On tap for tomorrow

Moms and Dads - some information for what is necessary for tomorrow morning (Sunday)

We have asked the team to each identify a photo and to tell a bit of a story around it during our service in the morning.

Part of your time Saturday evening, you can encourage your kiddo to write their story out on paper, and that will help you gain a bit of insight into their experience. Please have them read what they have written to you twice out loud, as they will have a microphone in their hand on Sunday morning while they do that.

Our flights are on Continental today - #863 to Houston, and #1779 to San Antonio, arriving at 6:44 pm.

http://flightview.com/ is a great tool to track flights!

We look forward to seeing you all at the baggage claim in Terminal 2 this evening to pick up your kiddo and take them home!

Thanks again for the opportunity to take your student on this experience. God has done some amazing things through these kids, and also in their hearts as well!

Live To Tell,
Adam J

The last night on the Island

So, it's really late. We just got done doing one of my favorite small group / church group times - called an appreciation check. Some of my older students know it as the snot and tears club. For me, it is special because it incorporates being the body of Christ that we are called to love one another. An appreciation check is where we focus on an individual in the group, and everyone else gets to tell that one person what they appreciate about them. We went for about 2.5 hours in our group tonight, expressing to each of the 13 people on our team what we have appreciated about them this week and in our own relationship with them.

I have to tell you, for the last day, of the last week of my time at Cibolo Creek Community Church, I couldn't imagine a greater way to spend my time in ministry. This has been a true delight, and a memory that I will cherish for a very long time!

We look forward to getting on a plane tomorrow. We will write more, and tell more about Dunn's River Falls, the beach, long bus rides to and fro, and our shopping excursion to the Hip Strip of downtown Montego Bay. We had a great day, and we are ready for our families to come and join us here in Jamaica, because not a single one of us is ready to go home. Hope you all like sleeping on air mattresses in one big open room!

Live to Tell,
Adam J

Helping answering the question...

One of the hardest things to deal with upon returning from a cross cultural missions trip is trying to share the immense amounts of stories and experiences with people back home. Typically, an interaction with a parent, a friend, or an acquaintance usually starts something like this: "So, how was your trip?" What an incredibly difficult question to respond to, because it almost dictates a one word response.

So, below, we have given you an entire list of questions to help our team, and to help you, better process and digest our trip. As a matter of fact, this will be the list of questions that our team will sit down with on Monday evening and work through as we debrief our trip and talk about the ways that God was working in us and through us on this journey!

Enjoy!

• Think of a Jamaican that made an impression on you and tell why.
• Tell about something funny that happened to you on your trip.
• Share about something that was hard for you and how you dealt with it.
• Share an illustration of God moving on your trip.
• Share 2 ways that you personally can keep ministering after your time in Jamaica.
• Share one thing you learned while on your missions trip.
• Share something that the Next Step staff said or did that made an impression on you.
• Share something about the Next Step staff.
• What was a typical daily schedule?
• Tell us what you did with your free time or recreation.
• What was your favorite meal? Share something that happened during that meal.
• Tell something about living in Jamaica that was difficult for you and how you dealt with it.
• Share one thing about the culture and how it impacted your life.
• Think of a couple of feeling you felt being new to the Jamaican culture. Think of 2 ways how minorities who attend your church may feel.
• Share how this trip has changed your view of the world.
• Name three things in the Jamaican culture that you experienced that was different than your own.
• Complete the sentence; “For me, Jamaica means…”
• Complete the sentence: “The things that I’ll miss most from my time on this trip are…”
• Share how this trip affected your relationship at home.
• What is the hardest thing you face now that you are back home?
• In what ways did your experience in Jamaica change how you relate to your friends who didn’t go?
• What is some attitude or behavior you thought of while in Jamaica that you want to start or stop doing now that you are back home? How are you going to carry through with it?
• Complete the sentence: “My hardest thing upon returning was…”
• Some people may think of your experience as a vacation or a neat trip. What would you say to help them understand it was more than that?
• In what ways did working at your ministry site strengthen your direction for the future or change it?
• In what ways has your walk with the Lord deepened?
• Share a story that illustrates God showing love through you to a Jamaican
• What did you learn about God and His character through your experience?
• Name 3 ways that the Lord ministered through your outreach and give and illustration for each.
• Name something that happened that you didn’t expect to happen.
• What did God teach you in relation to ministering the gospel to others.
• Name one area in your life that was benefited by going to Jamaica.
• Describe one that that has been difficult.
• Would you like to spend more time ministering in Jamaica? Why or why not?
• What is something that didn’t happen that you expected to happen?
• In what ways can you apply what you did in Jamaica to your lifestyle back home?
• What was difficult for you during this trip and how did you deal with it or are dealing with it?
• What was the most exciting thing that happened?
• Have you be frustrated at the lack of interest from others toward reaching the world? If so, what do you think you can do to help them be more involved?
• What issues are you now facing that seem difficult to handle?
• What you do differently if you were able to participate in this trip again?
• What was most important about this trip?

Thoughts from the last day of work projects

Thoughts of today...

1) We were able to work together as an entire team for the first time this week. While the other church group is small, we have all fit into teams of 6 or 7, and rotated around the 3 different work projects. It was neat to have our entire group together, see everyone in action, and be able to accomplish the same task.

2) I can't tell you how breath taking the views of the ocean are around here.

3) I have a visual in my head for the lyrics of the song "How He Loves" - there is a small palm tree in the planter above our pool that I will remember when I sing "loves like a hurricane, I am a tree, bending beneath, the weight and wind of his mercy"

4) Learning about culture is a beautiful thing - I have been asking about different Jamaican words and phrases we should know. Today was "mahbeli berollin." If you lengthen it out, and slowed it down, you would hear "my belly be rolling", or "I'm so hungry, my stomach is growling." Trust me, that hasn't been much of an issue with Ms. Pattie and Carrie running the kitchen - we have eaten well this week. Mon, for real!

5) I am with a great team. I am so very grateful for Carrie, Pattie and Les. They are so encouraging with their words and actions. They love so specifically in the lives of these students. They set a tremendous example of a life of faith. Our students have been wonderful as well. It is really neat to see them encourage one another on the work sites, play with one another back at the villas, and sit into their own personal moments of writing in journals or connect with God in other ways. Amazing!

6) I miss my family something fierce, but I am encouraged that my boys are so very close to being of an age that they can participate in youth ministry events like this. I had a mental journey of what that might look like in the future; the entire Jacobus family pulling out their passports to travel the world and serve in settings like here in Jamaica, or at the Ministry of Mercy orphanage in Otutulu, Nigeria. I can't tell you how excited I get thinking about the possibilities!

7) This has been the best possible last week of serving the student ministry of Cibolo Creek Community Church. Taking students on a cross cultural ministry experience is something I started dreaming about when we first started considering joining C4 in the first place. I told our team tonight that I couldn't have scripted this week to be any better. Location, team, missions group, weather, food, group dynamics, programming, the whole 9 yards.

8) Stepping outside of your comfort zone does wonders for your soul. Yesterday we met Rasta, today we were privileged to work with him again. As we were wrapping up and ready to load the bus, we asked if he would join us for a group photo, but to do so with his hat off to show us his 25 year old dreadlocks. Wow!! They hit the ground - that is how long they are. It was a beautiful thing!

9) The Next Step team has been great in every way. If you are considering taking students on a missions trip - Next Step has got it going on. I have already been dreaming about taking students from Nebraska to the Pine Ridge, South Dakota site in the future! It doesn't hurt that the team lead, Liz, is from my home town of Madison. We have had great fun talking about Green Bay Packers football, and all the special Mad-city features we both miss! Hello, University of Wisconsin Babcock Hall Ice cream! Yum!

10) I should probably stop here and go and get some sleep for the night. Thank you parents, for trusting us with your kid this week. They have been great, they have been challenged and stretched, and I couldn't be prouder of them.

Be sure to see the next post of how to welcome back your kiddo, and how to help understand their story a better by the questions that you ask of them!

Live To Tell,
Adam J

Meet Rasta

You can't help when thinking about Jamaica and its culture to bring an image to mind of a Rastafarian. Dreadlocks, relaxed fit clothing, slouching gait, shoulders dipping and swaying to a beat somewhere in their inner mind. Well, we met Rasta on our worksite today, and we enjoyed every moment with him! Rasta turns 50 years old next month, but the strength and stamina in him is far greater than any 5 people from our worksite today!

He has hired himself out to Next Step over the past few nights to watch over the storage shed that has been built on the property. It was hoped that all of the tools and materials left over at the end of the summer could be stored in this box over the winter, but when the team got to the site on Tuesday, 1 wall of the shed had been dismantled and stolen!! It was then that Rasta was contacted and hired as the night watchman. Turns out, he is a pretty handy and worthy day laborer as well! He picked up a shovel, and almost single handedly shoveled a half of a 30 cubic yard pile of sand down the chute to the lowest level of the excavation site. He simply would not stop or slow down. Even when we all took a break for lunch, he shoveled a 4 ft high pile of sand from the diminishing pile to the front of the chute so that it would be ready for us when we returned! (You can see other pictures of our day here!)

As I admired his beard and matted dreadlock soul patch, I asked him how long it would take me to grow mine out. The good news is, only 4.75 more years to make it look like his. The bad news, ain't no way my wife is gonna go for that one! His hair, which we didn't see, has been growing for 25 years without being cut. Rasta told us that it would drop down to his ankles if he took it out of his big hat. I guess that is one way of doing hair!!

Group 2 went to Lilliput and worked at cutting and putting up ceiling forms for the concrete roof that will be poured soon enough for Rohan and Karen's home. Rohan was enjoying his new boots complete with SOCKS this morning - also out-working our crew by carrying much wood up his steep path to his house for the framing process.

Next Step has put together a video drama series that they are showing parts of during each night. It is really well done, and for me, lets me catch a glimpse of my old home town of Madison. You can find their videos here. I won't cheat and look ahead, but it is exciting to see the journey of these characters unfold.

Tonight was a powerful lesson to our team, as we looked at the example of Christ's love for his disciples in John 13 - where he took the position of servant to wash their feet. We were able to replicate that experience by washing each other's feet around the pool, while the rest of the group prayed over the person who's feet were being washed. It was a griping experience of love and affirmation for and from our teams, and will be a significant memory for me as well as many of our students here.

We are excited about getting out for our last day on the work site. I believe that our 2 groups will be put together on the same sites tomorrow, as we hope to finish moving the sand pile at Bogue, and then do some concrete mixing and pour the bond beam at the house in Providence. Continue to pray for health, rest and good attitudes with our students!!

Live To Tell,
Adam J