ACWR Touring Pictures

Monday Morning about 10 Chad, Kirk and I left for another ACWR Touring. Because of my responsibilities at the school this was the first one I was able to join them on. Our first stop was at the Jamaican Christian School for the Deaf. It was neat to see another deaf school on the island outside of CCCD. And its nice to meet people with the same goals and passions as you since we all work in deaf ministry.

Two Students at JCSD
Pre-primary students at JCSD
After we toured JCSD we then went to Blossom Garden a children's home in MoBay. It is one of two orphanages in MoBay that accepts kids 5 and under. I have been to this orphanage many times and it is one of my favorite places to serve. I love getting to hold the babies and spend time with all the kids there. Its never easy leaving but I praise God for each opportunity that I get to go and visit. They asked us not to take any pictures while we were there so we respected there wishes. Next we were off to Pastor Buckner's home to visit a while with him and his wife. While visiting the Buckner's I received a nice collection of bug bites all over my legs (15+ in about a 1/2 hour!)
Tuesday we got up and started making our rounds again we started off with Falmouth Infirmary (another place I have visited many times and just love!)
This Amazing Women was Boiling cloths at the infirmary to stop all spread of sickness

Chad lead devotions at the falmouth infirmary

Then we sang lots and lots of praises to our Great Lord. This man accompanied our singing with his harmonica (he did a great job too!)

We then drove to one of the primary schools we support, and it also happens to be the same primary school that Usian Bolt went to growing up. So the head mistress was more then ready to share Usian stories with us. (If you don't know Usian Bolt he just broke records in running in the 08 Olympics and brought a lot of pride to the country)

One of the class rooms at the primary school

After we toured the school some students came in and we all sang some songs together.
From the primary school it was decided that we should try a "short cut" through the bush of Jamaica to our next stop. So we gave it a try... and even though we asked just about every passer by if we were going the right way... and even though we made a few wrong turns.. we got to see some of God's beautiful creation!

Our road through the bush of Jamaica

Our road becoming a little wet but we still made it through (3 or 4 times trying to find the right road:))

Then at times our roads became like this... I don't know that you could even call this a road any more it looks like a creek to me... This one we didn't try to go through because we couldn't see an end to it.
Once we finally made it back to civilization again Chad called Mr. Jones ( who we were supposed to be meeting so he could show us how to get to our last stop) and he kept saying meet me at the sign post office... Well we were so confused we were not sure if we were getting it right with the patois he was speaking so we were looking for a post office sign. When we asked him where this sign was Mr. Jones replied in St. James... well St. James is a Parish (county) and there are MANY towns in a parish so we were still completely lost. Thankfully as we drove by this Mr. Jones flagged us down.

The sign post office
Mr. Jones then lead us up the mountain to the Robins Nest. This is the 2nd orphanage in MoBay that accepts children 5 and younger. This children's home is owned and operated by an American women.

The view from Robin's Nest on top of the mountain.

This is Neil (one of the orphans) whom I instantly fell in love with and he clung to me the entire time. It broke my heart to have to leave him. We were both not very happy and crying when I had to go.

another little boy at the children's home.

I was blessed in so many ways through this trip and I praise God for each stop and opportunity that He gave me to learn and grow. Have a great day.

I love you.

Be blessed and be a blessing

Erin

ACWR Touring

I was reading in St. Luke before our touring and was reading about Jesus sending out the groups of 2 to go and preach. At one point Jesus says "Blessed are the eyes that see the things that you see.... for I tell you many desire to see the things you see and hear the things you hear."

And that's how I feel totally blessed to be the one who gets to go out and meet others serving, to meet God's people and learn there stories it's.... indescribable.

I have just spent the last hour plus putting all the pictures on from the tour and writing about our adventures and then using my HORRIBLE computer skills I went and deleted it all while I was trying to edit it. So... I will try again later. Have a great day.

I love you

Be blessed and be a blessing

Erin

Enjoying Fall in Jamaica

The great idea to have a wiener roast was brought up so that's what we attempted tonight. We picked a nice rainy night and so had to improvise cooking over a little grill instead of a camp fire.

But we all came together making all the must haves of a typical American wiener roast, hot dogs, baked beans, chips, pumpkin bars, then later smores and hot chocolate. What a great night full of fun and fellowship.

Sitting around after supper

Roasting Marshmellows

Sharing Smores

Drinking Hot Chocolate

Have a great week! I love you.

Blessings

Erin

Please Pray for My Family

As I sit here on my living room couch I have just finished talking with my family who sits up at the hospital with my Grandpa who is ready to go home to Jesus. I sit here and know that Jesus sits right beside me, and that I must sacrifice this for HIM. Its so hard to sit here while I know what is going on back home and that I cannot be there to join my family. Please keep them in your prayers as we go through this time Rejoicing with Grandpa that he soon gets to go to his heavenly home that he longs for, and for Comfort for my family as we must say goodbye (for a time) to someone whom we love very very much.

Blessings

Erin

A Beautiful Day & Pudding

On this Friday God has blessed me with a beautiful day and a class to teach on milk.

I try to get creative so I can do more then just stand and write notes about milk for them to copy. I get board of teaching it so I am sure they get bored of listening to it. On Wednesday I taught about the uses of milk, one of which was to make puddings. So today we made some Jello instant Pudding.Mmmm...
These kids are supposed to be learning the proper technique for restaurant cooking not just home in your kitchen cooking. So before we got started we had to go through all the proper procedures of washing our hands (some of them wanted to go to the dorm to clip finger nails too but I didn't have the time with them to go to that extreme), put on our aprons and cover our hair, clean all our surfaces, make sure we had all the proper ingredients (aka milk, and pudding mix... check!), and to make sure we had all the utensils it takes to make instant pudding.

The kids took it very seriously one reading the directions, one adding the mix, 3 each pouring in one cup of milk, and another whisking it together. They were happy to do something other then take notes and of course were more then ready to eat their creation after it had spent its 5 min. in the fridge. Happy Eating!

Have a great weekend

Be blessed and be a blessing

Erin

Good Afternoons

I love my afternoons. Keri goes down to the school now to work with one of our special needs kids and this gives me an opportunity to hang out with the boys for a little each day. Today the boys decided to...

fix my walls with shovels and sticks
we tried to catch a lizard but didn't succeed.

Truitt yelling CHEESE!

Then we finish our time with a service by Drew. He always starts off with Good Morning Everyone (and it could be morning noon or night) then asks us if we like to sing before starts his performance. Today's consisted of a song about how Drew loves to sing with a little David and Goliath, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Holy Holy Holy, and something about mountains all tied in. Great fun had by all.

Be blessed and be a blessing

Erin

The ABC's Revised

Yesterday as I was working with some of my speech therapy kids, I am trying to assess where each of them are academically, and with their speech. A simplistic way I test them academically is I have cards with the ABC's on them I mix them all up and then ask them to simply but them in order. Yesterday this is a revised version a 13 year old boy gave me:

ABCDEFGHILFKJRPOQNMSTUVXWZY

He then looked at me asked me if its right that he was finished. I honestly didn't know what to say. 13 and he didn't know his ABC's. Then my next challenge was an 18 year old boy whom I gave the same task to. He didn't mess up the ABC's to the extreme as my first kid but he really struggled with the letters between k-p! So as of now my goal by the end of the term is to teach all my kiddos the ABC's.

Here are so random pictures from today

The seat of choice for the kids is on the bucket of the tractor
Truitt playing with some of the boys after school

Game Time after school with the kids.

Have a great Day, I love you

Be blessed and be a blessing

Erin