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Thursday, March 31, 2011

Sad sad saying soon come

I can't even express the feelings we are having saying good bye to everyone.  So we actually were saying we will soon come. (thats the jamaican way)  we are moving this morning, so we will post pictures about our day soon.
When one door closes, God opens another!!!!!!!!!!  Praise him!!!!!
Blessings

Monday, March 28, 2011

I don't have a title for the very first time

For two days now I have been trying to decide how to write this.  Not an easy thing to write about.  But I will try, so here goes.
We came to Jamaica July 10,2010, we had a plan for the next year of our life.  But God had an entire diffferent plan for us.  We were so sure God wanted us to take care of two of the children from the orphanage and keep checking on all the other children.  Someone needed to be the childrens advocates.  We have done that, and have done it very well.  When leaving the orphanage, we had to find a place to live.  Some friends helped us and we were able to move right into a house very close to where we were living, which meant Anita and Felix were able to keep going to there same school.  The woman that owned the house rented it to us for a VERY good price, but it also meant we needed to ask for  support.  We knew in our hearts that we needed to keep doing what God was asking us to do, so we put the word out, and we were blessed with enough to stay there for a couple of months.  As time went on, we were feeling that we needed to be doing more then just soley taking care of the three kids and we were almost completely out of money.  We were offered the lodge up in McAlpine district with Jesus for Jamaica rent free.  What an answer to MANY prayers.  Even though we have rent taken care of, there is current, food, internet, phone, transportation, misc. stuff for doing our youth groups, and for the school.  And there are 6 people.  Thats a pretty big family to take care of.  We put the word out that we were in need for finacial help again and enough came in to get us another half of a month.  Well that half of a month has come and gone.  Being a missionary is hard work, and its 24 hours a day, 7 seven days a week.  You don't get days off, and you NEVER get alone time.  Then with a baby and two children I swear its double that.  LOL  It is the same as back home raising a family except you have an entire jamaican community of people that need us or want to just hang out, not to mention youth groups, and them wanting class every single night of the week.  And visitors ALOT.  It is just a completly different lifestyle from the mojority of the people reading this.  But Mark Jenni and I just LOVE it.  We LOVE it up here.  We feel we have been making an awesome impact on this community.  I know we have, because the people are telling us.  But without the support coming in, we can not stay here and continue.  As you know we are in the process of adopting Dontae, he is not ours legally as of yet, but if we were not here he would be in some home.  Felix is now living with his mother for the very first time.  We are sad that we are not taking him home with us, but we are just so excited that his mother has finally stepped up to the plate and Felix is sooooooooo happy.  Anita's adoption is going great, Anita and her new mom and dad are getting along wonderful, emailing back and forth and talking on the phone, so that is going in the right direction just how God planned it.  All the other kids are doing fantastic as well.  We just had Sabrina over for the last 5 nights.  Oh man she is  just beautiful and doing awesome.  But... we can't continue.  We don't feel comfortable anymore always having to say "its time again, we need money"  so a friend of our's here needs our help and in exchange we will get room and board.  We will NOT be doing mission work.  Her husband is terminally ill and she is so tired.  They own a bed and breakfast about an hour away from where we are now.  But this means we can not take Anita with us.  That was one of our major goals in all this.  She is becoming such a wonderful young lady, but we will no longer be in her school district.  So sad sad sad to say we will be saying goodbye for now to Miss Anita on thursday morning.  As we watch her get on the bus with her suitcases it is going to be extremly hard on all of us.  We fill like we have let her down.  So pray for us hard please, and please pray for Anita, that she can go into this new short chapter of her life and do just great, great until her new mother and father come and pick her up.  I am sad we will miss that day.  But we are sooo happy for Anita that she is getting a loving family that she has been waiting for her entire life.
So to all of you who have given to us finacially, Thank you so much, like we have said many many times, if it wasn't for you, there would be no way we could do what God called us to do.  We are still asking for your prayers while we go through the last three months of our year.  The next couple of days are going to be so hard for us.  Today was hard, and come thursday morning, it is going to bite!
So after these days go by, I will write about the next chapter in our journey.  Probably titled
"A man his wife a jamaican baby and Jenni"    LOLOLOL
Blessings

Thursday, March 24, 2011

BEFORE AND AFTERS

Well we worked very very hard long after Solomon was done with his part.  We are soooo very proud of the grounds here.  Every single day there are more and more people that stop by to tell us how beautiful it is.  They come up to us while we are working and they stop us when they are walking by.  When I was cleaning the inside of the canteen the other day a gentleman came up to me and said "In all the years this place has been here, I have never seen it look so fantastic."  It is a comment like that from the community that makes it all worth while.  Just the simple fact that they are enjoying just looking.  So enjoy the pictures.  :-)
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE
AFTER
BEFORE












AFTER




















MORE BEFORE AND AFTERS

BEFORE
AFTER




BEFORE
AFTER



TA DA

BEAUTIFUL OR WHAT?
THIS IS RIGHT BEHIND OUR HOUSE,  MARK IS GOING TO PLANT BANANA TREES IN HERE

There are so many other pictures I could post, but for some reason, it is not working so hot.  The after pictures of the canteen will come soon. Blessings

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

A time of need

Yesterday seemed to be a day where we were visited by many needs. A woman we know from Petersville came all the way up here to tell us what a terrible time her and her family are having right now. She walked up our hill because she didn't have the money to pay for the ride ( about 85 cents US). Her leg was killing her by the time she got here and she cried as she told me all of what her family is going through. She said we were her last hope, but as we are also low on funds, all I could really do for her was give her a bag full of food and a few hundred dollars Jamaican, so she could get a ride down the hill and a taxi home.. We have had her in our prayers and on the sponsorship portion of our blog, but nothing seems to be working out for them. Her oldest daughter is starting to stray in the evenings and her husband has been diagnosed with skin cancer.
Mark and Jenni ran into town in the morning and , as usual, wound up buying some rice and corned beef for a homeless man we know there. Later that afternoon our friend Michelle came by. She's mentally handicapped, and so are her two sons, and she comes by almost daily to see us and especially Dontea. She just LOVES the baby and could spend hours playing with him. She often times helps us by shelling peas or emptying our trash, picking up Dontae's toys etc. I don't know how she manages to feed the boys, or send her youngest one to school, but we are always able to bless her with some rice or cooking oil or laundry soap. This time we were able to send her home with some Ackee and fruit that someone had brought us.
There is also a man here who they call one eye, because one of his eyes is gone.  He is either drunk or drunker most of his days, and he tries to make money by selling fruit, but I am sure he steals the fruit.  Anyway he came by today as well in need of food, so again the rice was pulled out and we gave him some.
It is so wonderful to live up here amongst all the Jamaicans, but its also VERY hard when the need is so great.    
We want to help them as much as we can, but we don't have much to give, so I feel sad.  There are people with headaches, and foot problems and leg problems and stomach problems, that are meds we brought for our own use are starting to get depleted.  We have good friends that say that they are giving till it hurts.  And so this is something that we have taken on as well.  We are not giving foolishly, but we are giving, and now it IS till it hurts.  It does hurt, but it also feels GREAT.  Thank you to everyone that has sponsored us to be able to help and do for these people that need it so greatly.  All our love
Blessings
PS.  Say a prayer for Anita and Sabrina, they do their GSATS this week starting thursday.  Sabrina will be staying with us for a few days while she goes back to school with Anita and take their tests.  Anita rocks at studying.  So I pray that Sabrina has been doing the same.

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Felix/Comments

I am sure some of you have been wondering about Felix.  We thought we would be bringing home Felix with us, but God had a different plan.  Felix's mom Tenelle has four children, three girls and Felix.  Two of the girls and Felix used to live at MFH, but Tenelle took the two girls out due to some problems.  Those two girls went to live with there fathers mother.  The other girl has always lived with Tenelle's mother.  Long time ago we were talking to Tenelle in hopes that she would take Felix with her (this is where he wants to be)  but she would always say no she can't take him, he would have to live with the other two girls.  So the plan was for us to take him to the States.
  Getting things together for that to happen things just didn't go as smooth as we would of thought.  So in talking with Tenelle, we decided it was best all around for Felix to stay in Jamaica.  And God decided that Felix needed his mother, and his  mother needed him, because now Felix is living with his MOM.  YIPPPEEEE!!!!!  very sad for us, but we are so happy for them.

COMMENTS:  Hardly anyone ever leaves a comment, how are we supposed to know if you even like what you are reading.  Is there something you would like to know that we are not posting?  If  you are having fun reading our blog everyday and look forward to it, that is how we feel when we go to our blog to see what people have to say.  It is so disappointing when the comment reads  zero.  Help us out here. LOL
Blessings

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Different things

First I am going to post this darling picture of Jenni, but the thing is she is to darling for her own good.  She could be married 150 times over living here. LOL  Anyone who knows Jenni, the way to her heart is one FINE body (on the boy that is lol) and CHOCOLATE......  But in Jamaica, when they bring her gifts, they bring her Ackee (Jamaicans national fruit) Breadfruit, mango, papaya and many many other foods.  Yesterday, the motorcycle guy came up called Jenni from outside and said that the Rasta dude sent this to her, she came in curious to see what was in the bag,  she kinda jumped when she looked in and saw a zillion eyes looking back at her.  LOLOL  Fish fish and more fish.  One thing about having a cute girl around, we sure get fed good.   LOLOL  JK.  So here is a picture of Jenni cleaning the ackee she got for a gift.  You have to take the pit out and clean around it, she fried it  up with onion and cabbage. Pretty cool huh?  Now onto the bad parent award.  I almost didn't want to show you.  I have never ever had this happen to me before.  But Markie said his mom would appreciate it because when he was little she was baking and took the cookie sheet out of the oven and turned around just in time to touch it on the corner of his eye, burnt the cornea off.  I now know what it feels like Pat and its not a good feeling.  Actually its probably the worst feeling ever.  I was making dinner and I opened the oven door, I always look for Dontate, but for some reason this time I didn't and he tried to pull  himself up on the oven door.  I grabed him and handed him to Jenni immediatly while quickly graped the aloe vera.  I squirted it on a plate and layed both hands and arms in it.  He quieted down right away, so we just kept adding more and more.  Aloe vera is a wonderful thing.  Because when you see this burn, you will know the pain that would be involed.  All his skin was rolled back and had to be taken off .  It was awful.  But he is doing great.  We are taking him in to the Dr. today just to make sure we are doing everything right.  What a scare I tell ya. 

he is doing great!




Sunday, March 13, 2011

Cleanliness is next to Godliness...


In the last blog I told you that we hired Soloman to do weed wacking and machete work for us up here on all this land that Jesus for Jamaica has.  He has worked 4 days so far and is coming back on Monday to finish up his work.  He told us that this is the biggest job he has ever done alone.  But he is very proud of what he has done and so are we.  It is beginning to look AMAZING....  So we are going to post some pictures of work in progress.  When all is said and done we will post the finish product.  This picture of the goat and the picture on the right shows what the property next to us and in front of the clinc looked like.  Next shows what its starting to look like..



This is the side of the clinic, as you can see this looked like the right side with a trail going up to the door, which is right around the corner. 

Now this is the side of the canteen (kitchen for the school)  You can see what he has done and what he hasn't.  Isn't it starting to just look great.  I am soooo excited for the kids to come to school on Monday and see what there school yard looks like.




These two pictures are on the other side of the canteen.



  We have a tarp that we load the piles on then we drag the tarp over to the burn pile.

This cute little building are the bathrooms...


The bathrooms are right there to the right of the picture, which is the basic school that Jesus for Jamaica built.  Well they actully built all the buildings I am showing you.





This is the front of the school, and you can't see very well, but the piles are filled with garbage.  Actually I have never seen so much garbage everywhere, and deep into the soil..




Now you are looking at part of the front lawn to the school.  This doesn't show how big the front lawn is, but its perfect for the children to play on.

Mr. Mark is hard at work.  Do you see that faint look of smoke?  Well that is because somehow the fire jumped about 10ft. from the picture below and started a fire.  We got it out.  PTL

This is one of our two burn piles.  Solomon did all the cutting and then we raked and raked and raked.  I have counted 166 piles so far and Solomon has one more day. Holy buckets mon!  This will now become the schools new burn pile.  Where they used to burn there garbage it was right next close to the water pipe which is pvc.  The pipe was burned already but never went all the way through.  So now the problem is solved, plus its hidden
Here is the other burn pile.  We have to burn our garbage so this is where we do it. Everything sitting there needs to be burned on that little burn pile. This pile is right behind our home.







SOLOMON

So now lets take a look of what Jenni and Anita have been doing while Mark raked and burned and burned and raked.

These are pictures of the canteen. This is where the cooking goes on and where the children eat there lunch. It just isn't cheery at all. Its a pretty cute building except for that. So we decided to cheer it up some.




 Those are the screens Mark built.

Check it out!!!  Is this cheery or what?  And the exciting thing is the teacher Miss Donna and the children don't know what we are doing.  Oh boy are they going to be excited when they get to school on Monday.  I hope they like it.
The two best girls ever....This is the only picture you get to see right now. The painting is done but we need to gussy it all up for you to see the finished product.
I hope you enjoyed seeing what we have been doing up here and there will be more to come.
Blessings

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Donations/much more

I hate to bring it up again, but we are down to our last $200.00.  This of course will not last us much longer, espically when there are five of us.  So we desperately need your finacial help immediatly.  You can donate by paypal right here or you can give your donation to my daughters and they can put it in our account. Thank you so much for supporting us.

Just a couple pictures of the birthday boy and his cake.

After Anita stuck his hands in his cake. 

Dontae's big boy car.  We will see how long it takes for him to
actually scoot around on it.

So as I have said in the past blogs, we have Solomon here working his butt off.  He is one of the best Jamaican workers we have seen.  Right up there with Marlon and Donnaree.  Everyone up here in the community have been going up to him and telling him the school and everything he is doing has NEVER looked so good.  So here is Solomon, which of course he told me to tell everyone hello and God Bless.Man he is Awesome.

u jAnd this one Anita, will NEVER let us take a picture.  So I am  posting this one so you know she is really alive and kicking.   LOLOL
Felix is still at his mom's since there is no school this week.  Jenni is still being sarcastic girl!  lol  I think she has perfected this role.  LOL
Any hoo, we are all having a good time.  And you just wait till I post the pictures
of the grounds,  Oh and the painting on the canteen is going to be done today. Blessings

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A birthday and more that went wrong

Today is Dontae's first birthday, well I thought it was.  It started out such a good day, so excited to say Happy Birthday to him as soon as he woke up.  Taking pictures all day with only his diaper on.  I never did dress him cause today was a hot one.   In between playing with him, Mark and I were working out in the yard.  I came in to get a drink and Anita asked me how much he weighed when he was born, I told her I didn't know and I didn't think it was on his birth certificate but I would check.  So I am checking for his weight, (which is not on there) and to my amazement I see Dontae was born on the 8th.  Today is the flipping 9th.  Now I start to feel bad, I didn't dress him today, I didn't want to spend money on wrapping paper so I didn't wrap his presents, I didn't have a big party, the happy birthday sign I bought only because Mark and Felix's are this month as well, but I forgot to hang it it,  and I didn't decorate a cake, plus the cake and frosting was PINK..... (what was I thinking, other then I wanted to eat a cherry chip cake with cherry frosting)  I didn't really think about the fact when he is 20 and looks back, he is going to hate me.  I beat myself up for awhile but finally got over it, well as much as a mother can.
Last year when our youth group came to Jamaica on a mission trip we built a house for Solomon.  He was  not a Christian then but after our team leaving he gave himself to the Lord.  Well we hired him to come and weed whack for us everywhere for us.  Oh My Goodness it is looking fantastic, he has been here for two days and is coming tomorrow too.  So Mark and I were raking everything into piles and then taking it to the burn pile.  Until the neighbor very nicely yelled over to me that I was smoking out her laundry. For heaven sake, why in the world did I not know what I was doing.  I felt so bad.
We got water today ON and OFF, mostly off.  It is on now just in time for me to take a shower, after three days with out one and working in the yard all day, we needed it.  So I step in turn on the water, and
 wait for it..........NO WATER LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL Thank God I can laugh..
And now as I write on my blog nice and clean from water out of a jug and a cup.  I need to ask for donations,
we are getting extremely low.  If you could help us through our last four months it would mean so much. Or maybe you could do some sort of a fundraiser for us in the States, or maybe give up a dollar everyday for lent,  Its not food but we would buy food.   LOL  Please pray about it.
Blessings

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Time flies sometimes....

Sorry its been so long since we wrote on here.  So lets catch you up.
The goat died.  :-(    I was hoping to see this guy up and running after his leg healed, but it didn't happen. 
We have been without water again for a few days and poor Mr. Mark is completely out of clothes.  Youth group was last night for the little kids and no one showed up....  :-( apparently there was a party somewhere.  So that was disapointing.
Ok all that was a downer   lolol  lets move on to bigger and better things   :-)
Since someone asked about Felix and Anita but couldn't leave their name, I find that strange and kinda stockish,  but to each his own.
Felix is with his family visiting this week, so he is with his sisters, mom and grandmothers just having a ball I'm sure. Anita has slimmed down a bit, not that she was overweight at all, but her clothes must of started fitting different.  So she is just darling as usual.  Her attitude has been amazing.  Her new mom and dad will be so blessed when she gets to move in with them. 
We are picking up the last of the supplies today that the school canteen will need to start cooking lunch for the children.  We are also pricing out supplies for when our team gets here. 
Oh, Dontae will be ONE tomorrow.  Is that amazing or what?
Blessings

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Stuff/Things/and more stuff

First and foremost a woman in the States made some beautiful tablecloths to give to some of the women up on our mountain. Miss Linda asked us to take a picture so this wonderful lady can see who one of them went too.  We went over to Michelle's house to take the picture and she ran inside her home and out she came with it and held it up to get her picture taken. LOL We were not sure if she just didn't want us to come in, or she was just to darn excited to think about what she was doing. I will tell you this though, she has come over the last three days asking if we had posted her picture, and wanted to know what Miss Linda thought. Speaking of Michelle, she has special needs and so does both her sons. The older one is quite severe but the youngest Kemy is not so bad. He is 15 and can go to a regular school. That is if there is money for him to go. He can only go once in awhile, which is so sad because he is the only one in the family that could maybe do something with his life. So if there is someone out there reading this that would like to sponsor Kemy so he can go to school every day. We can make that happen. This would be an amazing blessing for this family.

 Ok, lets see what else has been going on. Dontae will be one years old on March 9th. Can you say "Cake" we love birthdays round here because we get cake. LOL Felix will be 7 March 26th "cake"

Mr. Mark will be 52 on March 20th "cake" LOLOLOL can you say "fat" LOL I think maybe we will combine Mark and Felix that way we can still have two cakes. LOL




BTW..... Does this blog maybe look a little better then the rest?  I think I am starting to get the hang of it.  Only took me 2 hours.



Well its time again to ask for donations, our funds are starting to get low. We are on our last few months here, and I really can't believe it. July 8th. will be here in a snap. We are still praying and praying and praying for an answer if God would like us to come back and be Island Directors of Jesus for Jamaica. This is an amazing opportunity for us to do what we love, host teams, do youth groups, get the clinic up and running for Dr.s and Dentists to come and volunteer, work the school, work with the church, have interns and on and on and on. This list is crazy. But the cool thing is its all for God, I can't tell you how rewarding that is.

The people up here just rock and the view isn't bad either. :-) So pray for us, pray for clarity please.

Remember I told you that we have kids on our front porch all the time? LOL Is this cute or what?
Everyday is a new adventure.









Look at this poor guy right outside our door. He didn't look so good a few minutes before this picture. A neighbor man came over and told Mr. Mark that he needed his help, his goat had broke his leg. Well it was really broke, just kinda hanging there and bleeding. Mark remembered that he had seen casting tape up at the clinic, so he casted the goats leg. Mr. Mark is no Dr. but he sure was today. Please pray that this little guys leg will heal properly.

Like I said..... Always an adventure.
Blessings