august 6th 1962

today is the official day of celebration of jamaican independence from the uk. i thought it would be appropriate to blog about our trip today as sort of a shout out to the jamaican people. (okay, i wasn't going to blog today but i check "this day in history" quite frequently and jamaica was on today because of their independence.) this post will by no means be everything i want to say or learned about jamaica, but it will be enough for you to get the idea. 

our trip was good, some of it great, some of it hard. i did not get too sick or too hot (too often anyway.) i enjoyed meeting the other people from new hampshire and california. i also enjoyed the place we stayed (it exceeded my expectations.) 

what we did: 

played with kids at an orphanage
some people painted (3x) 
some constructed a fence and some steps (go tom!)
we did two days of vbs twice each day 
played music for church and twice as a street ministry 
held a medical clinic almost everyday we were there (blood pressure, blood sugar, and vision)
pastor murray conducted a 3 day conference for pastors to come and learn more about ministering to their congregations. 

what i learned: 

jamaicans are very intense whether extra friendly or very cross - a lady at customs told me to, "(h)old de phone and stand over there" it was interesting only because sarah and i follow directions very literally - i'll tell you the rest later 

i was more flexible than i thought i would be - turns out, because of rain or darkness, we only did street music twice instead of five times. which i was fine with even though we had practiced quite a bit and brought a bunch of musical equipment down. 

i am not good at reading my Bible and praying no matter what country i am in - although i did pretty good in jamaica with doing it every day because that was one of my goals. how sincere or private it was is another story; there was nowhere to hide in that house. 

i saw more churches there than anywhere else - they were literally on every street. 
Protestant 62.5% (Seventh-Day Adventist 10.8%, Pentecostal 9.5%, Other Church of God 8.3%, Baptist 7.2%, New Testament Church of God 6.3%, Church of God in Jamaica 4.8%, Church of God of Prophecy 4.3%, Anglican 3.6%, other Christian 7.7%), Roman Catholic 2.6%, other or unspecified 14.2%, none 20.9%, (2001 census) - cia factbook
my lmh official dictionary of jamaican history said that jamaica has more churches per square mile than anywhere else in the world (also in the guinness book of world records)
i also read that someone wants to translate the Bible into their other language - patois! 

i enjoy missions trips, but they always make me feel bad for leaving and wishing that a full time missionary would go instead of us (42,000 is a lot of money)

i am not a risk taker person nor do i like to try new things like snorkeling - i did try new foods most of which i did not like (gnips yuck) 

that is enough for now - i will post more later. here are a few pictures from our trip:
captions to pictures - because the layout isn't working they are in order sorry it is confusing- 
1 house we stayed in, i got to shower almost every day 2 transportation while we were there 3 a couple of the girls i talked with the little puppet doll is named mary. the girl was so excited when i gave it to her 4 sunset at the beach, beautiful water too 5 strange bug we saw the first day. it is about 2 inches long "welcome to jamaica!" 6 jamaica is green everywhere 7 a place we ministered at called gravel ground - i think we were all affected by this place and the people 8 the baptist church we did church, vbs, construction, and medical 9 the kids like to take our picture with our camera (sarah eventually got hers back) it is a great picture 10 medical at open Bible the other church we did vbs at. the whole team did such a good job. 





































































































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