1986
Our time as missionary pastors at Bread of Life church in Linstead had come to a close. There were Jamaican leaders in place who could teach, lead worship, and administrate the affairs of the church. It was time for us to “gracefully” transition out! Interestingly, when we first began to discuss the move to Jamaica to lead Bread of Life more than two years earlier, we had thought of it as an eighteen-month assignment. Yet we had made a decisive move away from all we were doing in the US and didn’t feel as if God was moving us away from Jamaica. So what to do next?
In this transitional season, when the present God-assignment was completed and the next steps weren’t clear, we met Al Miller, Founder of Whole Life Ministries, a man with a vision for the nation! Al invited us to begin meeting with him and his team once a week at the WLM office in Kingston. We soon realized that we cared for and were called to very similar and compatible assignments. And we realized that we cared for each other and were called to partner together in ministry for the current season.
Al Miller had connections across denominations and in all the fourteen parishes of Jamaica. We had the desire to help churches with discipleship teaching and training and with children’s and youth ministry. We were soon busy developing and conducting seminars in local churches and for groups of churches in denominations. It became clear that we needed to make a move from Linstead to Kingston to be closer to the action.
At Al’s introduction, Jean and I joined the Jamaica Association of Full Gospel Churches, a fellowship with member churches of 33 different denominations. We began regularly attending their monthly meetings and Jean was asked to serve as Secretary for the Association. I became a regular contributor to discussions and was soon invited to speak at member churches. A new and completely unforeseen thing was blossoming!
Sidebar: A condition of our residence in Jamaica was that our work permit be “sponsored” by a Jamaican church or recognized parachurch ministry and that our income be supplied in US funds from outside the country. So if we left Bread of Life in Linstead, we needed a new “sponsor” ministry. We would still be responsible as before for raising our own support from outside Jamaica. The relationship with Al Miller and Whole Life Ministries was solid and as we discussed the way forward, Al offered for WLM to sponsor our work permit. Remember this detail! It will be important in the story coming up next week!
Also, in this transitional season we met the team from Youth With A Mission, who had established a base for ministry and Discipleship Training Schools in Jamaica. They were in the process of moving their base from the North Coast to a village in the mountains outside Mandeville, in Manchester Parish. The YWAM Director asked us to come and do a week of teaching at the first DTS (Discipleship Training School) in their new location. We made the two-and-a-half hour drive from Kingston and got settled into our room for the week.
The local YWAM base had a good team made up of young people from around the US, a director from Canada, a couple from a country in Europe I can’t remember, and even a young man named Daniel, from Nigeria. Remember this detail! It will be important in the story coming up next week! Several Jamaicans were on the course, a Discipleship Training School, and would become part of the YWAM team on completion of the DTS course. We taught the day classes and then on the final night we spoke at a meeting to which people from the community were also invited.
When we finished speaking in the evening session of our final day at the YWAM base and returned to our room, we found a note on our bed that a phone call had come for us that Jean’s Dad was in the hospital and we needed to get in touch.
I’ve got to explain the phone situation! This was before mobile phones! Remember when phones had wires connecting them to other wires connecting them to the known universe? I know, right? How primitive! And in Jamaica in the 80’s there was a three or four-year waiting list to get a phone line to your house. So if you wanted a phone, you had to rent or buy a house that already had a phone! In this case, the YWAM team had worked out an arrangement with their closest neighbor, who had a phone, to build a small hut next to their house, put an extension phone in the hut, and then allow the YWAM team to use the “hut phone” and pay for the calls. It was a great system!
We have never figured out how Jean’s family in Washington State found that number, called it, and left a message for us. And they can’t remember either. But there it was! And it was the rainy season. And it was night. And the hundred-yard path through the jungle was muddy! We walked through the jungle with our little flashlight to the phone hut. We called Jean’s sister’s home and the only one there was nine-year-old Brian. Brian took our “collect call” (remember those?) but couldn’t tell us much. So we told Brian that we were traveling home to Kingston the next morning and would call when we got there.
We learned that Jean’s Dad had been diagnosed with cancer and had surgery to implant a steel rod in his upper spine to stabilize his vertebra and would begin radiation treatment soon. He didn’t live long after this but Jean was able to go to Washington State to see the family and spend time with her Dad before he passed away.
One of the sacrifices of “missionary ministry” is that because you can’t be in two places at once, you miss a lot of extended family stuff. Jean got to see her Dad for a few days when he was ill, but didn’t get to attend his funeral because we couldn’t get her a flight from Jamaica at the time he passed away. I didn’t get to see my Dad before he died, but because I already had a ticket to Jacksonville, FL when he passed, I was able to get home to Oregon for his funeral. My Mom and my brother Skip both passed away while we were overseas. You miss a lot! But it’s a legitimate sacrifice and the rewards are great as well! We’ve had a wonderful life and now we’re in a season where we get to be with our kids and grandkids a lot and we’ve reconnected with our surviving siblings and cousins. And I get to walk in the desert with my dog Jake! It’s a great life!
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