TKCS Jamaica Mission Team 2017

Happy Easter! What a wonderful blessing to spend a third Easter Sunday here in Jamaica with Kingdom Builders Ministries. Today was a day of rest! Most Sundays are very laid back on the island, as Jamaica still practices taking the day off (all non-essential businesses, anyway). We started the day with our beach devotions and came back to a wonderful breakfast - "Egg McJamaica" as Penie called it - eggs and cheese on this special bread called coco bread. It's the softest and most delicious bread I've ever come across. Church was... a strange experience. While we got to worship with many of the people we've grown to know and start relationships with over the last several years, the service itself was much more of a charismatic tone than we'd ever seen here. Even for charismatics, something was off. We debriefed with the kids, as some of them had some questions, but no one was entirely put off by anything. After the service we bought ice cream from the youth grou...

Good morning, everyone. The wifi down here is very very bad. I couldn't get this lost to upload last night - Today was a very long day! Somehow at the end of it, we feel like we have already been here a week - but that is a welcome feeling, as it means we still have so much more time here. We started the morning with our devotions on the beach, as usual. Next, we filled ~20 gallon jugs with water and brought them to the neighboring town of Petersville; their water pump has been shut off for about three weeks, and the despite the government's responsibility to provide them with water, it isn't happening. This was the bulk of our work day and then we headed home. We cooled down at the beach and after dinner, we went to a church benefit concert at the school in Petersville. Here is the day from Annie Panagotopolous' perspective. --- The second day of Jamaica your girl Annie gets to blog! Well to start off the girls woke up on the roof bc it was a beautiful night out side! ...

Hello, friends! Starting tonight, the students will be doing the blog entry details. Today we were able to settle in, work on the house, spend time with the kids that live here, and we even had an unexpected surprise - a local friend, Dr. Linda, took us out on her sailboat in the morning! This was extremely unexpected - normally we dive right into heavy work, but as today was Good Friday, the island was pretty much shut down (everything but gas stations are closed for holidays). We are extremely grateful for this opportunity, as it helped us have an easier transition in to spending time with members of the community as well as kids in the house. Photos have been added to yesterday's entry. As always, thank you for your support! Hi everyone!! It's Lydia!  We just finished up our first full day in Jamaica and it was wonderful! Today we had a more relaxed day and did some fun/cool things and some chores around the house. Our day started off with devotions at the beach down the str...

It took us some time to get settled in and find wifi, but we have arrived safely in Whitehouse! The team is exhausted from our 17 hour day, and we have an early day ahead of us. We will be posting updates every night. Thank you all again for your support! I'm having trouble getting pictures to upload across the wifi, but hopefully I'll get it to work tomorrow.

Hello! Welcome to the TKCS Jamaica Mission 2017 blog. We are Joe and Briana Lombardo, and we are leading our third trip with TKCS to Whitehouse, Jamaica. This time around, we will be leading 9 students: Ryan Anderson and Rachel Conover (returning with us once again!), Lydia Cho, Emily Farrell, Efan Feng, Shane Gillet, Eddie Oglesby, Annie Panagotopolous, and Lauren Wang. We will be staying with Jim and Penie Koch, missionaries stationed in Westmoreland via Kingdom Builders Ministry. In our travels, we will be doing anything and everything to serve the people of Whitehouse and its surrounding areas. Despite the glimpse that most of the Western World has at Jamaica, spots away from the resorts and major cities are not as fortunate. Everyday items that we expect to be in our homes are not readily available to the people. As a team, we will be assisting in home-building construction, as well as sharing supplies from the states (toiletries, toys, clothes) with hospitals, nursing homes, an...