Day 7

Ahhhhh, Friday. Day 7: fun day. This was a morning unlike any I had seen thus far. Even though we were allowed to sleep in today, I arose at the usual 6:30am, and decided to make good use of my time. So, I grabbed my camera and my Bible, and headed out my front door, only to realize that I was standing in the middle of a cloud. I made my way up to the veranda and found that I couldn't see a thing. But what I did notice, is that with every passing minute, the clouds would settle lower...

...and lower...

...and lower.

I was one of the fortunate few to bear witness to this unbelievable sight, and just marveled at God's incredible artistry. What a way to start the morning!

The sun seemed just a little brighter today and the air just a little more pure: maybe it was because I knew there was no work ahead of me today, rather, a lot of relaxation. Whatever the case, it was a beautiful morning. After breakfast and devotions, we had a little time to go down and check out our work. This is the door I helped make on day 4, and the guy who helped me make it. ;)

And we were able to spend a little time hanging out with the kids before they headed off to school.

We then all headed back up to our rooms to throw on our suits, pack our bags for the day, slap on a little sunscreen, and get ready for our day! of! fun! The bus arrived around 10am, and we were soon making our way back down the mountain for our fun-filled day in the sun. Well, no sooner did we get half-way down, and we recieved a phone call that we were to run back up to the compound to pick up a package that needed to be delivered to the head missionary who was working in the city that day. So, turn around we did, and we were headed back UP the mountain - another 15 minute ride.

**Now, I should point out that my incredible fear of heights that I had when I first got there; that paralyzing fear that I had of these "zippy" rides up and down the mountains that I had nightmares about before I even left for Jamaica - were gone by this point. I found these rides absolutely amazing on account of the view, the landscape: so what if there's a thousand foot drop only twelve inches from our bus's tires as we're flying down the mountain? Big deal! Seriously. God worked those fears out that week, let me tell you! God is so good!**

Anyway, so we picked up the package, and headed back down the mountain again. So we're half-way down, my friend and I are sight-seeing and enjoying the different views as we veer right, then left, down, and around, when we suddenly notice some commotion coming from the front of the bus. We're making our way into what looked like a little mountain town, when suddenly I hear our driver shout into his cell phone, "no, really- they're out. The breaks are completely gone. I'm not quite sure what we're going to do!"

Are you freaking kidding me?!

As he's saying this, mind you, we're coming up to a little bridge, and I'm having visions of that scene in the movie, "Beetlejuice", where they lose control of the car and wind up going over the side of the bridge - and DIE?!! (Yeah, leave it to my and my brain... lol) Well anyway, by none other than the miracle working power of the HAND OF GOD, we somehow manage to not hit the car that we should have totally plowed into, and stopped - a BUS with just the emergency break. THANK YOU JESUS.

Well so now we have to sit in the middle of this super scary little mountain town outside of Kingston where, only a half mile up the road, we passed a half-naked gentleman with dread-locks, holding up a machette, staring at us as we drove past. Marvelous. But again, God was watching out for us, and we wound up landing right in front of the town's police station. Surprisingly enough, though, that still didn't quite comfort me as much as I would have liked, because on the front porch of the police station, stood this scary dude that kept staring at me through the bus window and grinning. Eeeew. Luckily, we were totally outnumbered guys to girls on this trip, so there was security in that. And of course, the peace of God and His hand of protection, so we were all good. We just had to sit for a half-hour until Paul came to rescue us (unfortunately for us and our day of fun though, he had a bus-load of MAPS kids that were working at the other orphanage that he needed to drop off at the airport.)

So, after a few *ahem!* set-backs, we finally dropped everyone off, ate some lunch, and made it out to the docks where we would catch our boat to get ourselves out to Lime Cay for an afternoon of fun in the sun!

Helloooooo Lime Cay! Well... it didn't go as smoothly as we would have hoped. We got half-way there in the boat, only to: you guessed it... turn around and go back to pick up a few more people that apparently arrived right after we left. This was just... quite a day. But the wait was SO WORTH IT, as you can see, as the island was just beautiful. It was PERFECT.

We did a little swimming, snorkeling, lots of sunbathing, and had an all-around amazing afternoon!

The end of our day on the island came way too quickly...

... and we found ourselves packing up to catch a boat back to the docks before we knew it. Once we got back to the docks, we all got to rinse off, quickly dry off and change, and began our next journey through a very congested Kingston, to meet the missionaries for dinner at the finest restaurant in town (and this is no joke: this place was incredible! And it was, obviously, gated off, complete with little shops, a coffe house, and ice cream parlor. It was adoreable!)

These are the missionaries who hosted us for the week: an amazing couple: very sweet people, with incredible hearts for God.

The whole gang: celebrating our last night in Jamaica. The night was beautiful and still, balmy and tropical. We dined out on the lanai, and the ambiance was so relaxing: we enjoyed amazing food, incredible fellowship, and a lot of laughs.

After dinner, we enjoyed a variety of different ice creams and coffees out in the shop area, however, due to all of our little debacles throughout the day, found ourselves short on time. So we gathered together for a time of prayer, and shortly thereafter, headed back to the orphanage for the evening.

Once we arrived, we quickly settled in for a good night's sleep in anticipation for another long day of travel which awaited us in the morning.

Good night, Jamaica.