Sunday/Monday

Sunday was a day of moving/resting & reading as we had Northland heading home and CHWC teams coming in from Mississippi, the LA area, Nevada, Illinois, Florida and probably other states I'm forgetting about. I woke up and we had family style breakfast with Chelle, JC, Ralph and the 3 boys. Then I moved my bags from the temporary villa to the IsleGo villa where we webstreamed Northland's service, painted nails, made bracelets and enjoyed the quiet between teams. I ended up having a 2 hour nap which was amazing! The first half of the new team arrived around 3 so we got them settled in their rooms and did some more constructive relaxing until dinner at 5:30. Not only are all of the teams here new to Jamaica but many of them are new to anything near the equator so the caribbean was a fascination. Corinne said some of them were swimming and couldn't believe the taste of the salt water. I love love love the new ones. It's a great way to look at everything & appreciate what we see as if it's the first time again. After dinner we headed to the church in St. Ann's for orientation. We (Dusty) gave our IsleGo introduction/rules/don't smoke what they give you speech and we headed back to the villa. We were back for about 3 minutes when the power went out again.

The power going out is usually a fun adventure and not to say that it wasn't last night but here's the situation we were in. We had food in the ovens for the other half of the team that was meeting us at the church, ALL of the villas were locked so we couldn't have lanterns/candles ready, they'd all need to be finding their villas & rooms in the dark and to say that it was pitch black would be an understatement. I used the last little bit of battery I had in my phone to call Gregory and tell them to take as long as possible at the church- turns out the power was out at the church too and they were having mass by candlelight. They held off for a while but they came back to the 5 of us finding entertainment by sitting around a lantern watching the water dribble through the layer of ice in the middle of Jessica's water bottle. I'm not even a little bit embarrassed. :] When they got back we went from sitting trying to find things to do to looking back 40 minutes later feeling like a hurricane went through here. We were opening locks, unloading the busses/luggage, arranging rooms, REarranging rooms, re-re-rearranging rooms, searching for matches using the light of our 1 lantern to light the remaining oil lanterns and organizing the food in the kitchen for the team who arrived. Naturally, as if planned, the lights turned back on as soon as everybody was settled in, oil lamps lit & happily eating. After the lights were on and the groups were starting to go to bed, I moved my bags over to Michelle's room. We spent the rest of the evening organizing tools, infirmary supplies & toys for the kids so they could be sent out with the work groups today. It did not take long to fall asleep when my head hit that pillow!

This morning we woke up for the first day of work with the teams. Michelle organizes the groups so that they're forced to get to know each other. She created 4 work groups with 10 people each and they aren't all from the same youth group. CHWC has their morning worship starting at 7:30 with music, dancing & prayer. They also start with the blessing of the hands and singing of "the fragrance prayer," which just happens to be my favorite. After morning worship and breakfast we took 2 of the groups to start the morning at Seville. As usual, it was the first day which carried the heat exhaustion, dehydration and pukers. I'm convinced a lot of it has to do with the traveling/getting right to work because I know they drink gallons of water when we're with them and it's usually only the first day!

The team worked hard this morning carrying the 100 pound cement bags from the bottom of the site all the way up to the top, mixing cement and sending the buckets down the line to start filling the trench. This afternoon, Corinne and I got to be a part of the food baskets! We took the teams to a store in St Anns Bay which is cheaper and a cool experience because it's more of a local place versus the grocery store in Ochie. Nobody had any idea what size spice bun to get or how many filets of salt fish but it made it all the more entertaining. Today we delivered to a woman Cynthia who lives right by the new community center. She has 6 kids and some adorable little kittens. The second house we went to was a HIKE. We hiked about a mile up into the mountains to reach Mrs. G (I cannot think of her name!) who had no idea we were coming. She was an unbelievably sweet woman who lived on a farm area. She has 7 kids and there was also a little boy at the house that she was watching for the day. It was definitely my first experience visiting a house that was in what seemed to be the middle of no where. The house was in the middle of a vegetative heaven. Mangos, bananas and fields of fruits/veggies. Corinne and I talked about how humbling it is to deliver the food baskets. There's no feeling in the world like being the answer to somebody's desperate prayers- and to know it was God's plan all along is unbelievable.

Cynthia called today and asked what color dress I was wearing to the graduation. I mentioned before that she asked if I'd give a speech- I didn't realize how serious it was! She called because she wanted to get me a corsage that matched my dress :) I better start writing... How do you motivate kindergartners for life?! Holy pressure...

We were all exhausted and dripping sweat from our hike through the "bush" and ready to get back for dinner. The group's doing some grocery shopping and having mass in Ocho Rios tonight while I plan on going to bed early. :)

Gooood night!