Perseverance: Being Steadfast in Something Despite Difficulty

Day 4 started off with a visit to the Martha Brae Basic School. We visited this community last year to work on the house of the Riverside Baptist pastor. This schools is a lot smaller than ones we have visited in the past, and is located on a pretty busy street in this town. Our group went into the one-room school and led praise songs with the students. The stories of David & Goliath plus Jonah were told to the little kids. Then all the GAC kids paired up with little kids to color with the books and crayons that we brought to donate. The principal/teacher was a friendly lady who was extremely grateful for us spending some time with them today!

The rest of the afternoon was spent at Chukka Adventures. This was a new activity that we tried out this year and it didn't disappoint. We began with an adventure challenge course that involved harnesses, platforms, and cargo nets/swinging. The next activity involved ATV's and a scenic tour of the Jamaica hillside. After a relaxing lunch in the shade, we loaded back up in the harnesses and completed 2 MASSIVE ziplines. We took a bus ride up to a Great House and ziplines from the balcony back down to the Chukka property. It was approximately 1,400 feet in the air with a nice breeze blowing in our faces. The second zip went through the canopy and took us over the Martha Brae river. We then worked our way into tubes, went down a slipslide, and finished with a relaxing float as a group on the river. Our afternoon was such a unique experience and a great time was had by all. Happy to report that no injuries occurred while at Chukka Chukka Choo Choo!!! We also had great tour guides who really looked after and took care of our group.

After getting back to the house, the group worked as an assembly line to pack food bags for the community in Dumfries. The bags consist of beans, rice, and mackerel. Pictures will follow of those bags being distributed on Wednesday.

The devotional theme for tonight was perseverance and was led by Taylor Wright, Parker Stevens, Rachel Gilreath, and Njisane Adesegun. They wrote more about their preparation, so I'll just allow their comments below to give you an idea of tonight's devo.

Taylor: "Today was another reminder of how our team is not just a team, but a family. No matter what we are doing we are always encouraging each other. Perseverance is something that is constantly needed in Jamaica. The weather is hot and the kids we work with constantly want to keep going. We have to think about their needs before ours in order to accomplish what we came here to do."

Parker: "Each person has God given talents, but we need to learn to step out of our comfort zones to express God’s love for others and ourselves.  We need to persevere through the good and bad times to be able to fulfill the talents we have been blessed with."

Rachel: "In our devotional, we talked about persevering through hard times, even though some times may be awkward and out of our comfort zone, we still need God’s strength so we are able to persevere.  I read a verse (Isaiah 12:2) that talked about how we need God’s strength to do anything and to be able to get through hard times because without God’s strength, we can’t do anything."
Njisane: "In Philippians 4:13 the verse talks about putting your faith and trust in God during bad times. In life we are going have to face hardship. God wants us to turn to him and keep pushing through. In the rope obstacle course today, we had to go through a series of difficult challenges. To some people the obstacle course was easy, to others it was difficult but both of them had to face and complete the challenge."