JESUS IS 'DA WINNA' MON!!

So, we flew into Kingston Saturday afternoon and took a two hour bus ride into the mountains toward Mandeville. The YWAM base was actually about half an hour outside of Mandeville--deep in the country on the top of a mountain. From the sign, the base was about half a mile around the mountain. It was, as predicted, warm during the days and cold at night (43degrees without heat). It was a really wonderful place, though, and the staff there were extremely good hosts. Mrs. Simmons (below) was our host the whole time and went with us around the area when we went out.

The sunrises were beautiful and from the highest point on the base you could see the coast several miles away.Parts of the base were still showing evidence of Hurricane Ivan five years ago. The roof of the chapel (top right building with the sun peeking out) hit the building in the foreground, which is the cafeteria and storage rooms, and slammed into the great house (just behind me when I took the picture) taking out a whole room and part of the roof. The far building is the dormitories.Another shot of the dorms...The staff team that helped lead the team was (from left to right) William Draper, Brantley Murray, Caren Dilts, myself, and Jason Dixon.

This is a picture that Rebecca took of me talking with some of the missionaries there. Dave and Deb were the couple that hosted us when we came in December.At one point the team took a picture inside the chapel on the base. We did all of our evening intercession sets in the chapel, and I was really encouraged by the excitement of the freshmen in prayer and worship and the depth of their maturity as they served.

Our days started at 6:30 with breakfast and we left the base to do devotions in three of the area schools about 7:45--music, storybooks, skits, and a short teaching. After devotions, we worked for three days on three different projects. We did some scraping and painting on the base (I scraped paint all day the first day); we poured a floor for an orphanage; we poured concrete for an outdoor area for a church (my second two days). The first picture is the line of gravel and sand that we toted by bucket-brigade from 50ft. up the hill toward the right. They mix the concrete by pouring the bags over the gravel/sand mixture and then mixing it with shovels and bucketed water. This is a picture of some of the guys mixing up the concrete. Once it was mixed, you filled up the buckets and then toted it around to pour it out where they were laying it out. REALLY hard work, but I was told that it would've taken the church over a year to do the work that our team was able to do in three days (because of material/labor cost and the number of people we were able to devote to the project). It was a great trip...It gets more and more difficult to leave the family, and I'm getting a little nervous about the two weeks in Zambia. The girls were really sick the first couple of days, so it was a bit hard being so far away when a lonely and exhausted Carolyn was trying to keep up with them. Mid-week was much better, though, when the girls started feeling better and the rest of the trip for me was really good. The big goals of the trip--community building with the freshmen, meeting some tangible needs for the community, and introducing first year students to missions--were more than met!