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

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

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

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

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