Becoming a Diver

As some of you may remember I have previously talked about wanting to become certified in diving so that I can help out in performing cleaning and maintenance tasks on the bottom of the ship. I have decided that now is the best time for me to do this as 1. There are lots of diving schools here in Tenerife and 2. The dive team is going to be a bit shorter on people this next period while the ship is in Togo, with there been only 3 divers left on board and all 3 of them have other full time jobs as well. I am not yet sure how often divers will be needed to be used in Togo as we will have to wait and see the port and how bad the water and rubbish situation is. While in Benin though divers were needed to be used as much as 2 or even 3 times a week (Togo should be better than this).

I have contacted some local dive schools to see what sort of price they could offer me to get my PADI(Professional Association of Diving Instructors) certified open water diver certificate. This is a lifetime certification and allows me to dive anywhere in the world pretty much. I was shocked at the response I got from one company as they replied to me offering me the course for 183 Euros which is down from their regular price of 395 Euros. I feel like this might be a little hint from God telling me that I am doing the right thing.

I don't normally like asking for money, but this is something that I never planned for in my original budgeting and thus I didn't budget for it (funny how that works). So I was wondering if there was anyone who would like to sponsor me for a part of the cost of my diving course.

For information on how to support me go to http://tiatiminafrica.blogspot.com/2008/12/support-tim.html

Or if you would just like to put money directly into my bank account on the ship go to http://www.mercyships.org/page/outreach/view/crewmates/Timothy

I am planning on doing the course sometime in the next 1.5 weeks before the ship leaves Tenerife. There are a few other guys who also want to do this course and help out with the dive team on the ship, but they are having trouble working out the best time to do it as they have to work around their work schedule to get the 4 days to do the course. So please pray that we can find a way for them to also have time to do the course before the ship leaves.