Day 2

Hello everyone!

This is Jen, writing to you from beautiful Jamaica! Today was our first full day and it was so nice to wake up in this amazing place. This morning we woke up to a tasty breakfast of baked oatmeal, muffins, fruit, and cereal. It was delicious (especially the baked oatmeal)! After breakfast we headed to church with Mary (our host at Fairhaven) and our bus driver Chris. We quickly learned that honking is quite common in Jamaica, and can have a multitude of different implications. We are still all getting used to driving on the other side of the road, especially this morning. Pastor Dave's church, McField Baptist, is up in the hills of Montego Bay, so our drive was about 40 minutes on a very narrow and windy road. Luckily we all survived, thanks to our very skilled bus driver. The plan for church this morning was to lead "Sunday school hour" and then stay for the regular church service. Once we arrived, Tyler, Samantha, Grace, and Sam headed on stage to sing a couple of songs. They sounded fabulous of course, and our audience seemed to enjoy the worship. We then performed our "orange skit," which is a symbolic skit of the worldly tolls life can take on someone's heart. Stefene (who had the main part) did an amazing job of making the skit personal and meaningful, and Grace did a great follow-up/explanation afterwards. After the skit our little worship team performed a few more songs, and Kristin sang a beautiful solo, accompanied by Tyler on the guitar. Since it was a special occasion...and we all love our mothers so much...Sam, Grace, and Tyler performed a special tribute song to mothers during the main service, which they all wrote together last night. Sam "spit" a rap, which the entire church really enjoyed. We intermingled ourselves with the children in the congregation and enjoyed the rest of the service while entertaining them as well. One of the little girls, Kayla, made out like a bandit. She managed to head home with a snack, full bottle of water, and even my favorite chapstick with that sweet little face. Overall, Church was a great experience, and we all really enjoyed getting a taste of the Jamaican culture.

After church, we headed back to Fairhaven for an authentic Jamaican dinner (dinner is a big meal at lunch time on Sundays). As usual, we all took naps and some of us headed out to play football in the rain. Garrett would really like me to interject here that he dominated at football (or at least we let him think he did hehe). It has been raining off and on here, and usually there is a solid downpour for a few minutes, but it is still extremely warm and we all enjoyed the change in weather. After playing in the rain, they took a swim in the clear ocean and headed inside for showers and naps (we definitely have been enjoying our naps). Then it was dinner time, Kristin and Lindsey made us yummy spaghetti and funfetti cake.

After dinner we had "team time," which was a chance for all of us to share how we are feeling about our first day at the orphanage tomorrow. We all feel like tomorrow is really our first day on the mission field, and have a range of emotions. We're feeling excited, nervous, anxious, and ready to begin what we came here to do. Personally, I feel like each and everyone one of us are part of this team for a reason, and there is something BIG in store for each one of us individually and as a team. We can't wait to get to Robin's Nest tomorrow and spend the rest of the week there!

It hasn't even been 2 days and already this trip has been different than I imagined it would be! We are all so excited to be here and look forward to the coming weeks. Thank you so much for all of your prayers and encouragement, we look forward to reading your comments every day! We love and miss all of you and hope you had a wonderful mothers day, we wish we could be there with you..well kinda...c'mon we are in Jamaica!!

P.S. - Happy mothers day to my Mom, I love you so much!!!!! (I love you too Dad and Ally, but it's Mothers Day)

P.S.S. - Warriors update please Joey (dictated by Lindsey and Garrett...hehe)!