Things started out a bit rocky. We drove up 3 hours to Minneapolis to fly to Dallas, but before we started the drive we had learned that the flight was delayed which meant that we would have about 20 minutes to get on our connecting flight in Dallas.
When we arrived in Minneapolis we learned that that flight had been totally cancelled and they were going to put us on a flight to Miami which had exactly 22 open seats which was the exact number of our team, and this flight was leaving in 40 minutes. Meaning we had to get all 22 of us to check our bags, get through security and down to the gate.
It was amazing to see God work in order to get our team to Jamaica even if we got there later than we had planned. getting through Jamaica immigration and customs went smoothly for the most part but our transportation from Montego Bay to Black River, a 2 hour drive, was just a bit small. So we had to cram 5 people into 4 seats in almost every row while one of our leaders basically sat on our luggage in the back to keep it from falling on the people in front.
Yet we made it to our hotel safely and were able to get some rest for Sunday Morning service. It was definitely an experience. We didn't realize they had a children's church and so hadn't prepared a lesson for the kids yet we made it work.
The next day everything seemed to finally go more the way we had planned. However we found that the kids seemed to be quite reserved and we had to work hard to get them to warm up to us. Singing songs were a struggle the first couple of days because we couldn't get the kids to do the motions with us. But by the end of the week everyone loved to sing the songs and didn't want us to stop.
My responsibilities for VBS were to teach 3 lessons and half of another to the eldest group of VBS goers. At first I was a bit discouraged, the first day we only had about 6-8 students in our group and because they weren't open those first days it was hard to dialogue with them one of my other youth leaders put it well when she said It's hard to know if we are getting through to them.
These kids reminded me a lot of me growing up, most of them had been coming to church all there life and they knew most of the Sunday school answers. And so it did make it hard to know whether or not we were getting through to them. But again by the end of the week I felt like I had seen dramatic changes. They were asking questions and not goofing off as much as first days. I felt like what me and Dustin, my other teacher, were finally getting through.
My lesson planning went like this; Day 1: Creation, God makes all there is for His glory and man is to be representative of God on Earth. Day 2: Fall, Man has broken his image with God, he is no longer walking in obedience to God and must therefore pay the price, yet there is hope. Day 3: Gospel, Even though man is now a broken image of God rather than destroying us God has a plan to redeem us back to himself and He did it through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The bible tells us if only we have faith in Christ we will be saved, but more than that saved to be back in God's presence which is where we should long to be. Day 5: Worldview, I taught about man's ways to explain away an all powerful creator, i.e. evolution. We looked at Romans 1 which tells us that God has clearly shown himself to us yet because we want to be our own boss we harden our hearts to Him and explain him away. Also I taught that everyone has a worldview and as Christians our worldview must have biblical lenses.
Then on Friday night we had a outreach to the whole community which we had been going into the town of Black river nearly every night to witness to people and to invite them Friday to see the movie Courageous. we also did a couple of skits, songs, and some from our team gave testimonies. One lady came forward afterward to receive the gospel but I think that many more seeds were planted.
It was also neat to see a local man come to Christ that was helping with our construction team. And hopefully we will see him grow as we continue to partner with Black River Baptist.
I have so much more I have to share but this post is already really long so thank you for any still reading. If you would like to know more about what our team and I did in Jamaica feel free to talk to me. It was a real blessing.
