In 1998, with the help of Haw River Christian Church in North Carolina, USA, the ministry was able to purchase the M/N Perla del Mar, re-naming her the M/N Libertad. Our vision is to renovate her with the purpose of one day traveling to isolated island and river communities, taking the two hands of the Gospel! Initially the boat was used to transport personnel and materials back and forth from the mainland to the island community of Bocachica. Not too long after the purchase our "guard" organized and facilitated the robbery of major parts of the boat's motor rendering her "out-of-service"! Later the boat was towed to a private dock and there she sat for several years as we made occasional repairs. One leap forward was made when we were able to fiberglass the boat's hull with special donations made from a church in Germany and a Bogota hospital.
In 2002 we took the boat to Bocachica where she has been at anchor ever since. In 2003 we recieved more special donations designated towards boat repairs and were able to put her in dry-dock once again to replace rotten wood curves in the inner shell as well as doing maintenance to the outer hull. 2005 brought much blessing with the return of long time staff member, Martin Hakenjos. Martin has taken a lot of initiative to help raise funds for the continued renovation of the boat.
As you can see the renovations are coming along quite nicely. Martin has spent the last 3 years (2006-2009) focusing on the boat project. In 2009 we were able to put the boat into drydock once again to do more hull repairs and we also received a donation of a new motor and generator from the MTU company in Friedrichshafen, Germany. We are now waiting for the motor and generator to be shipped to Colombia so that we can begin the intallation process. We expect their delivery in January 2010.
In spite of discouragement and setbacks our dreams for the boat are kept alive and we are eagerly looking forward to the day we can make our maiden voyage taking the ministry of Proyecto Libertad (medical, dental, community development projects, evangelism and discipleship, etc...) "on the road" so to speak, reaching out to other needy island and river communities!!!
