Trip Note--Jamaica 1/09

Jamaica, 1/25/09

Yes, I'm in Jamaica in January--sounds unjust, doesn't it. Sitting on the beach, drinking rum with little umbrellas in our glasses--no, not exactly. I'm here for a meeting with my global consultant colleagues in International Ministries, along with our Area Director Charles Jones. Every other year we hold our meeting in a different country where we are developing new mission partnerships. The Jamaican Baptist Union and International Ministries have established a mission partnership. My visit to Jamaica in May 2007 was the first project of that partnership in Jamaica. Our gathering here is building on that and exploring ways for further extension of our shared mission.

We've been getting tours related to Jamaican Baptist history and mission. We've also had special meetings. I met with pastors in a tough neighborhood of Kingston to talk about dealing with the systemic violence in their community (Jamaica has one of the highest murder rates in the Western Hemisphere). I'd met with these pastors before, and they wanted to continue to discussion and go further. So while my colleagues met with various pastors and church leaders in the fields to which they relate I ran a mini-seminar on doing assessment of oppressive situations and building strategies to undo some of the negative dynamics.

Then today (Sunday) I went back to Denham Town. Denham Town is another of the rough neighborhoods of Kingston. Four and five years ago they had what they call "the war" a turf battle between major political/community gangs that was half-way between US gang war and open urban armed combat. The roadblocks set up by men in the neighborhood that I remembered from 2007 were still there, just yards from the Denham Town Baptist Church (DTBC). A neighboring church that had been ransacked and burned to the ground in the war had been rebuilt with a lot of help from the Baptist church. DTBC is an amazing congregation, packing out their small building, with a lot of young people and older members who are very active in reaching out to the community and mentoring the young ones. I preached on Luke 13.1-9, bearing the fruit of repentance in times of violence. I talked about what it is like to follow Jesus by loving our enemies in such times and places. These folks are doing it, not giving up even when it is hard, so I was there more to encourage and bless them and perhaps give a few ideas by sharing the stories of others courageously and faithful facing similiar difficulties.

We've also been doing some of our business as global consultants as we are scattered arouund the world. I am blessed to have some special colleagues: Lauran Bethell, Walt White, Mike Mann and Stan Slade. You can look them up at the IM website (www.internationalministries.org) to learn more about their wonderful ministries.

I'm also grateful for computers. With the Global Baptist Peace Conference coming up February 9-14, I could not afford to miss too much work on that. I'm the registrar for the conference, and we are dealing with over 150 people coming from countries where they will need visas to get into Italy for the conference. We raised scholarship funds for about 80 of those folks (full or partial). For each one I have all kinds of specific problems to help with, along with the other 100+ people coming from non-visa countries like the US. So when we're not working with Jamaicans or in our global consultants meetings, I'm working on the e-mails dealing with problems around the world. People are getting their visas, though, so hurray!

Blessings on you all. Thanks for praying for me, even in Jamaica. Looks like I'll have to wait for at least a third visit to see a beach!

Peace,
Dan