<\/p>\n
Fox News host Dana Perino spent her Thanksgiving doing something quite different from many other Americans: she went abroad to serve people in desperate need.<\/p>\n
Listen to the latest\u00a0episode\u00a0of \u201cQuick Start\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Perino, who partners with\u00a0Mercy Ships, an organization operating hospital ships around the world, was in Africa over the holiday to help ensure people could receive surgeries and special care they can\u2019t get in their home nations.<\/p>\n Her work with Mercy Ships began after she received a request years ago from former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush to interview them for an event arranged by the organization.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a kickoff to the capital campaign that raised the money to build this new ship,\u201d Perino said. \u201cMercy Ships is a surgical hospital ship. \u2026 It was started by Don and Deyon Stephens, a couple from Texas, and they had this goal of helping the people who feel hopeless and the forgotten poor \u2026 and this was a Jesus-based mission.\u201d<\/p>\n Perino said the couple wanted to bring surgeons to parts of Africa, where there are generally fewer physicians available to serve the needs of many. Tragically, some suffer without medical intervention or surgical care \u2014 something Mercy Ships remedies.<\/p>\n \u201cIn America, we have one surgeon per 10,000 people or something like that,\u201d she said. \u201cThey have one surgeon for like 2 million people.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, Mercy Ships offers these traveling hospitals filled with volunteers. Some surgeons come for a week or two, and others stay longer. Perino is among those who help out; she spent her Thanksgiving doing just that after having served at various locations in the past.<\/p>\n But even more powerfully, she uses her position at Fox News to tell the stories of people aboard these ships \u2014 moving stories of medical assistance, love, and compassion.<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t waste a dollar ever,\u201d Perino said of Mercy Ships. \u201cI\u2019ve been several times. I\u2019ve seen it with my own eyes. They\u2019re very good stewards of the donations that they get.\u201d<\/p>\n The experience of serving with Mercy Ships has inspired and reinforced Perino\u2019s faith.<\/p>\n \u201cI grew up in a Lutheran church,\u201d she said. \u201cMy parents were very strong supporters of the refugee program in Denver, Colorado. So we spent our weekends when we were kids helping resettle refugees either from Vietnam or from the former Soviet Union.\u201d<\/p>\n This experience, she said, instilled an understanding of what it looks like to help others.<\/p>\n \u201cIt reconnects me to my early years, my formative years,\u201d Perino said, noting she\u2019s grateful to work at a place where she can openly talk about her faith.<\/p>\n The TV host added that people will sometimes thank her for being so open about God.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m always like, \u2018Oh, well, yeah, sure, of course.\u2019 But then I remember Jesus said, \u2018You\u2019re going to be challenged this way. It\u2019s going to be hard for you to talk about it,’\u201d Perino said. \u201cAnd, so, in a small way, if I can add to people\u2019s confidence to feel that they can talk about how they feel and to profess God\u2019s love, then I mean, that\u2019s the good stuff of being able to work [at Fox].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fox News host Dana Perino spent her Thanksgiving doing something quite different from many other Americans: she went abroad to serve people in desperate need. Listen to the latest\u00a0episode\u00a0of \u201cQuick Start\u201d\u00a0 Perino, who partners with\u00a0Mercy Ships, an organization operating hospital ships around the world, was in Africa over the holiday to help ensure people could<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3771,665,3774,3773,481,214,3772,3267],"class_list":["post-13208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jesus","tag-dana","tag-desperate","tag-effort","tag-incredible","tag-jesus","tag-people","tag-perino","tag-talks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}