Jah Works, Inc.

After a long day of travel on Saturday, we had only a short 8 minute drive to Mearnsville Methodist Church on Sunday for morning worship services. If you’ve never been in a Jamaican church, it’s certainly an experience. It can be the only place that people hear information about the community, things happening, birthdays, and the like. It is also a place with so much song and musical worship. There were hymnals; never enough for everyone, but you share. They don’t have music in them, only the words, and everyone knows the tune and sings along. We also heard an Old Testament study (reading), a New Testament study, and a Gospel reading (right before the sermon).

Another part of the service was welcoming visitors. Our team of twelve were not the only ones visiting on that day, there was a family reunion in town and half the family came to the Methodist church and half went on to the Baptist church. One of the men of the family read some of the readings, and went on to say that he walked these hills as a boy and was glad to be back and to be with family. We talked to him a bit after the service and his folks had come from Kingston, New York, Atlanta and other places around the island and in the U.S. just to be together in Mearnsville for the week.

One of the most amazing evidences of God’s presence was in the overwhelming view of his Creation right outside of the church windows. This part of the island topographically has mountains that come right down to the sea with no flat plains in between. There is only a road carved out that runs down the coast to Sav-la-Mar in one direction and Whitehouse in the other. Mearnsville Methodist sits in a niche right above the coastal road with a view of the mountains and the sea. It is very beautiful, and it also offsets the poverty that you see when you turn around and look in the other direction. Even though by U.S. standards there are very limited monetary resources here, the natural beauty that surrounds, along with the importance of family and community are two wonderful gifts that God has provided to the people of Jamaica.

Our praises and prayer requests tonight:

• Prayer request for Tim who had a small injury on the worksite today (he’s fine, no worries!!) and praises that his injury was not a bad one.
• Pray for John’s back to feel better from strenuous labor working on the foundation of a house today.
• Pray that the team continues to find strength, patience, and understanding for things we do not know.
• Pray that we have enough supplies, snacks, provisions and funds for everything.
• We need prayers for safety for everyone.
• Pray for Arnold’s complete healing.  We met him in Montego Bay and he has just finished his last round of chemo. Pray he has no cancer return.

We’ve started Vacation Bible School and home repairs…more pictures and stories to come soon!