Month: October 2025

Happening Right Now – Tuesday, October 28, 2025!

Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica about an hour ago as I’m writing this, on the east end of the island, near Black River. Having just written about the churches we served in the Black River area and about Pastor Dorrell Wright and his donkey, this has really impacted me. So much convergence here as my most recent blog posts have been about our life and ministry in Jamaica in the 1980s, leading up to our move to the UK in 1992! I’ve changed topics for today and I’ll write about the beginning of our transition from our years as missionaries in Jamaica to our move to the UK to launch East London Bible Training Centre later.

We were living in Jamaica in September 1988 when Hurricane Gilbert, the first hurricane to make a direct hit on the island in over 50 years, rolled over Jamaica as a category 3 hurricane, and caused incredible, unprecedented devastation. There have been a couple of hurricane strikes since Gilbert: Hurricane Ivan (2004) and Hurricane Dean (2007) both category 4 hurricanes, didn’t strike Jamaica directly but passed close enough to do significant damage, then in 2012, Hurricane Sandy made landfall as category 1 storm and caused serious flooding and landslide damage.

Now Melissa! On October 28, 2025 (Today! Right now!), Hurricane Melissa is rolling north from Black River on the south coast, across the east end of the island directly toward Montego Bay on the north coast. Melissa is the strongest storm to hit Jamaica in recorded history! I just saw some TV video footage from Mandeville, just a few miles east, and there was catastrophic flooding already as well as severe wind damage!

Here’s some quick information about Jamaica and some comparisons to Oregon, where we live in the USA to help put things in perspective:

• Jamaica is 4,411 square miles in size, with a population of 2,837,000. Oregon is 98,379 sq miles in size, with a population of 4,270,000. That means that Jamaica would fit over 20 times into the state of Oregon and has two thirds of the population of Oregon.

• Jamaica is 146 miles long from east to west and about 50 miles wide at its widest point near Mandeville in Manchester parish. Highest point is 7400 feet, Blue Mountain Peak. From Blue Mountain Peak, you can see both the north and the south coasts of the island (it’s only about 10 miles from the sea to the peak!) and you can sometimes see Cuba in very clear weather.

• From Black River where Hurricane Melissa made landfall this morning straight across the island to Montego Bay, where Melissa is likely to exit into the sea toward Cuba is 43 miles. That’s the same distance as our frequent drive north from Bend to Madras, OR.

• The distance from the northernmost point in Jamaica to the southernmost point is almost 50 miles, the same distance as our equally frequent drive through Madras, to Warm Springs, on our way to see our kids in Gresham, OR, a suburb of Portland. Our drive from Bend to see the kids in Gresham is 150 miles, four miles farther than the entire distance from one end of Jamaica to the other!

It’s been a couple of hours now since Hurricane Melissa made landfall near Black River and began to tear north across Jamaica. I’ve been trying to get some information on the Weather Channel about the current situation and conditions but power and communication networks are failing across the island. They’re estimating that 53% of Jamaica Power System is down at present and the hurricane hasn’t even left the island yet. Some of the greatest damage is forecast to occur after the winds reverse direction as the hurricane leaves the north coast and moves out across the sea toward Cuba.

I’m going to go ahead and finish this and send it because I’d like to enlist your prayers for Jamaica, for our friends there, for the nation, for the impact of the damage still to come and for the long recovery period after the storm has gone.

When Hurricane Gilbert swept across Jamaica in 1988 we were without electricity and phone for more than six weeks after the storm was over. That was before Internet and cell phones. Things are better now, because much of the infrastructure is much newer than it was then and the use of cell phones makes it possible to get communications up and running more quickly. But this is a bigger and more powerful storm.

So please pray with us! The Weather Channel has pretty good coverage for those reading this here in the US. I’m sure that there’s accessible news on the internet wherever you are reading this.

I’ve tried contacting folks in Jamaica this morning, but without success so far. I’m sure they’ve got their hands full anyhow!

We (and they) really would appreciate your prayers and cares! I’ll plan to give an update in the next post as I get back to the story of our transition from serving in Jamaica to beginning something new in the UK.

As always, I’d love to hear from you. If you have a question or a comment simply reply to this email or if you’re reading on the blog, comment below.

Grace to you today, Jim Stephens

1989

I’m going to shift gears at this point because in 1989 the Whole Life Ministries Bible Training Centre was going really well, we were enjoying developing the material for the course, we had a good team of teachers, our work with the churches in the Black River area was challenging and satisfying, but in spite of all that, we were beginning to feel sort of restless and unsettled.

Then it was time for the Yearly Anniversary Celebration of the founding of Fellowship Tabernacle, a local church in Kingston that we had the privilege of helping launch and lead. We were part of the original group of sixteen people who met in Al and Melody Miller’s living room to discuss the establishing of a new church in Kingston, a non-denominational church that would bring together the solid foundation of teaching with the life-giving experience of the Holy Spirit’s presence in worship, celebration, and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit operating freely.

Anyhow, plans were being made, invitations were going out to people who had been involved at any level in the development of the church, and Al Miller’s brother George was invited to come to Jamaica from the UK to be the featured speaker for the Celebration services.

George Miller is a Jamaican Evangelist. There was a time in the 60’s when the entire Miller Family moved to England for a season and when they moved back to Jamaica, son George decided to stay on in the UK. You see, George had found the love of his life, a young English girl named Hazel, and married her. George was becoming a well-known teacher and evangelist in the Elim Pentecostal denomination in the UK (a group that had grown to around six hundred churches across England, Scotland, and Wales) and his ministry was much in demand for events and preaching and inspiring churches to growth.

So George stayed in England, became a citizen, and he and Hazel raised their family there. And now he and Hazel were coming back to Jamaica to minister at the Fellowship Tabernacle Anniversary Celebration. Everyone was excited to have George coming for the event, but little did we know that having George come to Kingston was going to be a turning point in our lives!

While George and Hazel were in town, Jean and I invited them to come and have lunch with us at our home in West Armour Heights. It was great getting to know them and they both had great stories about their life in the UK, about what it’s like being a white English woman and a black Jamaican man raising a family in England, and about George’s travels and ministry in Guyana and other parts of the Caribbean. And we talked a lot about the Bible Training Centre.

George and Hazel had visited the school to observe the evening classes. They saw students from Fellowship Tabernacle, but also from Baptist churches, Pentecostal churches, and Anglican churches. They saw business people, salespeople, nurses, school teachers, people who worked for the government in various capacities, all drawn together by a common desire to grow in their faith and to discover their giftings and callings for service. People wanted to learn and grow and to represent Jesus and his Kingdom in their workplaces and communities. George and Hazel were really impressed by what they saw!

So while we spent the lunch hour and long into the afternoon talking together, the conversation focused more and more on the need for discipleship and discovery and development of ministry. And at one point, George said to us, “You need to come to the UK and bring us what you’re doing here! We have Universities and Bible Colleges and Seminaries everywhere, but we don’t have anything like this!”

As we interacted with George and Hazel during the remainder of their stay in Kingston, George continued to bring it up; “You need to come to the UK! We need what you’ve got! Pray about it! Consider it! We need you!” Then George got Al involved and together they suggested we make a visit to the UK, travel among the churches, see the situation, and see if it was the right thing for us. The Bible Training Centre in Kingston was doing well, and it could continue to do well with or without us. The churches in the Black River area were making progress and Al said that they could send people down to minister and to keep in touch with the churches and leaders there. And the idea was growing on us!

George would set up opportunities for us to visit and minister in churches in England, Scotland, and Wales. We could meet denominational leaders and pastors in urban and rural parts of the UK. We could visit churches that were made up of people from across Africa, from India, and from several nations in the Caribbean. We could travel, meet the people, and even see the sights as we went! It was exciting and a little scary!

So before George and Hazel left for the UK, we said yes! George would schedule a month of ministry for us, find places for us to stay in each of the communities we visited, and introduce us to key leaders as we traveled. We would see what God would do – how God would lead us – and whether that is what we should do for the next season of our lives.

The time was set for late March and early April 1990. We’d go to Atlanta where Stephanie and Melissa and our friends Phil and Pam Underwood were located. We’d get preparation made for about four weeks in the UK, and we’d go see what would happen. Then we’d come back home to Kingston and talk with Al Miller and the team and see where we go from there!

That’s it for this one! In the next post I’ll tell you about our first visit to the UK and what we saw and learned and how the process developed that would lead to the next decade of our lives and ministry.

You know, it’s so good for me – for us – to go back over the events and stories of the seasons of our lives. And it’s so much easier to see God’s leading and God’s hand at work in the rearview mirror than when you’re looking through the windshield into an unknown future!

As always, I’d love to hear from you. If you have a question or a comment simply reply to this email or if you’re reading on the blog, comment below.

 Grace to you today, Jim Stephens

1987

In 1987, Jean and I were assisting the Calvary Ministries team with the development of Christ to the World Bible Training Centre in Kingston in addition to our work with churches through Whole Life Ministries. Calvary Ministries had missionary teams in South and Central America, as well as Jamaica. This meant that occasionally team members from various places as well as pastors from the US visited the school in Jamaica from time to time. We love to meet people and to host people in our home so when we heard that a pastor from the US and his wife, and a missionary couple from Costa Rica were coming to Kingston to visit the Bible Training Centre for a few days, we gladly offered to host one of the couples at our home on West Armour Heights.

When the airport van pulled up in our driveway on the afternoon of Monday, March 2, 1987, we were watching from the front veranda as people began to disembark the vehicle. The configuration quickly resolved into two couples, one with a daughter about four years old and one with an infant child, which was making loud sounds typical of a tired and hungry infant, as the dad unloaded pack after pack of disposable diapers into a pile on the ground. When we offered to host one of the two couples, we had no preference which one we’d get, but when we heard the sounds the infant was emitting and saw the stacks of diapers, we both said a quick, silent prayer something like, “Please, Lord, not the diaper couple!”

God’s gracious answer to that prayer helped to shape our lives and the lives of our daughters from that day forward to this very day! We got the non-diaper couple, the couple who were the pastors from the US (Atlanta, GA) and their four-year-old daughter. And I can’t remember in whose home the other couple stayed, but we’re forever grateful it was someone else’s, not our own! It’s not just the diapers and the infant audio emissions. That would have been less than a footnote in our story and long forgotten. It’s that the pastor couple from Atlanta became close and dear friends, and their friendship and generosity helped us to establish a new home base in the US, a network of friends and churches, and a place for both Stephanie and Melissa to settle in the US when Melissa graduated from high school at ICHS a year or so later.

The couple who stayed with us for a “few days”, which turned out to be about a month, were Phil and Pam Underwood and their oldest (at that time only) daughter Andrea. During their stay with us, something good began to develop, a mutual affection and appreciation, a mutual respect, and the beginnings of a deep and lasting friendship. We spent hours in conversation. I had ministry commitments in churches in villages and in the bush outside the city and Phil accompanied me. Phil and I spent hours one night under the stars on a jungle road when the old car belonging to one of the pastors broke down and we waited hopefully for a passing vehicle that could get a message to a mechanic somewhere to come and repair or tow the car.

We watched sunsets from my veranda and talked about ministry, the Kingdom of God, and life itself. When the time came for Phil and Pam to return to Atlanta, they invited us to visit them in their home. Soon Phil became pastor of a church in Tucker, GA, a suburb of Atlanta, and invited me to come for a visit to meet the church and the leadership and speak at the church. The church began to support us financially and in so many other ways!

Melissa graduated from high school in 1988 and she and Stephanie needed a place to be and to belong in the US. Phil and Pam invited them to come to Atlanta, and to stay in their home while they got settled and found jobs and an apartment together. Jean and I came up to help them get into an apartment, find a car, and get their household established. The people of the congregation made room for them to belong to the church! They became part of the youth group, the young adults of the church, and they found ways to serve and participate. They made friends. It was good!

The thing that stood out to me then and still stands out to me now, is the generosity Phil and Pam and their church showed to us back then, to Stephanie and Melissa in an on-going way, and to all of our family as the months and years passed. It was a generosity not only with finances and material things, but with giving us a sense of belonging, a sense of place and home. And Phil and Pam were generous with their relationships! They generously shared with us their own family, their personal friends, and their relationships with other churches and pastors.

We finally had a place to call home in the US! We made visits to Atlanta and traveled from Atlanta to visit churches that supported us across the US. On one occasion, Phil purchased a very nice late model conversion van and loaned it to us for a trip all the way across the US and back. We made the payments on the van while we used it and then dropped it off at Phil and Pam’s house with many more thousands of miles on it than it had when we picked it up! That wasn’t the only time that Phil loaned us a vehicle. And when we needed to make another cross-country trip to visit supporters and raise additional support for our move to London to start East London Bible Training Centre, Phil’s dad helped us find a minivan to buy for our travels. We were able to leave it with Stephanie when we made the move to the UK.

A few years later, when we had handed over the Bible Training Centre in Kingston to the Whole Life Ministries team and were preparing to move to London, we rented a house in in Tucker, GA, a suburb of Atlanta, with Stephanie and Melissa during the transition between Jamaica and the UK. Atlanta had become our home and base of operations in the US and when the time came for the actual move to London in March 1992, Phil drove us to the airport for the flight to a whole new world of life and ministry! In fact, the last stop we made on the drive to the airport was at the church office where Phil picked up a check for us that became the deposit with which we opened our London Barclay Bank account for East London Bible Training Centre!

That van from Kingston airport showed up at our house 38 years, 7 months, and 12 days ago today! You know, people who serve outside the US as missionaries for a couple of decades can sort of miss out on long term friendships with people they grew up with, on high school reunions, on watching the families of friends grow up. Nearly four decades ago the act of hospitality of opening our home to visiting strangers led to the development of a life-long friendship! And the generosity of Phil and Pam Underwood gave us a place and a people to belong to, to be part of. And best of all their generosity gave us another Phil, our first son-in-law Philip Smith who married our daughter Stephanie. They met and were married in the church Phil pastored in Atlanta! Amazing! God is so good!

Generosity with our lives is a very Godly characteristic!

As always, I’d love to hear from you. If you have a question or a comment simply reply to this email or if you’re reading on the blog, comment below.

Grace to you today, Jim Stephens

 

 

Early 1989

Last week I told you that in the late 1980’s Jean and I met a group of pastors from Kentucky and Ohio who had the responsibility for a group of churches in the southwest part of Jamaica, near Black River, in the parish of St Elizabeth. The organization was called Lighthouse Christian Fellowship and there were about eight churches active in the group.

After visiting the churches in St Elizabeth and getting acquainted with the pastors and leaders, we accepted the task of providing oversight for the churches and began traveling once each month to the area to meet with the pastors and begin to train and care for them. We ministered in the churches as often as we could and helped with their conventions and other gatherings. We held the monthly gatherings at the village of Crawford, on the main east-west road along the south coast. The Crawford Lighthouse Church was right on the highway and was the most easily-accessed of the churches by car and public transportation.

It was during the season we worked with those churches that Hurricane Gilbert hit Jamaica with devastating force and caused much damage and loss across the island. Because Whole Life Ministries, the organization that sponsored our visa and work permit, had the task of overseeing distribution of relief materials following the hurricane, we were able to arrange the donation of building and roofing materials, and food and clothing for the people of these churches to a degree they would have completely missed due to their isolation and distance from Kingston.

Pastor Dorrell Wright was pastor of the Petersville Lighthouse Church, high up in the mountains several very challenging miles from the road. There was no electricity in the Petersville District, and no paved roads. It was quite a challenge to make it up there in my little Ford Escort Station Wagon loaded down with relief supplies!

Pastor Wright had become somewhat of a favorite to Jean and me. He was a gentle, unassuming man who made his living by subsistence farming and led his congregation with compassion and care. He was not a reader. I guess the technical way to say it is that he was illiterate. But he was intelligent, wise, sensitive to the Holy Spirit, and a good pastor to his people. During his church services he would have one of the high school students read a verse or two from the Bible, then he would preach on the verses. When he finished, the student would read another verse or two and Pastor Wright would preach on.

One time as we leaned against the hood of my car in his yard, he told me the story of how God had called him to pastor the little church in Petersville. The church was without a pastor for several months and one day as he was walking from his house to his yam plot on the mountain he felt very strongly that God spoke to him and told him to “pastor the flock and feed the sheep”. He protested his lack of education, his inability to read, his shy personality, his lack of skill at speaking, managing people, and leading. But the sense of calling grew stronger. Finally, one day as he stood in the shade of a mango tree, he looked down at some stones at his feet. He said, Lord, if this is you speaking to me, if you’re really calling me to be the Pastor of the Petersville Church, then please move these little stones by my foot. No sooner had he said this, than three of the stones vibrated a little, then scooted across the dirt until the three stones were together, touching each other, right in front of him.

That’s all it took! He began to re-gather the little flock and lead the church. He learned from other pastors in the area. He watched what others did and then asked God to show him how to do the work of a pastor-shepherd. His little church grew as he served the people of his district and preached, prayed, and pastored. He still farmed to take care of his family’s needs (as well as the needs of others in his flock). Petersville had no industry or business, so everyone in the area farmed or fished to survive.

One day when Jean and I were visiting at Pastor Wright’s home, enjoying a cool drink of coconut water in the shade of his mango tree, I asked him what one thing would help him more that anything else in his ministry to the Petersville District and his church. His response? A donkey! Not a car (roads too bad) Not a motorcycle (fuel and repairs too expensive) Not a TV, a sound system, or a refrigerator (no electricity). He would be best helped by getting a donkey to plow the soil and haul his produce, and to ride on the mountain trails to visit his flock.

As Jean and I made our way back down the mountain to the main road, we resolved to get a donkey for Pastor Wright. We enquired about the cost and where to find a donkey. It only took a few days to raise the money. Everyone who heard the story back in civilization wanted to contribute. So the next time we visited for the monthly pastors’ meeting we gave Pastor Wright the money for a donkey. We insisted that he buy a quality, low-mileage, good condition donkey. Not a worn-out, used up donkey, but a good one!

On our next visit, a few weeks later, Pastor Wright invited us to his home. As we made our way up the last hill to his place, there in front of the house, tied in the shade of the mango tree was the finest young reddish-haired donkey you would ever want to see! As we exclaimed over the finer qualities of the donkey, Pastor Wright proudly informed us his name was “Harry” and with some training, Harry would soon make his life a lot better and his ministry more fruitful.

After we left Jamaica in the early 90’s and moved to the UK, we lost track of Pastor Wright. I often thought about him and his little church and his family and of course, Harry the donkey. I wondered if he was still alive, how his family and church were doing. I wondered if Harry the donkey was still alive after all these years. After we were settled back in the US, one morning at coffee I told my friend Gary Burton the story of the pastor and the donkey. About two weeks later, out of the blue, I received this email:

Greetings Jim and Jean, This is Keisha, Pastor Dorrel Wright’s daughter. My dad always talks about you and was hoping to get in touch with you. He was a part of the Lighthouse Ministries in Petersville, Jamaica. I just found you on the internet and I feel excited to give my dad this great news! My Dad would love to get in touch with you. God bless you.

I replied to Keisha right away and asked how her Dad was, if her Mother was still living, how the church was doing. Here’s the note she sent back:

Greetings Jim and Jean, I’m so happy that you replied to my email! I couldn’t wait to tell my dad, in fact I just got off the phone with him! He was extremely delighted to hear that I got in touch with you. He sends his love for you both. He always speaks of how kind you and Jean were to him. I am now living in the US, in Massachusetts. My most vivid memory of you and Jean is you people sitting on our verandah drinking coconut water that my dad would get for you and how excited I felt whenever you would stop by our house. I was a toddler then but I remember it as if it was yesterday! I am so happy to hear that you guys are doing well. My mom died in December 2003. Dad still hasn’t remarried. Daddy’s ministry is still going strong. He has three churches now. I’m so happy to know that you are still in the ministry and doing the Lord’s work. God bless you. Keisha Wright

As always, I’d love to hear from you. If you have a question or a comment simply reply to this email or if you’re reading on the blog, comment below.

Grace to you today, Jim Stephens