Jamaica, Jamaica, Jamaica - the Land We Love!

Jamaica was amazing! I am so blessed that part of my job is helping lead a mission trip where I get to see 50 freshmen and student leaders transform in front of my eyes into mature men and women of God. It has been amazing all year sowing into their growth and now they are stepping into student leadership for next year.

So a quick rundown. Some of this I'm writing now, and some of it is out of my trip journal, so its a confusing mix of past and present tenses:
Thurs. March 4 - We leave Athens at 1030 PM to head to Atlanta, and stay the night at Chris's, one of the freshmen from my small group in Roswell.

Fri. March 5 - We arrive at the Atlanta airport at 5 AM, starting off a full day of traveling on about 4 hrs of sleep. Once the team arrived in Montego Bay, we got to eat at a Jamaican restaurant called Scotchie's, and then drove about 2 hours to where we stay for the week in Port Maria, the capital city of St. Mary, the poorest province in Jamaica. We begin meeting every night to worship and pray for the team, Jamaica, work sites, and our ministry there.

Sat. March 6 - Since the work projects don't begin until Monday, we take the whole team (57 of us) into the mountains to go on a hike to a waterfall and down to this small cove only locals know about. We spent the day building fellowship and community that would bear incredible fruit during the week as we worked with each other to serve on construction sites. At worship/prayer time, I got to speak about comparison stealing all joy and how having selfless servant hearts during the trip would enable us to walk in Christlikeness.

Sunday. March 7 - We split the team and went to two different Jamaican churches, both of which were amazing (though I can only speak of the other what I heard). We gave the team the afternoon off to swim and fellowship, and even catch up on rest for the week.

Monday - Wednesday - We split up in four different teams each day, starting off by going to schools and doing devotionals where we prepared (in the weeks leading up) skits, teachings/testimonies, songs, and crafts to minister to hundreds of kids in the local schools. Our sites included painting a church, building a wall for a school, another site with a bunch of concrete work, and building a wall/filling in a concrete floor for a church (the one I was in charge of for the week). We kept meeting each night to worship, pray, and hear teachings by other Wesley staff.

Thursday. March 11 - We went to an infirmary this morning where dozens and dozens of men and women with mental and physical disabilities as well as terminal illnesses live. It was a very difficult environment, but hope was present in many of the people as they sang praises to the Lord with us and prayed with us. Two guys from our team prayed for a man who was in a car accident and he stood up for the first time in 6 months. God used the opportunity to really stretch and change every person especially in their capacity to just love the people, whether that meant sitting and talking with them, or rubbing lotion on their hands and feet, or painting their nails (the girls with the women). It seemed like it was not too much to handle for anyone, but everyone walked away changed.

After the infirmary we went to down town (its not a very big city) Port Maria to eat some very enjoyable Juicy Patties, which is basically Jamaican fast food, before we went to a church on a hill and interceded for the city, country, culture, and people of Jamaica. We prayed and worshiped for about 2 hours before coming back to the hotel where we stayed. A bunch of students got to go snorkeling in the late afternoon while many just enjoyed fellowship around the pool.

Friday. March 12 - Friday was sort of our tourist day. We drove over to Ocho Rios and bartered in the marketplace for souvenirs before climbing Dunn's River Falls. We converged with the 60 or so people from the other team in Montego Bay to have one big Freshley group at the Falls, and it was beautiful to see everybody come together and share with each other about their two very respectively different amazing weeks of growth and service. This might be my favorite day of the trip, not for it being the most like a vacation, but for it being one of the most beautiful visions of what true community in the body of Christ could look like. For the second year in a row, I am blown away by the community I have experienced in Jamaica in how people push each other and encourage one another towards the Lord.

Saturday. March 13 - Another full day of travel. Coming back through Atlanta was interesting with flights rerouted from NYC by bad weather, meaning we sat in the plane for an hour waiting for a gate. Coming through Homeland Security and Immigrations was interesting with one of our girls being mistaken for someone banned from coming in the country. In the end, we leave the airport somewhere around 1030 PM.

Our mission to Jamaica was amazing in so many ways. With two groups totaling over 100 people, we're able to serve in some real tangible ways, and when that many people come together as one to passionately seek the Lord in prayer, something shifts in the spiritual climate. We experienced incredible ministry and fellowship with the Jamaican people, and ourselves were forever changed. Seeing freshmen move into who they were made to be in the Lord amazes me, and now almost all of them are seeking to be on leadership for next year, where we get to invest in them even more to be world changing leaders of tomorrow.

Keep praying for increase in all these things, especially for the freshmen and student leaders to grow into mature men and women of God, powerful for His kingdom purposes. Thank you for all your support and prayers, God is moving in amazing ways, and I am saying that from what little I can actually see.

Jamaica!

In about 9 hours from now, we'll be at the airport, getting ready to take 60 freshmen, student leaders, and staff to Jamaica. The entire trip will be about 110 people total, and was so big that starting last year (this is like the 8th year) we had to break it up into two sites. We'll count that challenge as a blessing - what a great problem to have.

My heart for this trip is to bless the Jamaican people, and not necessarily to bring them a Jesus they don't already have there, but He who is already doing more than we can imagine in this beautiful place. We are seeking to really go with the hearts of servants, and to love selflessly. I also really want to see our student leaders and freshmen step into who they are as mature believers. This trip is designed to really call them into that, and it is a beautiful process. So here we go.

Pray for:
-safe (and even stress-free) travel
-unity in the team. serving one another in truth
-focus on the Lord. We're going to serve Him as our first love. His honor. His glory.
-rest. we're going to need it. especially with most of our site starting the trip on limited sleep
-Jamaica. The people. The culture. That it would be wholly exalting the Lord in every way.
-focus. We want to be fully there, no distractions from home, school, life.
-love. We were made to be famous in the way in which we love not just one another, but people who don't know Jesus. Not for our names, but so overwhelmingly that it makes His name great. (Is. 26:8)
-the multiple other Wesley Spring Break mission trips: Peru, LA, NYC, Costa Rica, Honduras, SE USA, Bethel (CA)