2004 - So Where's the "Ship" in Mercy Ships Nicaragua?

Mercy Ships Nicaragua has it's roots in a prosthetic outreach deployed from Mercy Ships International in 1996 working with the hospital in Leon, Nicaragua. Through the "New Steps" program, this team specialized in providing prosthetic services for the people of Nicaragua. Among others, this team helped people who had been maimed by the fighting when the Somoza dictatorship was toppled, and later in the Contra War.

Mark and Lori Thompson*, the directors of the Mercy Ships Nicaragua land base, were working with this program, but saw many more needs and opportunities beyond the prosthetic outreach. Then Hurricane Mitch hit in 1998.

In responce to Hurricane Mitch, Mercy Ships sent the Caribbean Mercy to Nicaragua with relief supplies and medical teams, docking in Corinto, (an hour drive north of Leon on the Pacific).



The permanent landbase was born out of this response to Mitch. In addition to the Mercy Ships home office in Garden Valley, Texas, the land base in Nicaragua is joined with only one other land base in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Africa.

*The Thompsons are currently on a one year furlough in the USA.