Wednesday, October 14, 2015
This morning, we didn’t have breakfast until 8am, which was really nice since we had all had so little sleep the night before leaving the states. The morning was cool and quiet and clear, and the view from the house showed layers of mountains in the distance, dark green on the closer slopes, then lighter green and gray on the distant ones. It was a beautiful morning while some of us sat out on the back porch reading our Bibles and studies before breakfast. Breakfast was fairly close to a traditional American breakfast – orange halves, sliced papaya, fried plantains, fried eggs over hard, and bacon.
After breakfast, we went out on the hillside to plant avocado trees. This doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, but we had to carry the saplings (two or three in each hand), watering cans full of water, and five-gallon buckets of water down the side of the steep, rocky hill. Fortunately for us, Rev Harrison and a few other workers had already dug holes and marked them with a stick. At first we had a difficult time finding the holes because there were lots of trees and other vegetation. Most of us felt pretty out of shape after we had planted our first batch of trees and by the time we climbed back up to the top for more trees and water. Brooklyn ran into a patch of cow itch, a plant which causes a rash and stings. Fortunately, the effects only last a few hours. We worked for about two and a half hours before ascending once more to the house for (cold) showers and lunch. Lunch was curried chicken, avocado slices, rice and beans (or rice and peas to Jamaicans), slaw, and mashed green bananas, which were prepared like and tasted a lot like mashed potatoes. Everything has been really good, but we’re learning to adjust to finding small bones in the meat.
Friday and Monday are national holidays in Jamaica – Heritage Day on Friday and Heroes Day on Monday, so we went to York Castle High School (grades 7-13) this afternoon for their culturama talent show. York Castle is one of the schools Rev Harrison oversees and has approximately 1300 students, some from Brown’s Town but mostly from the surrounding areas; some students have a long as a 90-minute commute and have to switch buses a time or two. As part of the culturama, each grade was responsible for designing an outfit – hat, shoes, dress, accessory – representative of some aspect of Jamaican culture. In addition, there were two student Djs, a steel drum band, a band with guitars and drums, and other groups of dancers and singers.
This evening, at Wesley Methodist Church, was the opening session of the worship conference we came down here for. We began in their fellowship hall which was separated from the Sanctuary by a small driveway. There were twelve singers, two drummers, and a keyboard player. We opened with prayer and sang several songs together. After a while, Lance kept the musicians in the fellowship hall to work on technique, and Lynette took the singers into the church to go over a few new songs. It had begun pouring down rain before we split into the two groups. Since there is no air conditioning, we had the door and the shutters over the windows open to let the breezes blow through, and the rain was so loud we could hardly hear any of the music above it. Stephanie walked back and forth between the fellowship hall and the Sanctuary with an umbrella to try to keep the singers dry as they made their way over to rehearse the new songs.
Wesley Methodist Church is a beautiful church. It’s 130 years old and incorporates several of the elements that will be important in our new Sanctuary at Resurrection – wood, natural light, and stained glass. There are dark wooden pews with designs carved into the ens near the aisles. The kneeler rail, the lectern, and the rest of the furniture on the chancel are also made of dark wood. The windows along both sides of the Sanctuary and at the back and front are tall and curve up to a point at the top. The top quarter or so of the windows contain stained glass while the bottom panes are clear. The tiles on the floor look like marble and form crosses with a floral pattern etched over the top. The Ten Commandments, The Lord’s Prayer, and The Apostles Creed are all hung on the wall behind the Chancel with a medieval design, including what looks like gold leaf.
When we got back to the manse, June had dinner ready for us. We had these beef and spice filled pastries between two pieces of soft white bread. It was sort of like a flat hot pocket sandwich. It would never have occurred to any of us to put the pastry on bred to make a sandwich…but it sure was tasty!
Posted by Angela
