Monday, March 17, 2008

some jamaican yummies

Freshly picked orange.

Freshly cut sugar cane.

Mango

Sugar cane from a side street stand.

This one makes the "yummies" list for the sheer fact that I found it NOT yummy at all! Say hello to Mr. Chickenfoot.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Welcome to Jamaica!

Leaving the plane we proceeded to the lovely long line of security checks/customs.
ALL 29 pieces of our luggage arrived intact - minus 1 box of Bibles...which broke during the flight. However, this proved to work well in our favor as we were able to present several Bibles to the people in the airport.

"Is that a Bible?" one man asked. "May I ... have a Bible?"
They were so thankful to receive the Word of God and many of them asked for study Bibles.

We loaded all our gear into a bus driven by the lovely Mr. Graham and went on our way- driving of course on the "wrong" or left side of the road.

Leavin' on a "West Jet" plane...

The low down of our time in the sky:

-Cory Betts took his first plane ride(s) on his way to Jamaica.
-Brad Swink discovered the headrests are able to be raised for the comfort of taller individuals at the close of our 1st flight.
-Chris Nunes & Christy enjoyed themselves in the Toronto Airport (getting a little exercise) as they raced back and forth on the speed track.
-Andy excitedly dug through his bag to change into flip-flops and shorts
-Christy, Kendra & Amy sat in the same row on the plane and saw places through the window like: Cuba and the Caymen Islands
-Mr. Klob slept
-We all drank a lot of cranberry juice and water
-When the plane landed in Toronto, Chris thought for sure we were in Jamaica . Unfortunately there was a little bit of a let down when he discovered we had not yet left Canada AND we still had a 4 hour flight. (He must have slept a lot on the 1st plane).

Arriving at the airport...

Some of you may be wondering, does 3:30am even exist on the clock - and if it does, why on earth would anyone ever be alive and awake at that time? Well...the first leg of our journey to Jamaica has more than proven this time does exist. Departing from Sussex, the van fell silent and in my opinion, the 3+ hour drive to Halifax felt like 15 minutes.

We arrived at the airport in no time and hurriedly teamed up to unload our 29 pieced of checked luggage. (Just a little disclaimer: We only have 8 suitcases present between our 10 team members, but the other 21 boxes encompassed sound equipment and 10, 60lb. boxes of humanitarian aid.)

Brad Swink quickly made friends with the airport ladies who would be checking our luggage...and I suppose 29 pieces of luggage ranging in size from 48lb-100lb. would get slightly exhausted...so he became a pseudo-staff member for a few brief moments and all who happened by could find him behind the counter, carrying the luggage after the nice ladies placed stickers on it.

With many wonders of why in the world we were up at such an early hour of the morning...we began to wonder about Jamaica, hoping reality would soon set in - We were on our way...finally.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Jamaica..here we come!

In less than 24 hours we will be en route to the Caribbean - heading to the island of Jamaica for 10 days of ministry with the people of Jamaica.

We will be processing through the airport in Halifax in the wee hours of the morning tomorrow so please keep us in your prayers for a smooth trip and move through security.