This is KK. She is one of the amazing children at The Salvation Army School for the Blind in Kingston, Jamaica. She loves to go down the bumpy slide. Really loves to. My third day in Kingston, I counted 32 times that she slid to the bottom, I caught her, we cheered, and I held her hand until she could locate and climb the playground stairs back to the top by herself.
This is Sanjay. He is 17, loves literature, Jesus, and the performing arts. I am convinced he is a genius, and has caused me to regret that I never picked up a musical instrument during my youth.
I spent the first eleven days of June in Kingston supporting my staff of four as they launched their first Adventures Youth group for the summer. They will spend June and July facilitating youth groups from across the U.S. on short-term mission trips at the Salvation Army base and throughout the Kingston area. KK and Sanjay are just two of about 80 students from across Jamaica boarding at the Salvation Army until July when they will go home to spend summer break with their family. My staff; Greg, Katie, Jordan and Jesse have already pioneered some amazing relationships with the students on site. It was an awesome week observing them in their new home for summer, watching the way they patiently and lovingly interacted with the students, and our AY participants.
The students at the School for the Blind are elated about a stream of ‘white people’, as they affectionately call us, coming to play with them for a summer. While in the field, I am accustomed to my skin earning me new nicknames. Mazungu if in Africa, Gringo in Central America and the Caribbean, but Jamaica was the first of simply being the minority identified as ‘White people’. The children who are fully blind would ask most of us, usually while holding hands and walking across the campus, ‘Are these white people?,’. ‘Yes, we are white’, I would respond. I spent much of those eleven days pondering what our eyes see, how we respond to race, and why it mattered to these children that we are white missionaries.
Fun facts I learned while in Jamaica:
– The name Jamaica comes from a word of the Arawak Indians, ‘Xaymaca’, meaning land of wood and water.
– Every radio station does in fact play reggae music. All the time.
– English is the spoken language, but most locals speak Patois, a mix of English and African Creole.
– Dreadlocks are the norm.
– So is marijuana.
– Jamaica has more churches per square mile than any Christian country.
– White people just look stupid in cornrows. stop it.
We enjoyed closing our evenings with staff feedback and prayer on the playground.
Katie, Greg, Jesse and myself.
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