Mark Your Calendars!

Hey Everybody!

Thanks for praying about getting my ticket sorted out. After seemingly endless hassles with a particular airline, I finally got a flight booked for June 1st to Seattle! Kudos to my bestest brother-in-law for spending 2 hours on the phone sorting it all out for me. It's a long story, I'll save it for when I see you.

These are my friends Steve, Tyrese, and Kristen. We helped paint a post office last Saturday in Tower Hill, a neighbouring community.

I have come to love Jamaica but I am so excited to come home for a month see my family and all the others I love in that corner of the world. It's gonna feel good to get some more wear on my hiking boots and gaze at big mountains again.

The community development school is well underway, I have a couple of projects coming up and our speaker this week is a firey Texan who has been living in Haiti for over 10 years. I hear he has incredible stories. Sometimes it's a lot to wrap my brain around but I'm learning and I'm enjoying it and I'm seeing God's faithfulness.

There's always more to write but I don't think I can express it coherently right now...I'll try again another time.

Oh yeah! And Carly arrives tomorrow. The Canadians here can hardly wait because she said she'd bring us some Tim Horton's donuts. Please pray that her visit will be all that she needs it to be.

Blessings to you all and don't forget to mark you calendars!
Em

Hope

So this is another one of those times when I really don't know where to begin. I can imagine us sitting on a rock by a lake somewhere silently admiring the beauty around us and eventually I would start talking...

I guess one of the things I've been coming to understand more these past few weeks is the importance of intimcay with God. I can get so busy not only in my actions but also in my mind, thinking about all the things I want to do here and wondering if I'm meeting others' expectations or even my own expectations...and it's so easy to "do" and think about "doing" without realizing it and then one dayI find myself wondering whose agenda I'm trying to fulfill, mine or my Maker's? It's the kind of situation that reminds me that God is patient and slow to anger and I'm so glad He is.

These days are super busy in the community development class and I'm learning so much. It has helped me to understand more why Jamaica is the way it is right now. No doubt there's been plenty of evangelism on this island but in several areas, God's truth has not yet penetrated certain false beliefs. Thus there are some"Christian" churches that call on ancestral spirits to visit the Sunday service and Rastafarians who believe a man ought to have many women (which has led to a nation full of fatherless children).

I meet some of these children when I visit orphanages when ever I get the chance. The last one I visited hit me harder than the others. It was a home for 70 boys between the ages of 8 and 18. Some had run away from home, some were considered a danger to their families and therefore brought to the orphanage, and many were abandoned by their parents through death or decision. Most of the boys didn't have shoes and their living conditions were grim. I looked around that place and I asked, "Is this the future of Jamaica?" "What will happen with these boys?" and "What do they believe about themselves?" I'm so thankful that I got to go and hug some of them and tell them that their Heavenly Father has always wanted them, but I wanted to do more.

I've also been challenged in my faith lately, "Do I really believe that it's God's desire to transform a nation, that He is active in fulfilling His purposes, and that as long as I am willing, He will make me a world changer? Yes, I do believe it! I don't understand how He works but I understand that He is good.

And there are good things happening in Jamaica, too. Many churches here are recognizing a need for big changes in this nation and they are praying and different churches are even starting to come together. That's the good news.

So please continue to pray for Jamaica, and for me that I will continue to seek the Lord and yield to His leading.

Thanks, I miss you!
Em =0)