Miles Ahead - Travel to Jamaica

April 25-27, 2007

The entire trip started out as a very blank slate to me… For the last two months I have been living a pretty anxious life – and for no reason other than being overwhelmed by blessing. But, either way, it was still worry, and it was the really rough kind – the kind that made me stay up late at night and wake up feeling nervous… there were so many things on my mind – the wedding, buying a new condo, the missions trip, new ministries, taking my photography to another level, family – its enough to make your head spin… So it was no surprise to me that leading up to the trip, I get sick.. yup… sick… two days prior… I have been running myself to the ground (as I often do) and it finally caught up to me, and probably at the wrong moment… The airport, new people, new faces – I had to prepare myself for the experience ahead – but in truth, I wasn’t really “ready” at all… and in a way, it was a good thing – I came in with no expectations, no real vision for what I was going to do in Jamaica… In hindsight, it would seem that my lack of prep helped me to take things in rather than expect things…

Well folks, here is the first entry of many from this trip… I have been spending several weeks getting the pics together, but mostly collecting my thoughts… At this point, the number of miracles and works of God that occurred, it is really a hard thing to grasp and explain… but maybe blogging will help… and through this, I hope you as a reader are blessed…

There it was, Montego Bay… It still didn’t hit me… I know that this time is going to be a blessing, but for me I had a really hard time figuring out how my photography and ministry of this trip was related… Maybe that was a part of why I was feeing a bit anxious… I think it’s because I imagined myself being more directly involved… then I realized that it was the storytelling opportunities that I was going to have … that was my purpose… to not let all this go by and then forgotten… I’m almost obligated to share…

time to board…

The flight felt like it lasted forever. In total it was about 13 hours with the layover in Newark (or something like that), but I think the cold that I was carrying into it made it feel longer… The best part of the long trip though, was the fellowship. I came on this trip essentially knowing my fiancé and maybe a small handful of others… In the airport, on the plane, and everything in between – Vaness and I got to know a whole bunch of different people from the church. For me, starting the trip that way, was a blessing.

I took a picture of the attendant loading luggage onto the bus… the one and only guy assigned to help us load our luggage on the bus. I put my luggage down and stopped. I felt a bit awkward that he was loading nearly 80 people’s bags on to the bus by himself. A bunch of us offered to help and grabbed a bag to put in the bus, then the driver stopped us and said, “It’s okay mon, no worries, let him do it.” He continued on, pouring with sweat in the hot and humid air serving our group. He had a quiet way about him, but you could tell he had a servant’s heart.

From the moment of the arrival of our group – God showed us the type of people we ourselves were going to serve - beautiful, humble, and hospitable. The entire journey thus far had been full of amazing people – and we haven’t even started yet…

I traveled in the children’s ministry group for Church in Jamaica… That experience in itself was something that I never had before… extremely different, but full of energy, conviction, and love… It was a lot of fun..

The last picture was of Vaness and me at the hotel we were all staying at… The beaches by the hotel were so beautiful, and the sand was so fine… Jamaica is such a beautiful island… a paradise… but no paradise is perfect… and we were all about to find out throughout the week that even with a beautiful island full of beautiful people, there were a lot of people in need of love, help, and prayer.