Thank you to Elyse Cyr and the Mission Immersion Experience team for their hard work blogging about their missions trip to Jamaica. This blog will be broken down into sections and shared with you each day this week.
Faithful.
Creative. Imaginative. Relational.
Gracious. Loving. Kind beyond understanding.
These are words to describe the ways God made himself known
to us over the Spring Break Mission Immersion Experience. All the words in the world wouldn’t be
adequate enough to describe this trip, but in the words below, we’re going to
do our best.
When asked to describe our trip in one word, here was our
response:
Wade: A-MAZING/Fabulous
Olya: Experience of a lifetime/
beautiful
Willetta: Changing/relationship
building
Crystal: Wonderful
Jonathan: life-changing/
spiritual growth/supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Nikki: Different
Andrew: Interesting
Micah: Spectacular
Mrs. Konopasek: Terroades/hot/memorable
Miss Pollard:
Simplicity/faith/providing
Mrs. Cyr: far-exceeding/sweet/treasure
Mr. Konopasek: Inspiring
Students kept a daily journal and have given permission for portions of
it to be reproduced here.
Tuesday, March 31
Ready or not, here we come!
Tuesday was a travel day for our team.
We left campus at 2am and arrived in Montego Bay at 11:30am with a
layover in between. Going through
customs was no problem for our group. We
wondered if it was our beautiful green shirts we were all wearing but the
Terroades assured us that our speedy process was God’s hand on our team, certainly
foreshadowing for the entire trip. We
met up with Raymond, our transportation guru for the week. We stopped for lunch at a great restaurant
and got to experience authentic jerk chicken and jerk pork. After lunch, we drove two hours to our hotel,
unpacked, ate dinner, had team devotions, and went to bed.
From our journals:
Jesus,
thank you for your goodness towards my experience so far in Jamaica. Help me to know that you are in control of
every situation that comes our way. I
praise you for everything that you are doing in my life, now and in the future
as well. I love you Jesus with all of my
heart. Thank you for loving me when I
don’t deserve it. Amen. ~ Wade
The
highlight of my day today was Jamaican food – the jerk meat was amazing, the
best meat EVER! And Raymond is a cool
guy. ~ Micah
Wednesday, April 1
Wednesday was an organization and orientation day. We organized and practiced for the Vacation
Bible School (VBS) we would do and then went to visit the Terroades to get
acclimated to UpHill Ministries. The
Terroades gave us a tour and shared a little bit about the kids we would
teach. We learned about family and
cultural norms. For the kids we would
work with, many came from challenging situations and benefited from love. This was both difficult and helpful for our
students to see and understand. Kenneth
and Eileen shared that all they had was provided by God and faithfully waited
for His provision.
From our journals:
Today
was a great day getting to meet new people and hearing what they had to
say. They told us their focus is on God. And they love teaching the little kids about
God and his Word. ~ Crystal
Today
I met with Kenneth and Eileen Terroade of UpHill Ministries. I learned they are so kind and their love for
God is strong and how they presented God to the Jamaicans is amazing. I love how they rely on God. ~Micah
Today,
God provided for me by us not crashing down the hillside road. ~Nikki
Today I met with Kenneth and Eileen
Terroade of UpHill Ministries. I learned
that Kenneth was a jazz musician. He and
Eileen had three children. Their eldest
son's name I can’t pronounce but their middle daughter is named Hope and their
youngest son is named Dove. They have 2
dogs, a white one named cloud and a black one named Koal, spelled with a
“k”. Kenneth has a “green thumb” and has
planted all the trees on the property.
He also enjoys wood carving.
~Jonathan
Please check back again tomorrow to read more about this life-changing experience.
Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.
No comments:
Post a Comment