“Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.”

James 1:2 (NLT)

Hello! Today is blog day! In fact, it’s my first blog post that’s written from Jamaica! It’s so crazy to me that this will be my home for the next 4 weeks! Just being here for one week God has done so many things not only in me, but through the entire squad. Let me tell you about what this last week has looked like for me!

We arrived in Jamaica on Thursday evening, we flew out from Atlanta and drove a couple hours to the Adventures Relief base, where I’ll be living for the entire time here in Jamaica. So Thursday was basically getting here and then going to sleep. Friday was an orientation and exploring the base. Saturday we enjoyed our first Sabbath in Jamaica before starting our first full week of ministry! Then on Sunday we had a community dinner for the people in the neighborhood!

So for our time in Jamaica, we have 4 different ministry jobs, and our 6 teams can get new jobs each week. It really depends on what our leaders decide after praying on it. There are three roofing teams, one team that does ministry at a school, one team that does random physical labor tasks depending on the people’s needs, and another team that takes care of the base while the other teams are out. This last week my team was assigned to do roofing!!

This made me pretty nervous because I have an extreme fear of heights. The idea of having to stand on basically nothing to build a new roof sounded pretty terrifying. My team got to build two roofs this last week, and y'all will be proud because I did get on the roof a few times! Although I wasn’t on the roof as much as some of my teammates, I did get the privilege to chat and pray with some of the people we were building roofs for. 

In this first week of ministry, the biggest thing I noticed about the people in Jamaica is their genuine joy. They all have stories of how Hurricane Melissa affected them, and despite how good or bad some of their situations were, every single person I talked with talked about how joyful they are to just be here and be able to praise God. To be honest, I really struggled to process that. Like, if I went through some of the things they have, I truly don’t know if I’d still praise God the way they do.

Here is my question: will you still praise God through the trials the way you praise God for the joys? The verse in James I picked because everybody loves that verse until they are experiencing the trials themselves. I want to be able to love and cling to that verse even through the trials! The biggest thing I’m learning right now is to praise God through EVERY circumstance, not only the ones I “feel” like praising Him through. 

Although roofing was fun, the start of a new week means the start of a new job! This week my team will be taking care of the base and running errands for the squad! I’m excited to let you guys know how that goes along with how God speaks to me through that. Thank you, guys, for taking a minute to read my adventures. I’ll see you guys next time!!

With Much Love,

Kielynn :)