Montego Bay - Wednesday

In the morning we went to Blessed Assurance, which was a facility for disabled orphans. I walked in expecting for it to be demanding emotionally, but I didn't really know how hard it really would be for me. There were about 25 kids gathered in a little open-air room for our show that looked like a play room, but as almost all of them were in wheelchairs, I'm not sure that they necessarily did much playing. Since they were all mentally disabled, we were only going to do puppets and a few songs - nothing too strenuous that would overload the senses - not to mention, they likely wouldn't understand the dramas anyway. We were only there for an hour. For the first 20 minutes we just milled around and talked to different kids, but as the puppets were starting though, I walked over to a sofa and sat down by a little girl who seemed very feisty. She hit one of the girls next to her, so I took her in my lap and tried to calm her down and keep her from fighting. Her feet were twisted in such a way that she would likely never walk. One of her eyes was half shut. She couldn't talk at all, just make animal-like sounds. I asked one of her care-givers her name, and I was told that it was Carime. To me she looked to be about 4 or 5 years old. For the next 40 minutes I sat with Carime in my lap, scratching her back and dancing her hands in time to the music. She couldn't really say anything, but I noticed that as I scratched her back she scratched my thumb - I think she really needed the one-on-one, tangible attention. While the music was playing, she hummed in the back of her throat, trying to sing along. Then too soon it was time to go, and I had to set her back down on the sofa and walk away. She wasn't upset, and I didn't think I was either, until I got to the bus and just sort of broke down. I kept thinking to myself, "Who's going to hold her now?" Like Blossom Gardens, I'm sure that the kids probably don't get nearly as much one-on-one time as they need. Then I thought, "What happens when she grows up?" Being mentally disabled, would she go to a place like the Port Antonio Infirmary? Alex told us all about the little boy she was with, how even though he was mentally handicapped, he kept bringing her head down to his feet and saying, "Walk." He just wanted to walk. We were all sad to leave, because even though we had made their whole day exciting, we couldn't fix them. Tom brought up a good point. He said, "I hope you all look at sin differently. I hope you hate it." The existence of sin is what gives those kids their disabilities. But someday they will be whole.

After that we went straight to our next show at a school. None of us felt much like getting into it, but we set our feelings aside and left the bus to share Jesus with those kids. It was very windy there, being in the corner of the island with three sides to the sea. Kellie and I agreed that it was a bad day for wearing twirly skirts. Those kids really got into it - they were comparable to the kids at Bound Brook. After the show when we were back on the bus, Roger came in and told us that one of the teachers had recently had a house fire and lost everything. He checked it out with our YFC worker and the principal and it was legitimate. So we took up a collection to give to her and prayed over it.

For lunch we went to Wendy's because we were sick of chicken and wanted burgers. When we got there, our cashier advised us before we ordered that they were out of beef! So we all got chicken. Later, Amy was talking with some of the other interns from other group and told them our incredulous story about Wendy's running out of beef. One of the other interns, Chris, just started chuckling and said, "You want to know why they were out of beef? Because our group got there first!" They had completely cleaned Wendy's out of beef.

For our last show we were in front of a store. Our band was stuffed into the pit-like entryway, and we stood on the side of the road. We had a decent-sized crowd, and people were really listening. After the show Will and I went out and talked to people. The first was an 18 year old guy named Theodore. He mainly wanted prayer for a job. We tlaked about the Gospel but he wasn't really ready to jump all the way in. Next we talked to a young woman whose name I can't remember. She had to leave before we could really get into a good conversation though. She seemed sort of unsure about what she really believed. She said that she was a Christian, but then she when we asked she said that she wasn't 100% sure that she was going to heaven. Next we talked to Jonah, who sat on his fence and mostly talked about his theories. He didn't really want the truth. Before we could wrap up we had to leave. We heard some other cool stories about people who did get saved on the bus.

That night, we talked about our highs and lows, and then since it was our last night we also had to say what our victory for the week was. Some people said that it was leading someone to Christ for the first time. Some people said that it was being more bold and having experience witnessing. A lot of people, though, including myself, said that their victory was getting to experience the power of prayer and learning to put more complete dependence on God. He stopped the rain for our show, and he provided sound equipment for us. We had, literally, exactly what we needed. It was a truly phenomenal week.