This past week (July 14-21, 2019) I, Christopher, and a group of 31 other people from my church, United Church of Crook, embarked on a week long journey to the Jamaica Christian School for the Deaf. During our time there, we mixed and poured concrete, by hand, to help build the school.
While there, we were blessed with the opportunity to put on a week long Bible school for the local kids at the Eden Holiness Christian Church.
Besides pouring concrete and hosting a Bible school, we had opportunity to visit Westhaven, a home for disabled children. This was really eye-opening to see this place. We are fortunate that in the United States we have compassion for our family members who cannot function in society. In Jamaica, they are cast aside and forced into places like this. Fortunately, the staff at Westhaven are wonderful people who truly love the kids there.
Finally, we visited Blossom Gardens Child Care Facility. Here, kids are housed temporally due to abuse of all kinds until their parents are fit to take them back, a family member takes them, or they are adopted / put into foster care. My heat was broken here. To know that some of these kids were never told that they were loved before coming here was too much to handle. I tear up every time I think about it. We were not allowed to take pictures here due to the sensitive nature of the facility and they don’t want dangerous parents to know where their children are located. The only picture I have is a “vision tree” from a wall of the facility. Reading this is truly heart-breaking.
All in all, the trip was amazing! My wife and I learned a bunch about ourselves and we were excited to see the team members grow in their faith. We can’t wait to go back!
Thanks to Mission Discovery for putting on the trip.