ACWR tour

As an ACWR team, part of our job is to visit the many organizations that ACWR supports and to continually assess the needs around us. On Wednesday, we took our first leg of this tour. We started at New Beginnings International Training Center. This is a ministry to street boys. It is a small family oriented ministry that usually houses an average of 15 boys. They provide educational services and have an active agricultural program. The school is alive with vision but also is struggling through these difficult financial times. After leaving NBITC, we took a cross country route that led us to Maranatha Christian school for the deaf. This is a Mennonite based deaf school located in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica. It is a small school with about 22 students, but is located right in the heart of a large deaf community. We were excited to see the work going on at this school. Also, right next door to the school is a deaf church, one of 3 on the island. The church was built by the deaf and for the deaf. When this was being explained to us, the man who was telling us this was beaming with pride. It was moving to see his commitment to the church that they built. We were also able to take an older deaf friend of mine to his house and it was interesting to see how he lives. We hope to make several more trips around the island to continue the work of getting a temperature of the work going on here. It is a joy to see the passion for the Kingdom that is permeating this country and Lord Willing, this culture. You can see more pictures on our pictures page.

Help Me!

Here is a quick little video of Truitt in despair. With a small interruption from his brother, who is usually the antagonist, Truitt pleads for help. This has been a new tactic for T. that he uses daily as he finds himself in trouble. "Help Me" "Help Me" "Help Me"

Enjoy!

I wanna be like ......

Growing up, the mantra was "I wanna be like Mike." Now obviously time has passed and I am living in a different country, but boyhood aspirations are still strong. All of this week, I have been on what CCCD calls "administrator duty." This requires me to supervise dinner time and the play time after dinner. It was interesting this week as I was watching the kids it didnt take long for them to organize some races. These werent just any races, but these were races to determine who was most like Usain Bolt. So, the mantra has changed and Usain Bolt is the man every Jamaican boy wants to be. I quickly grabbed my phone and shot a quick video of one of the races. Enjoy!

Rain Rain

We are in the middle of rainy season and it has been rainy. We have gotten rain from Ike and it has been wet. In Jamaica, sometimes the roads get bad with the rain and today I was heading to the store and came upon some pretty deep water. About half way through I thought, I should be videoing this. I pulled out my phone and shot the video. Jamaicans love stories of stupid people thinking they can drive through water that is too deep and getting stuck, but our van pulled right through. Enjoy!

A Piece of Paradise

Having dove headlong into the blogosphere, I have noticed while perusing blogs that is is quite popular to have a weekly feature or some type of regular post with a slick title. Not wanting to be left behind as a second class blog, we decided to start a "probably not so regular" feature called "A Piece of Paradise." So here is our first installment.



Believe it or not, in paradise, food is not free. As a matter of fact, food not only costs money, but more often than not, it costs alot of money. With a couple of growing boys, we have deemed milk a necessity. Since arriving, we have been consuming milk, albeit conservatively, for breakfast, snacks, and for the boys meals. The grocery store generally gives us two choices. Powdered milk costs around $4 a gallon. The price of real milk is about $136 for 1 Liter. With about a 70:1 exchange rate, you math people will quickly calculate that into over $7 US a gallon. So, as you take your next gulp of the smooth white milk from your prarie farms jug, think of us in paradise.

Welcome Back Students!

Yesterday was the first official day back to school. The kids started arriving back on Monday and are still trickling in(some may not arrive till middle of the school year!). It's great to have life and energy back on campus. They give us a new energy as well! Drew is doing well getting involved after school. He enjoys going to the Library with the kids or doing outside activities. Our youngest student this year is a 4 y/o girl named Paris. It's exciting to see Drew try to communicate and interact with her as she is also a beginner at signing.
This morning we experienced some effects from tropical storm Hanna. This is a bit north of us. We are carefully following the lineup of storms behind Hanna.

3 Years Ago Today

3 Years ago tonight our little Drew was born. Wow! Yes I am going to say it again. Time Flies! Keri and I were reflecting the other night and were praising the Lord for His faithfulness. We have been given the encouragement so many times to cherish the moments because they go so fast. This is one of those times that we were assessing how we were doing. We both agreed that we can never cherish the moments to their fullest because we are so limited, but at the same time we rejoice at the moments we have shared in Drew's life. While it is going fast, by God's grace we feel like we are trying to capture them, cherish them, and give them back to Him in praise. We anticipate continued growth in this area and we pray that we can do the same with little Truitt. Drew is becoming quite the little man and we are so proud of him.

Happy Birthday Drew!!!!