Your Help

Mercy Ships relies on a team of volunteer crew members. One of the first things you can do to help is to consider serving or discussing with others, especially those in the medical field, the possibility of serving. If you think you don’t have a useable skill, a Mercy ship is a city, and it takes all types of skills to run a city. Typically, there is a minimum commitment of three months, but many medical volunteers, especially surgeons, come for two-week commitments. Visit https://volunteer.mercyships.org/opportunity/ to see all the possibilities.

One of the things people are surprised by is that a Mercy ship has families living onboard. In order to make that possible, each ship has an academy with grades K-12. Perhaps, more surprising is how happy the children are living on a Mercy ship.

There are a lot of videos available online about Mercy Ships. My favorite is the documentary Mercy Ships – The Next Chapter. Even if one only watches the first six minutes, you will learn why we do what we do and why we do it where we do it.

Volunteer crew members pay their own travel and personal expenses while serving. This allows general Mercy Ship donations to be used for direct patient care, community development programs and other costs associated with its Field Services Initiatives. From doctors to nurses, engineers to deckhands, housekeepers and teachers, almost everyone serves as a volunteer. My first commitment to Mercy Ships lasted seven months. I’m blessed to be putting my AVL professional skills to work again for another four and a half months, ending in April of 2026, aboard the Global Mercy.

There are a variety of ways YOU can support me, the crew I will be working with and or Mercy Ships, as we bring Hope and Healing to the poorest of the poor.

• PRAYER: The most important way that you can help is to pray for us as we travel and do our medical mission work.
• OFFSET MONTHLY VOLUNTEER EXPENSES: If you would like to help me offset the estimated $1,200.00 per month volunteer costs to serve on the Global Mercy, please send me a “Friends and Family” transaction on PayPal (martywagner@juno.com) or on Venmo (@martywagner).
• DONATE DIRECTLY TO MERCY SHIPS: If you would like to contribute to the general fund of Mercy Ships click the Mercy Ships button.