The late Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, is be­ing re­mem­bered for her work to sup­port faith-based ed­u­ca­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Coun­cil of Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es Dr Desmond Austin praised the late min­is­ter dur­ing a wel­come launch for the MV Lo­gos Hope dur­ing its re­turn trip to T&T yes­ter­day.

The Lo­gos Hope is a float­ing book­store run by a Chris­t­ian-based or­gan­i­sa­tion, which of­fers low-cost books for sale. Their mis­sion is to pro­mote faith, lit­er­a­cy, and ed­u­ca­tion.

“I thought of her ef­forts of work­ing syn­er­gis­ti­cal­ly. One of the re­ports we had is that she, at one of her con­fer­ences, had ad­vo­cat­ed for the church­es work­ing to­geth­er in com­mu­ni­ties. Ad­vo­cat­ed for the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem to be em­braced by the church­es as much as pos­si­ble,”  Austin said.

He said the Lo­gos Hope, which is the largest float­ing book­shop in the world, did great work try­ing to bring com­mu­ni­ties and na­tions to­geth­er. More specif­i­cal­ly, he said, the ship brought a sense of pur­pose to Min­is­ter Mor­ris-Ju­lian’s wish.

The Lo­gos Hope is staffed by a multi­na­tion­al crew of vol­un­teers, and the wel­come event was host­ed by Halin Bloomer, a Trinida­di­an who has lived on the ship with her fam­i­ly for four years.

There is no age lim­it for vol­un­teers on the ves­sel, and terms last about one year. The ship prides it­self on hav­ing peo­ple from mul­ti­ple na­tions serv­ing to­geth­er while on board. Dur­ing the wel­come, at what they called the pa­rade of na­tions, crew mem­bers from Brazil, Colom­bia, Ko­rea, and of course T&T crossed the stage.

Faith is al­so an im­por­tant com­po­nent of the Lo­gos ex­pe­ri­ence. One young mem­ber from South Africa named Em­ma said when she first joined, she did it to please her par­ents and wasn’t sold on the ex­pe­ri­ence ini­tial­ly.

“It was a way for me to turn my life around. I was very in­volved in drugs and many oth­er things”, she said. 

“Com­ing to the ship com­plete­ly turned my life around. Gave it back to Christ, it ac­tu­al­ly in­spired me so much I came back for an­oth­er year.”

The MV Lo­gos Hope last docked in T&T from De­cem­ber 2019 to Jan­u­ary 2020. This time, it will be docked in the port of Port-of-Spain un­til Jan­u­ary 28. When it leaves Trinidad, it will head to St Lu­cia and Grena­da. Stays typ­i­cal­ly last around two weeks.