So Many People! Trincomalee, Sri Lanka

An eagle flying by the ship

Galle, a nice small town by the sea. We arrived before Christmas and opened for several days before closing early on Christmas eve and all Christmas day. See my previous post for details on that.

Around the headland we went, up the coast a bit and in to Trincomalee. This was fortunately a short 6 day port. Fortunate because we had the largest crowds ever on the Logos Hope!

Sunset against the ship docked next to us

Trincomalee is one of the largest natural harbors in the world. It is massive and very beautiful. Where we were berthed was one of the closer points to Trincomalee town but it was still at least 20 minutes away unfortunately. This did not stop the people from visiting!

On my ministry day I had the opportunity to do door to door ministry with a guy called Simeon. We went at a slow, easy pace and had some good conversations with the people there. While we were talking with one family, Simeon felt as if he should ask the mother if she suffered from ongoing stomach pain. He thought this was a strange thing to ask but he followed the Lord's prompting and it turned out she did. He was able to pray with her and she received Christ that day. The Grandmother of that family follows Christ. She was overjoyed that her daughter has come to know Jesus and his love for us.

The first day was rather quiet actually but then as word spread we were increasingly busy. Our record for number of visitors on the Logos Hope was broken three days running. 16 000 then 17 000 then 18 000!

A small part of the queue

The worst day was the first busy day because we were not ready for it. The line was kilometers long and people kept trying to jump the queue. This nearly caused a riot several times because it just took one impatient fool and many more would follow him.

All of ship's company were called outside to help crowd control and we still weren't enough. Basically we were just trying to keep people from being injured in the crush. We created several choke points to hold back people. This didn't work quite as well as we hoped because people kept pushing! Many were crushed up against the barriers and still they pushed.

Among the stupidity I witnessed some very brave acts from people from singing a song to calm people to jumping in and rescuing children who were being crushed. Thankfully no one was badly injured and no one who was there will ever forget this day.

We closed on the last day because even more people were coming than before and it wasn't safe to remain open.

Sunset whilst sailing