Minutes by Minute

The new roof inside the Refuge Basic School and Community Center Our team heads out on a nature walk with the children from the school while their new built desks dry from the final coat of protectant A view from a distance of the school building       Asbury UMC from Tulsa, OK spent a week in Jamaica from March 13-20, 2011. Their ministry included working with local schools and spending time with students in their classes. In the afternoons the teams were involved in community work projects such as the one up in Refuge. The group that worked with the Refuge Basic School not only invested in the children and spent the week with them, but they replaced a roof and ceiling inside the building and built new desks for the school. The team was led by Craig Tomlinson from Asbury UMC and Glendon Hazle from Hopewell Baptist Church in Hanover, Jamaica. It was awesome to see the students from Asbury invest their time in impacting these little children and helping th...

      Maureen Young and her husband live in the small town of Refuge. Refuge is a small community in Trelawny. There's a school and a community, that's about it. It's not a far drive from the main highway so many people that live there travel via route taxis to the highway and work in the tourism industry or some other form outside of the community of Refuge. Maureen occasionally works at the school in the community doing cleaning and janitorial work. The picture above is a photo of a foundation that First Presbyterian Church from Houston, TX laid in June of 2010 on a PPM trip. The foundation is for the Young's future home. Establishing a firm foundation is the first and most important part of building a home. The foundation sets the standard for the way the rest of the structure will hold up. Jesus says in Matthew 7:24 that, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like the wise man who builds his house upon the rock." The Lord ...

     One of the projects some of our summer teams will likely be involved in here in Jamaica is the construction of a pigsty at the Nutshell Conference Center. "Nutshell" is a good size conference center in Trelawny, Jamaica. The facility is east of Montego Bay about an hour. It's owned by the Jamaica Baptist Union and is run by the director, Leslie Blake, who is also an assistant pastor at the William Knibb Baptist Church in Falmouth, Jamaica. The future pigsty will allow Nutshell to raise pigs and save money by providing their own pork and bacon. They will also be able to raise pigs and sell them for profit, this will provide jobs for people from the nearby towns of Spice Hill and Duncans. Nutshell already has a large chicken coop and is working on acquiring some chicks to begin raising them, which will also provide work and income for individuals and Nutshell as a whole.     Leslie can be seen in the picture above standing in his own personal pigsty wh...

    Asbury United Methodist Church from Tulsa, OK will be traveling to Jamaica on Sunday, March 13th. There are 104 team members who are divided into 7 groups. Can you imagine the logistics that are built into a trip like this? From lodging to transportation to the ministry the team will be involved in to recreation, there's a ton that needs to be done in order for a team to have a successful mission trip. That's my job, that's exactly what I do, I make sure that everything is in place and that the team is set up to have a successful week of ministry partnering with Jamaican churches and schools.     Asbury will partner with five five different schools in the mornings on Monday through Friday, bringing an hour and a half curriculum with Bible teachings, education, etc. They will be connecting with Jamaican students, mostly ages 7-14. In the afternoons Asbury will be helping with a variety of work projects, including the construction of a couple school buil...

Where to start... I've been working with Praying Pelican Missions now for six years! It's crazy to think back to the first couple years when I served in Belize as an assistant trip leader and to see how God used my experience to prepare me for what I'm doing now. In 2008 I graduated from Central Christian College of the Bible and took a full time job with PPM. Since then, I married the love of my life- Emily, who I actually met through my work with PPM, and have begun leading our ministry in the country of Jamaica! I love the country of Jamaica, I love the people, the places, the experience, and the challenge. It's awesome to partner with churches here and the Jamaica Baptist Union, and it's a joy to do God's work with God's people in this beautiful country. I hope this blog serves as a bridge between my experience here and the people who support me personally and support the ministry of PPM. Right now I can't find any pictures from 2005 or 2006, the bes...