 Welcome to the Mercy Minute from Mercyships.org Lawson was on the brink of death when he arrived at the Africa Mercy in Togo. A tumor in his mouth had been growing for four years and now was suffocating him. Lawson was once a prominent soccer player, had a wife and three children. But the tumor changed everything. His wife left him, people in his village thought he was a devil, and no one would hire him to work.