I just want to take a minute and thank everyone who has been supporting me and praying for me and my team of freshmen, fellow Freshley leaders, and Wesley interns and directors who went to Jamaica for our spring break mission trip. Your prayers are more powerful than you know, and all 58 of us in Port Maria saw God at work through your prayers all week. I love and appreciate all of you, and I can't thank you enough for making this trip possible and for bringing down God's blessings on the trip in abundance.
The Lord did so much over the course of that week, I don't even know where to start. This is probably going to take more than one post, so be prepared to be reading for a solid half hour. Haha. I'll just start with a not-so-quick overview of what we did all week. (I'll follow up on this with another post about all that God taught me during the week.) We arrived at the Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta around 8:15am on Saturday, March 10th. My small group, being the best (haha, just kidding; all of the groups were great... but seriously), was the first group to have everyone there, so we were the first to get our bags checked in and to go through security. We breezed through security in under an hour, which gave us time to say good-bye to our friends on the Saint Ann's team, who were leaving at 9:30. We had lunch/breakfast/brunch at the airport, and at 12:30, we boarded the plane. I had a window seat, which turned out to be a blessing from God because He used the view to speak to me about the trip and the work He was about to do. I'll get to that later, though, when I go into everything the Lord taught me that week. We got on our way, and we arrived at the airport in Montego Bay around 3:30, where we stood in line to get through customs for over an hour. That was an interesting experience because there was another group from UGA on our flight who had been drinking for most of the flight, and we got to stand in line with them. Anyway, after running into more friends from the MoBay team, being joined by two more people on our team who were on separate flights, and getting through customs, we hopped on a couple buses and made the drive over to the Casa Maria, the hotel we stayed at for the week. I got to talk to Jessica and Sloan, two of the interns, on the way there, which was really cool because I usually have a hard time putting myself out there to get to know people older than me or who seem to be in a higher position than I am. We arrived at the Casa Maria around 7:30 that night, and when I saw that hotel where God made such a powerful move in my life last year, it felt like I was coming home. After a delicious dinner provided by the Casa Maria staff, we had our leadership meeting, where we talked about the day and prepared for our small groups, and then we met with our small groups to debrief, talk about the next day, and just hang out. I'm probably going to be bragging a lot about my small group—they're more like a family to me than a small group now—so just be prepared to hear about them a lot. After small group we had our nightly team meeting in the courtyard in the center of the Casa Maria, where we heard a message and had time for prayer and worship. Afterward, Josh, one of the guys in my small group who I have come to see as a brother, grabbed a few people for a Bible study, which turned into a huge discussion about our fears, doubts, and weaknesses in sharing the gospel and about what we wanted to see come out of the week. We probably had half the team gathered around a small coffee table at one point or another as people came and went. We even had Daniel, one of the Wesley directors, sitting there with us. We probably talked for about an hour (maybe more—time moves in weird ways in Jamaica), and we closed out by praying over one of the guys who was having doubts about being able to build community during the week. As you'll see, God shattered those doubts by the end of the week. Our time of deep spiritual discussion was followed by a time enjoying each others' company in games of Spades, Nertz, Bananagrams, and more. All of this happened just on the first night. To say that we started off the week strong would be an understatement.
The next morning we split up into three groups to visit different Jamaica churches. One group visited Acts Church, a house church just down the road from the Casa Maria; another group took a road trip into the mountains to visit a church run by Pastor Kermit, who we worked with last year; and my group visited the church that Trevor, one of our bus drivers, attends, which is where I went last year. All of the services were amazing, from what I've heard, although they were all longer than the typical American church service. The service at Trevor's church was three hours long, and while it did feel like a long service, it was worth it. The group that went to Pastor Kermit's church, though, was gone for nearly five hours. They got lost in the mountains on the way there, and normally the ride is about 45 minutes. The church service was the same length as the others, so the only difference was the distance the group had to travel to get to the church. Anyway, at Trevor's church, we had worship and random interjections of announcements, the church's dance ministry performance, and a brief message from our own "Brother Bob," the director of Wesley. Like last year, the part that stood out the most to everyone was the warm welcome: unlike in American churches when the pastor says "Stand up and greet your neighbor" and everyone does just that, "Stand up and greet your neighbor" in Jamaica means "Stand up, dance to the music, and greet everyone in the room as we sing, 'Look what the Lord has done!'" The pastor gave a message on 2 Kings 5, which was really good. She made a few comments I had never really thought about before. It was a great way to start off the week before getting to work the next day. We spent the rest of the day just hanging out, getting to know each other. Like the day before, this consisted of several games as well as swimming and sitting around the pool talking. We had our team meeting that night after another awesome small group—family—meeting, and then Jack, the other guy in my small group got a bunch of people together and led a meeting on what he called "identity prayer." I'll go into that more later. And as usual, we finished off the night with games and community building.
Monday. We got up the following morning feeling like we had already been in Jamaica for a week. Everyone had already gotten so close, and we had already learned so much that it was hard to believe it was only our third day there. Needless to say, we were all excited to start working. We had been assigned our work sites Sunday night, so we all boarded our buses right after breakfast. I worked on McGuiver's "farm" that day, which, much like Mr. Eddie and Melanie's farm from last year, was more of a jungle than a typical crops-and-livestock farm. We spent the day on the mountainside pulling and cutting weeds with machetes. After lunch we had about another hour to work until the rain hit. When it didn't let up, we decided to pack up and head over to the infirmary, where there was another group working. Ironically, it stopped raining on the bus ride over there, so we finished off the workday by scraping paint off of the overhang. While I was there, Andrew, our worship leader for the week, was playing his guitar and singing along with some of the residents. I found out later that instead of playing and singing songs for the residents, he was actually coming up with chords to play along with the songs that the residents were already singing. The whole day was interesting because while we were working at the farm, God started speaking to me by interpreting the work we were doing. More on that later. (Sorry to keep giving all these cliffhangers. There's just too much for me to say all at once, and it would get really disorganized if I tried.) When we got back to the Casa Maria, we had the rest of the day to relax until dinner, small group, the prayer and worship session, another night of identity prayer, and more hanging out. The time after identity prayer was a little different that night though (I think it was that night... I don't remember for sure, but it sounds right), because we followed it up with a group conversation about the gift of speaking in tongues. A few of us shared our personal experiences with tongues and how we came to receive the gift, and we had the opportunity to explain tongues to someone who hadn't heard much about it until that point.
The next day I was assigned to go back to the infirmary, and I had a great time. At first I was a little... I don't want to say disappointed, but I wasn't exactly jumping for joy when I found out I was going to the infirmary again, even though I was only there for about an hour the day before. But once the work was under way, I really started to enjoy it. I got to talk to some of the freshmen who were with me on the scaffolding scraping paint, and a couple of us realized we had some mutual friends and other interesting connections we didn't know about before. One of them is good friends with my home church's pastor and his son, and another one has an older sibling that I took a class with when I did dual enrollment at Kennesaw State. Then after lunch, we got to spend time with the residents in the infirmary, including Richard, an amazing man of God that I met last year. Talking to Richard brought joy to everyone who came in contact with him. In fact, two of the freshmen in the infirmary team that day sent a letter to him with Wednesday's team because his love for us and for God encouraged them so much in their own love for God and for Richard. As we were cleaning up, we were told by infirmary staff that we couldn't use their broom that day. So what happened? Richard found a broom for us. But someone (probably one of the employees) took the broom back while Richard wasn't paying attention. When he realized it was gone, he grabbed my hand, and we wandered around the infirmary looking for it. We never found the broom, but he found a broom that we could use. Unfortunately, it was time for us to get ready to leave, so he reassured us that he would sweep up the paint chips for us. Then just like last year, before we left the infirmary, he called a bunch of people together from the team and asked us all to pray for him, and then he prayed for us. Like I said, it was just like last year, but it was just as awe-inspiring as before. Don't miss this: he, Richard, the toothless Jamaican man who has nothing and who has been left to die under the apathetic care of the infirmary, prayed for us, the missionaries from America who have everything in the world to be thankful for yet who live life looking for more. He wanted us to know that we are God's "handmade" and that we had been a blessing to him and that the Lord has blessed him in so many ways in his life. I can't help but feel like he was more of a blessing to us than we were to him, combined. We went back to the hotel filled with joy because of the joy that overflowed from Richard into us. After another awesome family meeting, which we had a full hour for that night, followed by prayer and worship, Jack led another night of identity prayer, where we continued to see breakthrough as God revealed the lies we have believed about ourselves and replaced those lies with His truth. By this point, the days had begun to run together, so I can't remember if this next part happened Tuesday night or Wednesday night, but the point is that it happened: Rebekah, my co-leader, and I were talking about small group, bragging on our freshmen and discussing what we wanted to see in our small group in the days to come. I have come to believe that coincidences don't exist because God works everything, even the smallest and most insignificant details, according to His plan. And "coincidentally," just a few minutes after I mentioned wanting to see a stronger sense of community and a family bond in our small group, three of our freshmen convinced the two of us to join them in a game of Goober for some "small group bonding." Whether this was Tuesday or Wednesday, it happened before identity prayer, so after having sufficiently made fools of ourselves, we joined Jack and the group of identity seekers he had gathered by the pool before going to bed.
Then came Wednesday morning, the last work day. It was hard to believe that the week was already half over, and none of us wanted to think about it. But we braced ourselves and went to work one more time. This time I was working on building a wall at a nearby high school. It was a good day. We started off with a huge display of teamwork, unity, and encouragement as we got into a system of concrete mixing where each person would work their best for short amounts of time before switching out so that we always had fresh mixers able to give it their best, and everyone would call out individual encouragement while they waited for a turn. We had quite an audience as some of the Jamaicans skipped class to watch us work. We got to talk to some of the high schoolers and hang out with them during our short breaks throughout the day, and they were all really cool. Even I, shy as I am, got to talk to one kid for a good half hour as we finished up the wall at the end of the day. Some of the others even got to play a pick-up game of soccer with some of the kids, which looked like a lot of fun. Then some of the kids helped us clean up as we got ready to leave. After taking several photos, we got back on the bus and went back to the Casa Maria. That night was a little different because we had small groups after the team meeting instead of before, which was nice because we had as much time as we needed. Starting Tuesday, we ended family time in different ways each night. On Tuesday Rebekah suggested that instead of closing out in prayer as usual, we should just start with prayer and then read Scripture as our prayer and encouragement for the freshmen at the end. Wednesday was similar, except this time Bess brought it up after we spent some time reflecting on how the Lord has been good to us throughout our lives and especially this past year. So she read Psalm 86 to finish off the night while we listened. Then we went back to even more community building time with Spades, Goober, Speed, and Egyptian Rat Screw. Then instead of the usual identity prayer, we had a night of healing prayer for anyone who was sick or in pain or who just needed healing in general.
The next day the realization started setting in that the week was almost over, but we tried to ignore that fact. After all, we still had two full days left, plus an all-nighter Friday night. So we welcomed the extra sleep when Draper, the director in charge of the PoMo team, announced that breakfast would be half an hour later than the past few days. After breakfast we made the drive over to Trevor's church, where we spent time praying for the people of Jamaica and singing in worship. It was really cool to see so many of the freshmen go up front to pray whatever was on their hearts for Jamaica and for us as we prepared to come back to Athens. God was really moving in our prayers, and He was working powerfully in our worship too as we sang for His glory and sang our prayers for the nations. Then for lunch we went just down the street, where we had the option of trying something called Juici Patties, which are essentially Jamaican empanadas, or we could stay within the comfort zone of American food at KFC. I didn't get to try a Juici Patty last year, and I'm glad I got to try it this year. It was pretty good. A little weird, but good. And the coco bread that came with it was delicious! I probably could have made a meal out of just coco bread without the Juici Patty. We had so many people in line at the the Juici Patties restaurant that a few of us had to eat while we walked down the street to the nearby Anglican church, which one of the Sunday morning groups visited last year, where we had the opportunity to take pictures on the rocks by the ocean. After getting plenty of pictures, including some last minute shots as we were being hurried onto the buses for our last service activity, we split up into three groups to go to the infirmary to finish the mural and some more scraping and painting, to the church to finish up the roof, and to Galina Primary to play with the kids at their field day. Galina Primary was one of our work sites last year, so it was really cool getting to go back this year, even though I didn't see any of the kids I remembered from last year. That evening when all of the groups returned to the Casa Maria, we were able to celebrate the completion of all of our service projects: all of the work we had planned to do throughout the week was accomplished! There was nothing that didn't get finished, even if it did take part of an extra day. Then we had the rest of the day, as usual, to hang out until dinner. I think what followed dinner left the biggest mark on me out of all that happened that week. We went straight from dinner to our team meeting for prayer, worship, and a message, but we ended the meeting in a unique way. At Wednesday night Wesley services at UGA, the interns stand at the front of the room during "ministry time," a time of worship when we reflect on the message, and anyone who wants someone to pray for them can go to the interns. That night in Jamaica was similar in that the interns stood apart from everyone and the students would go to them, but it was slightly different. The theme of the night was inviting the Holy Spirit to fill us and have full reign in our lives, so all of the small group leaders went to the staff and interns, who were standing in the back of the courtyard, and they prayed that the Holy Spirit would fill us with more of Himself. Then we went back to our small groups and got to pray for our freshmen individually. There's something very powerful about personal, individual prayer in group settings, especially from people who have already been pouring into you. Or from people you have been pouring into. Of course, I can't claim that the pouring out was a one-way road in my small group because I learned a lot from my small group that week, but as a small group leader, when Josh turned to me and Rebekah and prayed for us individually after we had finished praying for him, I couldn't help but see him living out Galatians 6:6 and Job 32:8-9: "Anyone who receives instruction in the Word must share all good things with his instructor"; "But it is the Spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that gives him understanding. It is not only the old who are wise, not only the aged who understand what is right." In fact, I think those two passages pretty well characterize my entire small group. After Josh prayed for me, I prayed for him again since I was at his feet while he was laying down when I prayed for him the first time, so God wanted him to hear His encouragement through me this time. We ended up losing track of time as we prayed and just talked about life, and somehow we didn't notice that everyone had left the courtyard and gone to their small groups. So after a good, long man-to-man, brother-to-brother conversation, we got up and went down to the pool where our family was meeting. Honestly, I don't remember a whole lot of what we talked about during all our meetings. I just remember that every night was awesome in new ways. (I probably remember more than I think I do.) I do remember this though: that night I shared a short vision God had given me the day before, and Jack said that, "coincidentally," he had heard almost the exact same vision described by someone who led a conference in Chicago last summer... That blew us all away. We spent the rest of our family time talking about the next day, about leadership—what leadership area everyone is planning on signing up for for next year—and about life after Jamaica and how we didn't want it to come yet. Then Jack closed us in prayer, confirming our collective identity as a family. And then after taking a break from leading identity prayer the night before, Jack was back at it that night.
The next morning we got up for breakfast and then boarded the buses to go to a Jamaican market, where we met up with our friends from the Montego Bay and Saint Ann's teams. We spent the morning souvenir shopping, haggling with the Jamaicans, and catching up with our friends who we hadn't seen in six days. When we were done looking around the market (after they had cleaned out our wallets), we walked across the street for lunch. We had a small variety of choices, but instead of going for more Jamaican food, I went for simple American fast food: Burger King. It was a good choice because I ran into more friends there that I had been looking for and hadn't been able to find all morning. From there we left at 12:30 to go to Dunn's River in Ocho Rios, where we had even more time to spend with our friends from the other teams. We had a great time climbing Dunn's River Falls and just hanging out on the beach. And of course everyone was taking a ton of pictures while we were there. It was sad when we finally had to leave, but the time we had together was great, and we knew that we would be seeing each other again in just a few short days at Freshley on Monday, if not at the airport the next day... but we didn't want to think about that yet. Back at the Casa Maria, the rest of the day was spent preparing for that night's talent show. We had some really good acts. And by really good, I mean really funny. Andrew and Jack played guitar and cajone and sang a hilarious song about mission trip goggles (the condition where a particular person of the opposite sex begins to look especially attractive during the mission trip, and sometimes after the mission trip) called Mission Trip Girl. They were followed up by another mission trip goggles song, this time a variation on Justin Bieber's song, Baby. And in keeping with the theme of mission trip goggles, we had a guy act out a serenade for Paul, who had built up a reputation as the most sought after guy on the trip, while lipsyncing as a very talented girl sang Someone Like You, by Adele. We also had some acts that were more impressive than funny, such as someone licking his own elbow, and two girls not only doing a split, but jumping and landing in a split on the hard floor of the hotel. We also had a lot of people who were easy to impersonate, so a group got up front and, very exaggeratedly, acted out a scene imitating those people. And for the finale, a group of guys did the "five guys skit," which a group did in last year's talent show, and it was just as funny as ever. Oh, and my friend Shelby and I, once again, opened the talent show with the National Anthem, performed on a trumpet mouthpiece and with vocal percussion. Needless to say, it was a very upbeat way to finish off the week. But it wasn't quite over yet. The leaders met with Jessica and Jasmine, our interns, and they gave each of us encouraging notes. I'm not sure "encouraging" quite captures just how great the notes were. All of the leaders, all of the interns, all of the staff, and all of the freshmen were on this trip for a unique reason, and the trip would not have been what it was if any one of us hadn't been there. So thank you again for making this trip possible! But I'm not done yet. After our leadership meeting was when the biggest fight against fatigue began. It was probably around 9pm when we rejoined the freshmen inside the hotel, but it felt like it was at least 11. Several of us had been making plans to pull an all nighter the last night, and I remembered that it was difficult last year, but I had forgotten just how hard it was. After having prayer and worship time and family time until 9 every night, we had gotten used to starting all the games around 9 or 9:30, but we had started close to 8 that night. We had to do whatever we could think of to keep ourselves awake. For me that meant writing notes for my small group like Jessica and Jasmine had done for the leaders. I barely remember what I wrote because I wrote them some time between 11pm and 3am, but as long as my sleep deprivation didn't make me write nonsense or something offensive, I meant every word. Anyway, our internal clocks were at least an hour ahead of schedule, and most of us eventually gave in and went to sleep, if only for an hour and a half. A few people did manage to make it through the whole night, and a couple took a short half-hour nap as morning got closer. But no matter how much sleep everyone got, we were all up to see the incredible Jamaican sunrise around 6:15, just before breakfast. We had had an amazing week with amazing people in Port Maria, and because the Son is risen and we are filled with Spirit, He has sent us back to Athens to love Him, to serve Him, and to live as missionaries wherever we are. We may be back in America, but the impact God had on our lives in Jamaica will last longer than we know. Our job now is to act on what we have learned.
After having our last Jamaican breakfast—at least for this year—we loaded our luggage onto a bus, boarded our own buses, and said good-bye to the Casa Maria as we left for the airport. Most, if not all, of us slept on the way to the airport. We weren't at the airport in Montego Bay for very long. We had about 45 minutes to get lunch and board the plane. Boarding was a little stressful because we almost lost two of our freshmen, but they made it with a few minutes to spare. As we took off and pulled away from the island, clouds could be seen covering the entire island. After some more sleep on the plane, we arrived back in Atlanta around 3:30. Getting through customs was a little frustrating because I was stopped twice to have my luggage inspected, once for my Blue Mountain coffee and once for my trumpet mouthpiece... And when I finally made it out to the front of the airport, a few others and I had to wait even longer for our luggage. But our luggage finally made it through, we said our good-byes, and we all went home. Sunday came and went, and then came Monday, which meant Freshley. Not only did it mean Freshley, but a lot of us realized that Monday also meant classes, which meant that everyone was back in Athens. So of course we had several massive reunions scattered throughout the day leading up to one of the most intense nights of worship I've ever been a part of at Freshley.
As the song goes, "Greater things have yet to come, and greater things are still to be done in this city."
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Andrew made this video to sum up our experience in Jamaica. I'd encourage you to watch it again after I put up my next post about everything God taught me/us over the course of the trip and how He is continuing to build off of everything He taught me/us that week. It'll probably be more meaningful then. Or maybe it'll be just as powerful without the extra post. Who knows? Maybe I'm biased and I love the video because I was there. Regardless, enjoy, and "look what the Lord has done!"
http://www.facebook.com/v/10150763695974880
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