Saturday, April 19, 2014

Our hotel made us a great breakfast this morning.  It put us in a happy mood and made us ready for the day.  We headed off to church in downtown Montego Bay.  The taxi drove by the location where we thought the church was located.  But we were told that the church building was for sale and the congregation was building a new church.  While only the second floor of what will be a three story building was poured, about 600 members were meeting in the daylight basement area of the church!  This would not happen in Redding!  But, there was a sea of folding chairs, and nicely dressed Sabbath keepers seated throughout this unfinished area.

There were four or five people who were to be baptised who stood in front of the church and answered affirmatively to keeping and believing in each of the fundamental beliefs of the church before  they could be accepted to for baptism.  Several in our group noted that there were a lot fewer conditions to being baptised in Jesus' time than now. (We have some sharp people on this trip!)

They had me get up and tell a little bit about our group, and to bring greetings from Redding, CA, which seems to be a Jamaican tradition, as I was invited to do the same thing in the Christian Fellowship Church the Sunday before!  If I had to take a vote, I think most everyone felt a little closer to God in the little church in the mountains as opposed to the big church in the city.  Good things to spend some thought time trying to figure out why.

We had lunch and then spent the afternoon seeing some of the remarkable sea life that calls Jamaica home.  The prize find was a sand stingray.  The eel was a close second!  It rained most of the afternoon, so we headed up to the hotel where the students voted to eat pizza for the second night in a row, and the adults had choices from the hotel restaurant.

For worship, each person took a turn talking about what the trip meant to them.  There have been great lessons learned, and we are all closer for the experience.  Some of the ideas that were expressed were:

• Hard work builds stronger friendships
• There is something very satisfying about accomplishing something as a team
• People are much the same around the world.
• Happiness does not come from stuff, it comes from within.
• Being disconnected from the stress of home for a week can be a good thing
• Working together, we each made a positive impact on each other
• There are many Christians around the world.  Many are not from our church.
• We can have a positive impact wherever we are.

I couldn't be more proud of our kids. They have been nothing short of awesome this entire trip.

Tomorrow we are looking forward to our trip back to America.  But it will be with very fond memories of our new friends we have made in this beautiful country called Jamaica!