of a boat in Tórshavn. We would have to stand at the side of the quay and play a few tunes as the boat came into dock. Yes, I was available, but it didn’t sound particularly exciting. Apparently the old Norröna that used to sail between the Faroes and Denmark/Norway (there’s a new one now) had become a ship which was used by Christians and it was coming home to the Faroes before continuing on its travels. That was all I knew.

This is me walking from the car to the quay, not really knowing what the point of this whole event was. I think I capture that look well:

The quay had been nicely decorated with Faroese flags. We started playing a few tunes, and rather a lot of people started to turn up. Including the Prime Minister, and I began to realise that this might be a slightly more important event than I’d thought.

After about twenty minutes, this huge boat came into sight and into the harbour (clearly, these next two pictures were not taken by me): On board, I could see hundreds of people, with flags from all over the world. They were cheering and screaming and waving and it all got pretty exciting: As the boat pulled in, the Prime Minister (there’s something about that guy that makes you want to be his friend... And he used to play in the national football team, but that’s not particularly relevant here) and Mayor of Tórshavn gave a speech, the Faroese sang their national anthem (very nice) and the Captain and someone else from the boat gave speeches, made presentations, etc.

The Prime Minister welcoming the ship to the Faroe Islands: After a little bit of waiting, we were invited on board, and I had an excellent time. As it turns out, the Logos Hope, as it’s now called, is owned and run by an organisation named OM (I want to say that stands for Operation Ministries...) and Christians can volunteer to spend anything between two months and two years serving on board in some capacity. The boat sails around the world aiming to spread hope (the Christian message, the sense that people aren’t alone), help (in whatever way they can) and information (by providing books from ‘How Things Work’ to religious books to dictionaries) to the people in the harbours it docks at. We saw pictures of them helping in the Philippines, India, Indonesia, everywhere. The crew of 400 represents a whopping 45 countries, and – as anyone who knows me will know – meeting people, Christians, from all over the world was a bit of a highlight for me. The ship does a fantastic job and it was very hard to leave that boat and not feel inspired. The fact that the boat continues to sail under the Faroese flag was a real source of pride for the people here. The fact that their tiny country is the home of a ship that they know so well and yet does such fantastic work has really caught local imagination, and I reckon you’d be hard pressed to find many people in Tórshavn that didn’t visit Logos Hope during the week that it was docked here.

This is three of us from the Army with a really nice girl from Siberia:The fact that I was in my uniform was also pretty cool, as I had a fair few people ask me about, mostly from countries where the Army is little known, and I was able to speak with them about it (I knew me knowing the name of The Salvation Army in a load of obscure languages would come in handy one day!) and it also meant that people who knew The Salvation Army already were able to come and chat with me about it. Excellent!

It just shows how you have no idea how some things are going to turn out.

PS. I have to say I was a little disappointed with the effort from the UK flag waving team...