Local Outreach - Lionel Town

For our local outreach in Jamaica, we spent 4 days in Lionel Town doing construction work for the New Testament Church. We dug a small pool for the church to be able to perform baptisms and also moved loads of stones on the land surrounding the church. I think we all felt like are arms were ripped by the end of the week with all the shoveling we did.

In general, Lionel Town is a very poor community. The land is dry, representing the atmosphere of the majority of the people here. When we went on a prayer walk, I sensed a “deadness” over the town. Many people wouldn’t wave or say ‘hello’ back to me when I greeted them.


The 14 of us stayed in a small house at the end of a dirt road. We had 2 beds between the 8 girls and a small bathroom. It was my first experience with the “bucket shower” bathing method. The cool water felt so good after a hard day’s work.

Here's a glimpse of the church that we were working on. We dug out this hole because they wanted a pool to perform baptisms.

Lots and lots of shoveling dirt!!

I didn't actually kiss the frog..but came close. He's my prince charming. What was really funny was how everyone ran away from me when I picked it up. They screamed as if I was holding a crocodile or something...guys included. I don't think Jamaicans like amphibians too much.

We put bandanas over our faces because of all the dust that would pick up from the shoveling.

Spiritual Warfare Week

Another incredible week! We had pastors Anthony and Cheryl Nelson come to speak on spiritual warfare and spiritual gifts. It was powerful!! Spiritual warfare is a complex topic but they did a wonderful job in their teachings. They are orginally Jamaican but the Lord led them to Canada to establish Faith Five Ministries, which they've been leading. I thoroughly enjoyed this week and learned so much. I know I keep saying that but it's true. :) I included the link to the song that we listened to all week. It has become one of my favorite songs now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPKvKwIZUCM

Bible Guinius

What a week! These past 5 day, we had the privilege of having Pastor Wayne Palmer speak to us on Evangelism and the History of the Gospel. This man is incredible! Any question you ask him about the bible, he knows, plus he knows a scripture reference to back it up. He's read the bible over 50 times, oversees 6 different churches, pioeering another one, runs a farm, and has a family! He is a serious man of God. He shared stories of how God saved him from death countless times: struck by lightening twice, stabbed in the chest 9 times, multiple drownings, etc. I was so inspired by his story.

I also never realized how interested I am in the history of the bible. It's amazing when you really look through the pages. (Big surprise eh?) I decided to start back at the beginning in Genesis and reread the stories. I'm finding new revelation and noticing little details that I've never read before!

A Week in Manchester

We all loaded into a bus to head to Manchester, Jamaica for this past week. It's about 3 (long) hours away. I say long because it was bumpy roads and curvy almost the whole time. A bunch of u got car sick, but at least no one threw up (thank goodness!!) We stayed at another YWAM base called Stone's Hope. It really was beautiful here. It's out in the country with lots of farm land. It was a lot more quite and peaceful verses Montego Bay. The temperature was quite a bit cooler too. It was a nice change.

We went exploring in the run-down "great house" on the base. The property at Stone's Hope used to be a coffee plantation. This was the "master's tub". The buiding we were in was about 300 years old.

Having some fun doing photo shoots. :) We found outside showers. We named the cow Josh because one of the girls thought our Josh (DTS student) was having fun making cow noises in the morning, before she realized that there was actually a cow on the base. LOL. This is Paula. She's 21 like myself and is actually on staff at this base. I got really close to her. She did her DTS a year ago in Kona, Hawaii. This base also holds a school for Jamaican kids. Many of the staff are also teachers.

On one of the days, we split into groups and had a contest. In 10 minutes, we had to blow up a big balloon and try to draw the world on it and name a many countries as we could. Our group probably listed the most countries, but I have to say, we didn't have the prettiest globe. On our last day there, Dave Harper (who was our speaker for the week) led a sexual purity ceremony. We each made covenant and got a bracelet as a symbol of the promise we were making.