We Are Done! Let's See How Well We Did

Daytrip!

Hello world, yes it is true we survived a Jamaican daytrip with a busload of youth from Trenchtown! We set off at seven in the morning for a long, windy, and loud bustrip to the north side of the island. Arriving at New generation camp, where we spent our first two days in Jamaica, we were as ready as we'd ever be for a crazy afternoon of fun and games with a group of kids who were... well let's just say a handful is an understatement. From the get go we knew communication was going to be an issue because all of these kids speak fairly thick Patois, which they will sometimes tone down when they’re speaking to you but when they talk to each other it’s a mile a minute, not to mention the fact that these kids are very upfront emotionally and will speak their mind without hesitation. Which combined led to us having to stress very often the values for the day, “Build people up, help people grow, because people matter.” It was beautiful though to see these kids come together and develop teamwork and understanding through group activities, games, and challenges. God used this experience to humble us and teach us to rely on him when we come to new situations that we don't know how to deal with, and taught us to look for the good in everything even when it seems like everything is going wrong sometimes.

And so with our most stretching and tiring day so far behind us, we have been blessed with a few days of rest and vacationing. Sunday was filled by church at Swallowfield Chapel then relaxing at our billet Nel's house, and playing with her grandchildren Asim and Kemba (interpretive dancing to classical music, connect-four, a walk in the park). Monday, much to the girl's enthusiasm) we got down to some shopping with the help of Patrick and managed to get pretty much all our souvenirs in one fell swoop, then visited Devon House (a used-to-be plantation) for some awesome ice-cream, and finished up with a trip to the movies (Underworld Awakening!). Today we're off for our last beach-day of the trip and hoping to get our tan's up to snuff, still pretty white but what can you do? And then tomorrow is our last kids club in Denhim town and thursday morning bright and early we're off!

Missions Week!

A brand new chunk of picture!

From the guys!

So as the girls mentioned we had the opportunity to go once again to the north side of the island (now our sixth time driving across the country) for a day of fun with all our fusion team. The road trip through the windy, hilly mountainside was going quite well and we were but ten minutes from the Dunn waterfall when our driver (Patrick) started driving more recklessly than normal (even for Patrick). People started to get nervous as we wove through traffic coming down a big hill, passing people on the shoulder and weaving between cars into the other lane and back again. It turns out our brakes were totally shot and Patrick was doing all he could to control our speed coming down the hill, luckily there was a curb for him to rub our wheels against and get some much needed friction to slow us down. By the end of this ten minute ride we were blessed to end up perfectly in the lot of a local mechanic shop, Thank you God :) As we waited for the repairs to finish we enjoyed some time just chatting with everyone and reminiscing about such things as basketball back home. An hour or so later we were back on the road and ready for some waterfall! As we pulled into the parking lot we were somewhat unnerved by the sheer quantity of white tourists, not even joking we feel more comfortable around the Jamaicans down here. But that doesn't stop us from being white either which meant that the Dunn waterfall people saw fit to deny us the "local rate" and charge us three times as much, so we went to the beach! *pawp, pawp! Boollet, boollet!* as Patrick would say. 

The rest of this week has been spent doing what we're actually here for! Our team was split between two primary schools (Boystown and St. Albans) and the Operation Restoration school for teenagers. Work at the primary schools done by Tyler, Tim, Rachelle and others included large amounts of reading, songs, and complete insanity. Meanwhile Kyla and Jordan got to play sports with teenagers :l but we all got to be a part of Kids Club in the afternoon which meant fun, games, and more songs! 

In the midst of this busyness we were also planning a daytrip for local youth (more on that later) and grappling further with Jamaican Patois, it's a work in progress. But we're also getting to teach some Canadian slang to our friends down here, or maybe it's just Tim and Tyler slang (words such as legit, gnarly, brosky, rad, cha-bra, and of course eh!). And of course we're slowly but surely soaking up the sun, we're still pretty white. But we've got one more busy week (which we have no clue what to expect from, the plans get made as they go here) to grab as much heat and sun as we can before we venture back to rejoin the great white north! Save some of that beautiful forty below weather for us!

From the girls!!!

This last week has been awesome. We have learnt a lot about ourselves and others. Rachelle has been able to catch up on sleep these last two days. Our new friend chris is a professional cheerleader and when we went to the beach with everyone from the foundations course, he taught rachelle and kyla how to do lifts (thankfully we were in the water because the fall would hurt a lot more. Chris told rachella to squeeze her butt in order for the lift to wourk and told her she had good form.he also got some help from the other boys so they did a basket toss and threw rachelle and kyla in the air,kyla was wearing shorts over her bathing suit bottoms, and tim had to hold them up when kyla was being lifted out of the water and chris told kyla she did a back tuck when she was thrown into the air(she doen't know what she did cuz she closed her eyes). The countryside is beautiful here, and what looks like jungle us they call bush. On saturday, at the festival we were helping with, rachelle and Kyla got swarmed by kids. The kids would try to rub off rachelle's tattoo and they would play with Kyla's blonde hair. Last night all of us graduated the foundations course and we got ourselves each a certificate to prove it. Marvin, one of our new friends, was trying to teach kyla how talk jamaican, but she is too white to sound like them lol. Today we are lucky enough to have time to go see the Dunn waterfall on the north side of the island. Our team is able to say we will have drove across this country three times. Crazy, right?

We're Still Alive!

So far so good here in Jamaica! This last week we spent at another camp and went through a Foundations course through Fusion. We met many other people from Canada, United States, Jamaica, and elsewhere. The week was crammed with class time. At least 10 hours a day of classes, but they were all really good, and we got to have a lot of fun with all of our new friends in between. We have gotten to eat many of the traditional foods of Jamaica including aki, which is the national fruit of Jamaica! It is the weird looking fruit with the three balls, and the mushy yellow stuff in our pictures. It is impossible to describe the taste, but it's kinda like eggs/tofu/whatever you add to it.
Tyler and Jordan finally got to play basketball with the Jamaicans! It was a very exciting time in their lives. Something else exciting was our festival yesterday in Majesty Gardens! We were all very surprised to stop in the middle of a ghetto on an intersection. This was the setting of our festival. The kids instantly swarmed us, touched our hands, and pretty much took the hair off of our heads. The festival itself was crazy. Very crazy. 100 plus people crammed into an intersection having tons of fun, trying to butt in line, sometimes fighting, but all in all it was a great time for everyone. It really pulled the community together, and according to the Fusion workers the best festival they have had yet, which means the community is improving and God is allowing their work to... work!
Today we graduate from our Foundations course, and we are looking forward to this next week of missions in the inner city of Kingston! Thanks for your prayers!

Foundations Course!

Video Blog #1

More Pictures

Pictures!

We're alive!

First off sorry about the delay, our plans have been less than concrete since we left but we have technology once again! So to recap our trip so far we have flown from Edmonton to Chicago then to Miami. We had a ten hour layover in Miami from midnight to ten and then the final flight to Kingston. Needless to say we reverted to our natural instincts learned from CLBI camping trips and huddled together in a corner of the airport to try and retain some warmth while on the tile floor in the air-conditioned environment. We were very thankful for the blankets and pillows we had, which we did not expect to need so soon. But we toughed it out and are all the more appreciative of the weather here in Jamaica. Also while in Miami airport we found the one open place to get food at midnight, good 'ol Subway! However due to our lack of experience with international travel it wasn't until we got to till with our subs made and ready that we realized canadian money and debit cards were completely rejected. Luckily Tyler had a Subway gift card for 25$ (thanks Grandma) that covered most of it, and the cashier was nice enough to take our worthless money anyway to cover the rest, seeing as there was no other option at this point (He said that he may or may not have a job tomorrow, we'll be sure to check in on him when we get back to miami).

Jamaica! Alas our inexperience showed yet again as soon as we landed, Tyler almost passed out from the heat (like actually, not even joking) and Rachelle was still cold (Miami was a suckerpunch to our internal thermostats). We moved into customs and realized we didn't have an address for where we were staying. After a few phone calls and a lovely chat with an airport official (it was actually quite delightful, no sarcasm intended) we were permitted into the country! We knew someone was coming to pick us up and we were very excited when we saw that it was Patrick and Michael our friends that we met way back in October when they visited AB! Oh! and the airport was on its own peninsula, then on the way back to the mainland, we discovered the insane driving habits that Jamaica possessed (video to come) which Tim and Tyler were thoroughly impressed by, after all it takes a lot of skill to drive on small, crowded, windy, pot-holed streets (correction the streets ARE POTHOLES!) which have very little organization (just a never ending series of Y-intersections).

After our first experience with driving we arrived at Robert's parents house and had a much needed nap time followed by grocery shopping (at a more westernized shopping centre). The night in Kingston was hot but beautiful and the next morning we were off! So we mentioned earlier that our plans were a little messy which is due to the recent election (last week) and the resulting violence means that schools are closed (there goes our plans for the week). So without delay were off to the north side of the Island to New Generation Camp to help out Nell, a missionary who has been here in Jamaica for thirty-seven years! So we spent the last two days out at the camp helping out in whatever ways we could such as fencing, (using cut logs as posts, putting them in holes and stabilizing them with rocks) and masonry (all the houses here are concrete!). When not working we had a beautiful time with our new friends from the local Technical University of Jamiaca intervarsity christian group, we got to join them for worship time, discussion groups, prayer time, games, and just hanging out around the dinnertable.

Personal favourite moments from the past few days include:
-Bag-juice (sold by street vendors it's pretty much koolaid in a plastic bag with a strong ginger taste)
-Cold showers (Like cold! There is one tap on the shower and one setting, COLD!)
-Chickenfoot soup (they use the whole foot!)
-Dishwashing (they were dumbfounded by our enjoyment of doing dishes, Jinnell couldn't believe how much we joked and laughed)
-Condensed milk (they use it everything! poridge, hot cocoa, coffe, tea, cookies. So good!!!)
-Stomping roaches in the guy's cabin (Tim 3 - Roaches 0)
-Our first trip to the beach! (it turned out to be cloudy and rainy but fun nevertheless!)
-Lemon (the mason we were working with) talking on the phone, "Hey Tuna, dis is Lemon!"

Tomorrow morning we start our Foundations program up in the jungle by Montigo Bay, we're still not sure quite what to expect but we know God has some amazing things planned and we're really looking forward to all the experiences to come. Sadly our internet connection may be lacking up in the jungle so you may have to wait for our next update but we'll do all can to keep you posted!
Love Team Jamaica :)