Part 2 – The Value of Good Habits and Simplifying to Allow Opportunity

When I first walked into the Finance Office on the Global Mercy, it didn’t take long to realize that some of our processes were clunky. Actually, “clunky” might be too kind. Many of them were slow, frustrating, and flat‑out inefficient.

Paying bills can take days with the back and forth. Running day crew payroll ate up more than a day. Handling deductions or insurance fees could stretch on and on. Every cycle, we’d spend hours bogged down in the same steps, repeating the same frustrations.

Being around finance systems for a long time, both in nonprofits and in tech companies, one thing I’ve been taught is that inefficiency eats away at more than just time. It eats away at morale. It makes people feel like they’re spinning their wheels. And when you’re a volunteer — when you’ve left your home, your career, and your family to serve on a hospital ship in West Africa — you don’t want to feel like your energy is being wasted.

So early on in our first year here, we made it our goal to simplify.

Why Good Habits Matter

Before getting into the technical fixes, I need to explain why I cared so much about habits. Because this wasn’t just about saving hours on a spreadsheet. It was about changing the culture of our team.

If you’ve ever been part of an overworked team, you know the default mode: heads down, just get through today, don’t think about tomorrow. When you’re that busy, you don’t stop to ask, “Could this be done better?”

That’s why good habits matter. Good habits create margin. And margin gives you space to breathe. Space to think. Space to notice when others need help. Without that margin, we never could have said yes when the hospital came knocking.

Cutting Down the Big Time Sinks

Take day crew payroll. Every two weeks, we pay about 300 day crew — Sierra Leoneans who work alongside us in everything from hospital wards to deck operations to the galley. Before, the stipend process took 10–12 hours. Each cycle. We’d sit in the office for a full day, sometimes two, checking and rechecking spreadsheets, transferring information, typing things in by hand.

Afew a few months of retooling, we cut that process down to three or four hours. Same work. Fewer headaches. Fewer errors and challenges, too.

Or take insurance fee deductions for a subset of crew. What used to take two days now takes about five to six hours. That’s not just time saved — that’s a day of someone’s life every month, freed up to do something else.

Even journal entries were streamlined. We used to type every single one manually into our accounting system. Painful. But we already had the data in Excel. All we had to do was reformat it and import it. Suddenly, what took hours took minutes. This reduced the risk of errors, too.

Beyond Efficiency: Building Up the Team

But it wasn’t just about processes. It was about people.

Simplifying gave us the freedom to invest in the team. Instead of always being buried in tasks, we could think about growth. I could encourage them to take ownership of projects, to learn new skills, to pursue continuing education. Sometimes that meant giving them more responsibility. Other times it meant stepping out of the way and letting them run with it.

I wanted them to know Mercy Ships had their back — not just as accountants, but as people. That meant celebrating wins, encouraging them to take classes, and reminding them they didn’t always need my permission to make improvements.

How Simplifying Creates Opportunity

Here’s the bigger picture: without those improvements, we never could have helped the hospital the way we did this year. Those “small” improvements during our first year created the margin to help the Hospital to second year.

If I’d been underwater, buried in paperwork and 12‑hour day crew stipend days, I wouldn’t have had the time or energy to notice their struggles, much less offer to help. And if our team hadn’t built a track record of success — real, measurable improvements — no one would have trusted us to jump into hospital processes.

But because we had margin, we could say yes. Because we had success stories, we could point to them and say, “Look, we’ve done it here. We can do it for you.”

That’s why good habits matter. Not because they look neat on a report, but because they create opportunity — opportunity to serve beyond your department, opportunity to step into someone else’s burden, opportunity to make a difference where it’s most needed.

The Irony of Spreadsheets in West Africa

Some of you might be thinking, “Why spreadsheets? Haven’t we moved beyond that?” In the U.S. or Europe, there are countless cloud systems that automate payroll, reporting, and scheduling. But in West Africa, things are different. Internet is slow and unreliable. Power can cut out. Cloud systems that look great in marketing brochures just don’t work here. Or they don’t serve the currencies or needs of the country.

Excel works offline. It’s shareable. It’s flexible. And everyone has at least some familiarity with it. It’s not perfect, but in this environment, it’s often the best tool we have. And when you learn how to really use it, it’s powerful.

So yes, a lot of our work has been in spreadsheets. It might sound nerdy. It might even sound boring. But those spreadsheets free up time, reduce stress, and help people go home earlier. And that matters.

Looking Back

At the beginning of the first yer, our team felt the workload and laundry list of tasks. Processes dragged. Everything was reactive. By the end of the year, we had space. We had margin. We had stories of success we could point to and say, “We made things better.”

That shift changed our trajectory. It gave us the ability to help the hospital. It gave us credibility when we offered ideas. And it reminded me of something I’d nearly forgotten: sometimes the most missionary thing you can do is simplify a process, so someone else has time to breathe.

New Jobs, Same Mission

 While I gave a brief explanation in my last blog post about teaching science this semester, I wanted to explain more. 

At the end of last school year, the science teacher on the ship had to go home unexpectedly due to family circumstances. In the Mercy Ships world, it is very hard to find a new teacher, get all the vaccines, training, etc and start in August. I had a quick conversation with the principal before we left and told him I had tutored science classes when I was in high school and college and would be willing to help however I could. About a week before we arrived back on the ship I got a message from him saying no science teacher had been found and was I serious about helping for a semester in the academy. He explained that the students would be enrolled in an online science class and I would be tutoring them through that, making sure they stayed on track, explain things further, update parents on progress, etc as I don't have a teaching credential and can't actually teach. After talking it all over with Jeff and praying about it, we decided it was a go! It is 3 mornings a week and leaves plenty of time for working in the hospital. We are 5 weeks in and so far so good. I'll be done in December and will return to physical therapy everyday again. 

View from my science classroom

Not only am I doing 2 different jobs on board, but now Jeff is too! He is still Finance Director and in charge of all of the budgeting, banking, etc on the ship, but he can now be found in the hospital as well! He has been helping different departments in the hospital be more efficient in how they use data, systems, spreadsheets, and all of that stuff I will never understand! Ha! He has been in more hospital meetings about how many beds are available, tracking patient information, and how we best use the resources we have. It's fun that I will see him in the hallways down in the hospital sometimes now too! 

In other news, the kids are doing well. Now in 9th, 6th and 4th grades (WOW!) and enjoying the small class sizes and fun activities onboard. All of the kids loved the "Hospital Open House" where they could see firsthand what happens in the hospital. 

Once again, thank you for all of the love and support, notes in the mail to say "We miss you!" and texts just asking about our day. We appreciate it all more than we can say. 

J^2, L, S^2

Part 1 – Open Eyes and Listening Ears to Serve

When we arrived back onto the Global Mercy six weeks ago, I (Jeff) already knew the hospital teams were busy. People would say things like, “They’ve got too much,” or “That team is working until 8:00 at night.” I heard those comments last field service too.

But here’s what I didn’t know: why. Why were they staying so late? Why did it feel like the hospital was always underwater? And honestly, even if I did figure out the why, I wasn’t sure if I had anything to offer. After all, I’m the finance guy. My day job was on Deck 8 — spreadsheets, budgets, bank accounts, petty cash. Important, but not exactly what you picture when you think of “bringing hope and healing.” 

Still, if there was a way I could help, I wanted to.

It Started With Excel

So I tried something simple. I put out a message to the crew along the lines of:

The Finance Office is going to be open on Thursdays and Fridays this month to host Excel Office Hours. Stop by if you’ve got Excel questions. We won’t do the work for you, but if your spreadsheet isn’t working the way you want, or you’ve inherited one that is hard to understand, or you’re just stuck — we’ll help you think it through.

Honestly, I figured a handful of people might stop in with random questions. What I didn’t expect was that this would be a doorway into the hospital.

One day, a nursing manager showed up. She told me about a spreadsheet her team used and how it was slowing them down more than it was helping. I said, “Sure, I’d be happy to take a look.”

Now, I already knew her team was slammed. They were leaving late almost every night, trying to juggle too much. I’d also heard from others about some of the challenges they were facing. But this was the first time I was pulled directly into it.

Calling in Reinforcements

I’ll be honest: I’m not the best Excel person on the ship. Not even close. Thankfully, my team includes people who are much, much, much better than I am. So I pulled them in, and together we started working with the nurse manager.

It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t some shiny new cloud system. (By the way, cloud systems don’t always work well here anyway — internet and cell service can be spotty when you’re up country. Offline spreadsheets are often the most reliable tool in West Africa.) It was still Excel. Still rows and columns. Still formulas and cells. But these got the job done.

Small Wins That Weren’t Small

The changes we made don’t sound huge on paper.

• An admin assistant saving about 30 minutes a day on reporting.
• A system that flagged 80+ duplicate entries with one click.
• Restructuring sheets so it was easier to track patients coming in from up‑country.
• Cutting patient transportation planning from one month to one week.

It all sounds pretty nerdy. And, well, it is. But here’s the thing: it mattered.

Those 30 minutes meant one less task at the end of an already long day. Catching errors early meant fewer late‑night scrambles to fix mistakes. Restructuring meant less time trying to piece things together and more time focusing on patients.

And maybe most importantly, it showed the hospital volunteers that a completely different team noticed their struggle — and cared enough to do something about it. 

Why This Matters

If you’ve never been around hospital work on a Mercy Ship, it’s easy to think the mission is only about the big things: surgeries, training local doctors, equipping hospitals. And yes, that’s true. But those big things are built on thousands of small things.

For the hospital team, it’s the small things that pile up: reports, rosters, bed tracking, scheduling. When those processes are slow or messy, the stress builds. When they’re made just a little easier, the difference is felt immediately.

That’s why we’ve come to believe that even something as nerdy as an Excel formula can play a part in “hope and healing.” It frees up time. It lowers stress. It gets people back to what matters most (the patients).

Open Eyes, Listening Ears

I didn’t have a master plan for helping the hospital. I just noticed that people were stretched. I listened when they said, “We’ve got too much.” And then I offered what I had, even though it didn’t feel like much. It started with just one thing, then became another, then another.

Sometimes service looks like someone from Finance sitting with a tired nurse manager, opening a spreadsheet, and asking, “What if we tried this?” It might not look like much, but when you see the relief on their face, or when they realize they can leave work 30 minutes earlier, you understand: it’s not small at all.