Archives for 2013

The Most Embarrassing Thing I’ve Ever Done

There are so many wonderful things happening with CEF in St. Kitts and Nevis! The TCE class (Teaching Children Effectively) in Nevis is going great. And our first ever church partnership After-School Good News Club begins next Tuesday!

“Normal” life here is a roller coaster. Wonderful things are usually followed by not-so-wonderful things… and the hard times are usually followed by awesome times. We (as in the expatriates living here) have a saying, “OISK”… Only In St. Kitts.

For example, you are running late to an appointment and hit traffic… which isn’t normal on an island with 40,000 people… only to find out the reason for the back up is an abandoned tractor in the middle of the road… surely it broke down you think… but it’s just the driver’s lunch break (true story)… well that would be an OISK moment!

Unfortunately, this time… it’s my fault and St. Kitts had nothing to do with it.

On Saturday Sean traveled to Nevis for the TCE class and called around 4:30 to let me know he was heading back and I needed to pick him up at the port. So I got Maddy into the van, got in myself and proceeded to back out of the driveway only to drive into the wall in front of me.

Our driveway has a decent incline so I’m not sure if I put the van in reverse and didn’t hit the gas hard enough, rolling into the wall…. or if I put the van into drive thinking it was in reverse. Either way… it’s the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done.

The van is fine… Maddy and I are fine… the wall is NOT fine. Apparently the top part of the wall was made with solid concrete but the middle section, where the van hit, was made with hollow cinder blocks filled with crumbly rocks and sand. So once one block crumbled… a chain reaction was set off and more than half the wall tumbled down the stairs below.

Here are some pictures…

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Thankfully we didn’t go over the edge…. and despite how awful it looks, the van really just has a few scratches. I don’t think I actually hit the wall as hard as it looks. Still… it is definitely embarrassing and I am learning a humility lesson for sure.

Although Sean says the wall can be replaced easily by himself and a couple other guys, we know our property manager will want it professionally done. So we will be getting an estimate in the next coming days. We have a property damage clause on our auto insurance so we are hoping this will be covered. Either way, it hopefully won’t be too expensive to replace.

Maddy told me not to drive into walls again… and I plan to park much differently from now on!

Life on the roller coaster is never dull!

Two Big Milestones!

First, before we get to the good news… there is some bad news. Mavis Huggins, the new National Director had to travel to the States because her brother-in-law and his wife were in a terrible bus accident in North Carolina. Her brother-in-law was killed and his wife was in serious condition but is now doing better. Will you please pray for Mavis and her family during this terrible time?

Milestone Number One

Last night we celebrated one year of our Good News Club in Fig Tree! I can’t believe how quickly the time has flown. We asked the kids who were at the very first club day last year to raise their hands… it was nearly half the club! We are definitely praising God for bringing these kids back week after week for the last year. This Good News Club truly is the highlight of our week. Next Monday we will formerly celebrate our birthday with a cake and a candle!

Milestone Number Two

On Sunday evening Sean conducted the very first St. Kitts & Nevis church partnership After-School Good News Club training! Antioch Baptist Church is adopting William Connor Primary. The relationship is so interesting! Dr. William Connor was the founding pastor of Antioch Baptist Church some 60 years ago and the school, which is down the street basically, was built and named after him 25 years ago. So Antioch Baptist has a special interest in ministering to William Connor Primary. They are even more eager to get a club started because the Mormon Church has also been reaching out to the school lately by teaching in the assemblies and donating expensive equipment to the school.

Typically, it can be hard sometimes to get the necessary 5-7 volunteers needed to run an effective club (even in the States) but Antioch Baptist has 11 committed volunteers! That completely blew us away!

Antioch Baptist Good News Club Volunteers

Antioch Baptist Volunteers, Sean took this picture on his phone

The team will begin their Good News Club in May and only go for four weeks to “get their feet wet” and work out any kinks. Then in the Fall they will begin normally. We are so excited to see this partnership take place! We strongly feel the BEST ministry is done working with the schools by neighborhood churches and we want to see partnerships like this repeated all over St. Kitts and Nevis until every primary school is adopted.

Other Happenings

Sean ended up having 5 people register and show up for the TCE class (Teaching Children Effectively) in Nevis! The first official class went very well so Sean will be riding the ferry to Nevis every Saturday for the next five weeks.

We are finally out of the dry spell! We have received a ton of needed rain in the last couple of weeks. The fires have subsided and it seems the water problem isn’t as much of a concern now.

Maddy began her dance class and so far seems to be enjoying it! Although when asked what she learned in class she responds with “I don’t know”. 🙂

We are continuing to plug away with life in St. Kitts and are getting ready for our first mission trip team next month!

 

Please be in prayer for Antioch Baptist Church, the TCE class in Nevis and for Mavis and her family.

I also updated our Recent Prayer Requests page for more ways to be in prayer for our family and ministry.

Thank you!

Welcoming April

Things have been busy around here lately. Last week we had the privilege of spending time with the Willis Family from Heritage Baptist Church in Prattville! They were here on vacation, along with some of their daughter’s friends, and kindly made time to meet with us and help us in our ministry.

Sean took the girls to a school in Sandy Point and Tyrell Williams Primary where they shared the Gospel and loved on the kids in several classes. Their help was needed! Sean asked some of the kids if they knew what Easter is all about and they told him Easter meant flying kites. Flying kites is a tradition in St. Kitts on Easter weekend… people from all over the island get together to fly kites and have competitions. But it was sad that for these kids, flying kites was the reason we celebrate Easter.

Teaching at Sandy Point and Tyrell Williams Primary

Celebrating Easter

On Good Friday we had a service at the beach with our church Caribbean Christian Fellowship. It was such a blessing to see lots of people there and to worship the Lord surrounded by such a beautiful setting!

CCF Good Friday Service

Caribbean Christian Fellowship started a few years ago as a Bible Study for some of the expatriate vet students on the island and has grown into a small church. People from several schools now attend along with expatriates working in St. Kitts and even some locals. There are over 1000 students studying here and the vast majority of them are not Christian. Many of the students party and drink way too much every weekend. It’s not uncommon for the Christian students to be ostracized because of their beliefs. The original Bible Study was actually kicked off campus because they refused to compromise their beliefs. It seemed kind of strange for us to move away from America to get plugged into an American church! But we love our church family here in St. Kitts and want to do what we can to encourage the Christian students and help them reach out to their peers.

On Easter the service pretty much doubled! We are praying for many of these students… that God would work in their hearts and they will continue coming to church.

Mission Trip Team

The Graysons are hosting their first mission trip of the year and they are teaching a 5 Day Club with us! The team has Christian Youth in Action teens and Good News Club volunteers from Fort Wayne, Indiana! Sean has been helping with the driving and hanging out with the group. Their 5 Day Club is at Tyrell Williams Primary (the same school the Heritage Baptist girls taught at last week) and is going great! The school was actually on holiday Monday and Tuesday morning and we still had kids show up!

5 Day Club at Tyrell Williams Primary

The team has only a few more days left… they will be leaving on Monday. It’s been such a blessing to partner with them!

Weather

Summer is definitely coming… the breeze is slowing down and the temperature continues to rise. Before the last 7 days it had only rained three times since we came back in January. With it being so dry, we’ve had LOTS of fires. By March we already had 50% of the amount of fires from all of 2012! It’s really sad when driving around the island to see so much vegetation gone or brown. They don’t fight fires here like we do in America… they just kind of let them burn out on their own. In the last week we had three good soaking days. Hopefully the trend will continue! Some of the neighborhoods are having their water shut off every evening from the lack of rain.

In April

Maddy will be starting a local dance class on the 6th! The Nevis Teaching Children Effectively class starts next Saturday. Right now we only have two people signed up and we really need to have at least four. Sean will have to pay to ride the ferry there and back every Saturday for six weeks so we are praying for two more people to register. The Graysons are having another mission trip that we will help out with and we are continuing to work on getting two after school Good News Clubs started.

We are also praying that we can fix our van this month. In May we will host our first mission trip team and we really need new suspension and shocks before then.

Thank you everyone for keeping up with us, praying for and supporting the ministry in St. Kitts and Nevis!

First Walk-a-Thon!

Last Friday the CEF National Board of St. Kitts and Nevis hosted their first ever walk-a-thon fundraiser!

Fundraising walks are very popular in St. Kitts and we had about 20 people participate! The board will be hosting another walk-a-thon this Fall and it will likely have even more in attendance!

The event started at 7pm with prayer and then everyone started off together.

The walk was about 11 kilometers. Sean and I didn’t realize it was that far… living on an island makes it seem like much less. We honestly thought it would take about 2 or 2 1/2 hours to complete. Maddy and I went home after the walk started because it was held so late. This turned out to be for the best because Sean didn’t get home until after 11pm!

Everyone had a great time and the evening ended with refreshments back at the CEF office! It was a great fundraiser and seemed to be a lot fun.

I could keep writing about it but I’ll get to the pictures…

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Maddy and I were there to cheer on the participants before it got too late

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Where the participants would begin their walk outside the CEF office

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They would walk beyond the neighborhood on the hill (Bird Rock) turn around and come back!

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Group prayer before they began the walk

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And they were off! Complete with a police escort!

Thank you so much to everyone who prayed for this fundraiser to be successful! We are so encouraged to see the ministry here quickly becoming self-supported and locally funded!

Visitors and a Walk-a-Thon

Last week was so fun because we welcomed several visitors!

On Thursday we met up with a friend of a friend named Mary who was visiting St. Kitts on a dive trip. She brought us some items we miss having in America and gave Maddy a  few fun surprises too! We really enjoyed spending time with her and got to enjoy breakfast together on Saturday before she returned home.

On Friday last week we had visitors here from Alabama on a cruise ship! The Boyds are from Redland Baptist Church in Wetumpka and they were with other people from Tallassee! It was so fun to talk with them and share some kindred Alabama accents! They were the first visitors we had coming on a cruise ship and they also brought our family lots of goodies from America! We feel so spoiled…

Sean took them on a tour of the island and stopped at an old sugar plantation turned hotel for lunch. Before they left, Maddy and I got to meet up with them for some ice cream at Port Zante. They, and Redland Baptist Church are such an encouragement to us!

It is so nice to have visitors that are willing to take time out of their vacations to encourage us! Our family feels very blessed.

Ministry

Sean and Mavis have been working at the office everyday and meeting with several pastors about starting After School Good News Clubs. We have handed out several What Is The Gospel? books and everyone so far has really enjoyed them. People keep saying how excited they are for these to go around the island!

Next Friday the National Board is hosting a walk-a-thon to raise support for the ministry. Fundraising walks are very popular here in St. Kitts so we are praying for a great turnout. We ask that you pray along with us. Having a locally funded CEF ministry in St. Kitts & Nevis is one of our highest priorities this year.

A few weeks ago we passed out CEF 60 Day Wonder Devotional Books to all of the kids in our Good News Club in Fig Tree. We have been amazed at how faithful they are in doing these devotions everyday. Some of them even went ahead and finished all 60 days! We had to explain to them the point is to do ONE devotion each day. 🙂

Thank you so much for your prayers, encouragement and support. We grow more and more excited about the ministry here everyday!