Let The Adventure Begin!

Day one was... interesting. I don't think I've EVER traveled so much in one day in my ENTIRE LIFE. We met at the church at 12am Saturday morning: we prayed, packed up, and headed to O'Hare International Airport where we proceeded to wait for three hours until our flight left at 6am for Fort Lauderdale Florida. Our plane took an extra 45 minutes to get off the ground due to "paperwork problems", and we barely made our connecting flight to Montego Bay, Jamaica.

Once we got into Jamaica, we soon realized (as we had been told before we left), that everything with the locals is an "event" and not an issue of time. We wound up waiting for three hours for our ride to show up, and this is what the waiting looked like:

We had to stick very close to all of our stuff, because as you can see, along with our personal luggage, we had a ton of gifts for the orphanage that we stayed at for the week. We were able to get lunch in shifts, and some of us chose to enjoy the hot sun while we waited. We were even seranaded as we in the meantime by a local who sang "Don't worry.. about a thing... cause every little thing... is gonna be alright!" So fun!

Once our bus arrived at 4pm, we all piled in and headed on a four hour trek from Montego Bay to the mountains of Kingston.

On the road, we passed countless "markets" like the one pictured above, and "bars" like the one shown below.

I absolutely could NOT believe how they lived: the things I saw just passing through on the first day, reminded me of a scene straight out of a World Vision commercial. There are no words to really express how I felt that particular day. I do know for sure that I was in shock on account of what I saw: but what amazed me even more was that right around the corner of many of these poverty-stricken areas, would be five-star, gated resort communities just bustling with life and wealth. I just couldn't believe it.

We stopped in at a resort in "Ocho" (Ocho Rios) on the way to Kingston to pick up a couple of temporary missionaries from the orphanage. They had come into the city with another group who had just wrapped up a week at the same place that we were headed, and were enjoying thier free day in the Dunn's River Falls area. This is a picture of our group (all ten of us!), as we were hanging out
waiting for the missionaries to say thier goodbyes.

The rest of our Saturday consisted of driving, driving, and more driving all around the island (through the "fern gully" in the mountains which was really cool) , and dinner at Wendy's in Kingston (yes, they have next to nothing in life, but gosh darnit! They have a Wendy's!). On the way up the mountain, we stopped in a creepy little town which was bustling with people, and were left alone while our bus driver headed into a gas station. While we were waiting, many unexpectedly nice locals would pop thier head into our bus just to say "hey mon!" (Can you just IMAGINE my nerves? We're in the dark, in the middle of one of the most dangerous cities in the WORLD, and we have random MEN coming into our bus just to say "hi". Talk about God testing me! Whew!) So anyway, at one point, one of these nice gentlemen popped in with a handful of cd's, and asked, "Hey mon! You want some music to rock your head?"

That became the first of many quotes for our week in Jamaica. "To 'rock your head'"? How could it NOT be?

We arrived at the "City of Refuge" on top of one of the peaks in the Blue Mountains, at 10pm; at which point, we had all been up well over 36 hours and wanted nothing more than to just.pass.out. And that's what we did. But not before we took a walk around the compound to check the place out. It was pitch dark out and I could barely see a thing, but from what I could see, it was going to be an AMAZING week...