Saturday, October 17
I can’t believe I forgot to post this yesterday – we can see the ocean from the manse where we’re staying! Layna told us she could see it on the first day, but the rest of us thought it was just the way the clouds and sky appeared that made her think that. But yesterday afternoon after the rain, several of us were standing on the back porch looking at the clouds. Off to the north, there was a really strange-looking cylindrical cloud floating above the trees. And the more we looked at it, the less it looked like a cloud. James took a picture of it with the fairly-powerful zoom on his camera and then zoomed in on the picture once it was loaded onto his computer to reveal the object was a large ship, probably carrying bauxite, which is a major export here in Jamaica. The view to the north has been hazy all day today, so it’s again difficult to differentiate the water from the sky.
Last night, someone was playing music quite loudly like they were having a party. They played a little of all types of music, but they primarily played 80s and 90s hip hop and rap from the US. My roommates and I went to bed at about 10:30, and they were still going strong, so we wore earplugs to fall asleep. When I woke up in the middle of the night, it was nice to discover the music had been turned off, so I could drift off to sleep again to the natural nighttime sounds drifting in through the open windows.
Breakfast this morning consisted of salt fish, ackee, bananas, oranges, toast with guava jelly, spinach-like greens called callalloo, and bread fruit. Bread fruit has a texture like tofu, but drier, and is like bread or tofu in that it doesn’t have much flavor itself; rather, it takes on the flavor of whatever it’s eaten with or cooked with.
This morning for the music clinic, we had seventeen in attendance, but most of them were children. We weren’t sure how many of the children were supposed to be there and how many of them happened to hear the music and wander in. We sang a few songs together and then I taught a session on spiritual gifts. I had brought enough supplies and activities to fill two or three hours but ended up condensing it to about 45 minutes. It was especially challenging to me because a majority of the group were about thirteen or younger. Rather then get caught up in lots of the details I would have at Resurrection, I tried to emphasize that we all have gifts and we are all responsible for serving to build up the Kingdom of God both inside the church and out in the community.
We were a little short on food at lunch, so many of the kids and our team ended up splitting the meals up and sharing. We had rice and beans, beef/carrots/dumplings, slaw, and potato salad.
Shortly after we had started singing after lunch, a little girl and a couple of other kids got called out by their mom. A few minutes later, Lance felt called to pray for that little girl. She walked with a cane, and her leg was badly bent up and scarred. It turns out, her family had a bad house fire when she was little. Her twin sister and another sister dies in the fire, and her father dies of a heart attack shortly after that. She is going into Kingston in November to have surgery on her leg. We prayed for her and her doctors, and her family.
Then, we sang a few songs, including “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone).” Then Lance told the story of how the original “Amazing Grace” came to be written by John Newton, a slave ship captain who came to know God’s amazing grace in his life. We ended the afternoon by standing in a circle, Americans and Jamaicans intermingled, singing “How Great Is Our God.”
I don’t know how much any of us learned this afternoon, but we certainly had a great time of worship. Before we headed back to the manse, we walked a few blocks down the road behind the church to the home of the little girl with the twisted, scarred leg to ask if we could pray for her, with her. She was a little embarrassed at first, but she let Lance put his hand on her head as we prayed again for her.
Today was a good day. A day of highs in worship and lows in the reality of some of the heartbreak surrounding us in Brown’s Town, but a good day all around.
Posted by Angela
