All Saints Lutheran Church

Well, we're here in Jamaica waiting for the team to find a flight here! We're very saddened that things got jumbled up with the airlines but we know that God has so much in store for the team once they get here! We're praying for you all!!!

The team is finally here!! And right after they arrived they went to straight to work at New Era Preschool & Kindergarten which is located just down the road from Usain Bolts' high school!!! After a delicious lunch and some time spent with the students we headed to check out the service project we will be working on for the rest of the next two days. We will be mixing concrete and pouring a slab roof on the education center of William Nibb baptist church! We are excited to get to work on it tomorrow morning. We had some time to shower and unpack back at the conference center we are staying at and after dinner we will have a quick orientation and then off to bed ~ we've got a big day a head of us!

Some of the team was able to present the school supply donations to some of the students at the school! What a tremendous blessing these supplies will be to New Era!!

The team started out the day doing construction at the education center in Falmouth. We mixed and poured concrete for half of the roof!!! We will Finish up the second half tomorrow. Everyone worked so hard and will certainly be sleeping well tonight (and might have some sore arms in the morning!)

After working hard at the construction site we went back to the New Era preschool & kindergarten. There we were served a delicious lunch of jerk chicken! Everyone loved it but boy! Was it spicy!!! After lunch we did arts and crafts with the students. They were so excited and so appreciative. Once they were done with their crafts they sang songs with us and for us until it was time to say goodbye. We are very excited to be able to spend another day with them tomorrow!

After the construction and the school we headed over to the Trelawny Infirmary where we spent some time reading scripture to, praying with and loving on the residents there.

Today we finished up our project at the education center. Everyone worked so hard mixing and pouring concrete~ even the Jamaican workers were impressed giving us "mad respect" (which is a really big compliment!) After the work project we got cleaned up and went to the school. We did arts and crafts and sang a bunch of songs. Once school was out the principle gathered all of the students of the school and all of our team and they put on a program for us to say thank you for all we had done this week and for the wonderful donations. We played with the kids for a while before sharing a tearful goodbye. On our way back for dinner we had a few extra minutes so we stopped at the beach! We had fun playing in the water and looking at different crafts being sold by some of the locals. We ate a delicious dinner and then headed to William Nibb Baptist church for bible study with the pastor. It was wonderful and challenging and the team really got into it! They were so engaged and challenging/ giving their opinion on what was going on in the passage. We ended the day with a debriefing meeting and are headed to bed now to rest up for our final day on the island!

To go along with the story of Noah, the students made a rainbow with raindrops that represented four things they are thankful for!

Bible study at William Nibb Baptist Church

Today was such an amazing day that we got to spend as a group in Montego Bay. We got to see the more "touristy" side of Jamaica that we didn't necessarily see during the week. We started out the day at the "Hip Strip" which is a street of shops full of souvenirs. Then we all met up at Margaritaville for lunch. After that, we got to hit up Doctor's Cave which was the name of the beach. We got to hang out in the water and jump on a water trampoline. Then we ended the night with worship and a wrap-up meeting where we affirmed each other and talked about how great the week was. There was laughter; there was tears; and it's official that no one is ready to come home. Please pray that we are safe in our travels and that none of our flights are canceled.