Enjoying Jamaican Jerk!

Hot off the grill!


Are you excited enough Jennifer? ;)


Yummy!!


Doesn't get much better than this!

More Photos from Majestic Gardens

See the below posting for a full description of these photos ~



Teaching the children a few fun songs about Jesus!


Kids love fun hand motions!


Reading to the children.


Lots of hugs for John!

Majestic Gardens

We spent this morning at an extremely impoverished area in Kingston called Majestic Gardens, where 5,000+ people are living in make-shift housing. Within the community, there is a center called St. Andrew Settlement, which houses a medical and dental clinic, a preschool, vocational training, a library, a church and more! The center is sponsored by St. Andrew Parish Church and has been in the community since 1965. Their aim is to "encourage residents to be self-sufficient, despite their depressed social condition, and to build a healthy and productive community."

We spent the morning at the center with several others from the ship's company. What an incredible morning! The first part of the morning was spent at the preschool. We put on a short program for them with lots of fun songs with hand motions. The kids loved it! Then I read a story about friendship and told them that Jesus can be your best friend if you invite him into your life. Then we headed to the area where senior citizens were awaiting their free lunch meal. We spent time connecting and sharing with them about the love of Jesus. The morning concluded going into their clinic (which mostly serves pregnant moms and babies) and spent some time with a few new mothers and their babies. What a special time. We are so blessed to have gone on this team this morning. Thank you to God for speaking through us today.


Arriving at the center


A friend John met while he waited for his free lunch meal. John was able to share with him about God's mission for your life and encouraged him to be a light in his community.


One of the sweet babies at the clinic. Her mother is in the pink shirt in the back of the photo.


John gives a little lovin' to this new born baby girl.

Full Day!

We had an incredibly full and rich day yesterday. I (Jennifer) had the privilege of leading the crew members that have been on board for one year through a "Life Direction Check" yesterday morning. The purpose of the morning was to give them time to reflect on the past year and set goals for the remaining time they have on board. I trust it was a good and rewarding experience for them. Then in the afternoon, John and I lead a training session for our local volunteers on God's Love. We had 30+ people in our training and we really enjoyed the opportunity to connect with them. Then in the evening, we welcomed a new ship family child -- Chrissi from
Germany! There are still people slowing arriving on board from our sister ship the Doulos (which is in the process of being decommissioned). Thank the Lord for wonderful, rewarding days like yesterday.

Wonderful Day Off

We had a wonderful day yesterday exploring more of Jamaica! A group of about 30 of us from the ship's company set off for a trip to Fort Antonio, Jamaica. Our first stop was the Blue Lagoon, which is among the greatest natural attractions of Jamaica. The Blue Lagoon is constantly changing colors from azure blue to deep emerald, to sapphire and turquoise. It was originally called “The Blue Hole.” The area was made famous by several movies, particularly Brooke Shields' movie "Blue Lagoon" and hence the site was re-named from "The Blue Hole" to “The Blue Lagoon." The Blue Lagoon is a water hole fed by underground fresh water springs and connected to the Caribbean Sea. Initially thought of as a bottomless hole, it gave rise to fables and fantasies (there is said to be a dragon at the bottom!). However, exploration has confirmed its depth to be 200 feet, which renders its fabulous colors. When we arrived a little before noon, the lagoon was a beautiful turquoise color. The top layer of the water is fresh water and the bottom part is salt water, so the top layer is very cold (by your shoulders and arms) and the bottom is very warm (by your legs). It definitely was an interesting experience!

The second stop on our tour was Frenchman's Cove. The cove was a beautiful beach area, also famous for many movies: Club Paradise (with Robin Williams), Treasure Island (with Charlton Heston), and The Mighty Quinn (with Denzel Washington). We had a wonderful time enjoying the water and waves!

The last stop on our outing was the home of Jamaican jerk seasoning! Our van pulled into an area with about 10+ vendors trying to direct us to their jerk stand. What an experience! If you're not familiar with jerk, it's a style of cooking native to Jamaica in which meats are dry-rubbed or marinated with a very hot spice mixture called Jamaican jerk spice. Jerk seasoning is traditionally applied to pork and chicken. Jerk seasoning principally relies upon two items: allspice (called "pimento" in Jamaica) and Scotch bonnet peppers (among the hottest peppers on the Scoville scale). Other ingredients include cloves, cinnamon, scallions, nutmeg, thyme, and garlic. Man oh man, is it ever HOT and DELICIOUS!! We loved every minute of it.

We are so thankful for this opportunity to see more of the beautiful island of Jamaica! What a day!

Home page of the Logos Hope website!

Every few days, there's a new lead story on the Logos Hope website. Make sure to check it out today! (www.logoshope.org) There's a picture of our CEO speaking at our one-year celebration last night and you can see us intently listening from the front row! ;) I put the picture below as well (taken by our ship's photographer Marina Maddock-Lyon). We had an incredible time celebrating our one year of ministry. Over the past year, we've visited 23 ports, 18 countries and had 565,000 visitors! Thank the Lord!

Hosting

John and I are so blessed to have had so many opportunities to be hosts at on board events on the ship. Last night was our opening ceremony on board, so we were invited to help host the event. We met many fabulous people. The most exciting part was meeting two really nice young Americans that work in the US Embassy in Kingston. We really enjoyed meeting them and connecting. What a blessing!

Then this morning, I (Jennifer) had the opportunity to help host an event put on by a local non-profit organization called Faith and Deeds. Again, I really enjoyed meeting many local people. During both events, I gave tours of the ship. Even after 1 1/2 years, it's still such a privilege to show people my "floating home."

One Year Anniversary

Today marks one year since our maiden voyage out of Koge, Denmark! It was one year ago today that we sailed the Logos Hope into full time ministry. It's quite funny to think about the weather differences between last year and this year. Our first port of call last year was in Sweden, so we were literally breaking through the ice to get into port. It was snowing like crazy and FREEZING! A year later, we're in sunny Jamaica enjoying weather in the high 80's! ;) God is so good. Over the past year, we've sailed to Sweden, Netherlands, Scotland, Faroe Islands, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Wales, England then across the Atlantic to St. Vincent, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, Barbados, Curacao, Aruba and now Jamaica! What a blessing to experience so much of the world and to meet such incredible people. We feel so blessed to be a part of what God's doing on the Logos Hope.

Great start to Kingston!

Yesterday was our first day open to the public in Kingston and we had 4,283 visitors! Praise God! Tonight will be our official opening ceremony for Kingston and John and I have been asked to host the event and help give tours. Should be fun!

Goodbye Montego Bay, Hello Kingston

Monday evening, we sailed away from Montego Bay, Jamaica and arrived in Kingston, Jamaica yesterday afternoon. We spent four weeks in Montego Bay and now will be spending five weeks in Kingston. This is the longest we'll be in one country since we left Denmark a year ago! Montego Bay was an incredible port for the ship. In our four weeks there, we had 83,474 visitors! And considering the population of Montego Bay is about 96,000, I'd say that's pretty amazing!! The most exciting part of Montego Bay is the thousands and thousands of school children that came for our school programs. We had 16, 513 children attend one of our our many school programs that we put on while in Montego Bay. Our school programs are quite incredible. We can fit about 400 kids into our theatre where they watch a really cute play about pirates searching for the "greatest treasure" which turns out to be the Word of God. We also play games with them, tell them about the ship and share about the love of Jesus. We thank God that all 16,000+ of these children heard the message of Jesus. Thank the Lord for what He is doing in Jamaica!

Our Only Valentine's Day Pic

So Jennifer and I (John) went out in Montego Bay, Jamaica for Valentine's Day and had a great time. We took lots of fun pics at the Jamaican Bobsled Cafe and some great self-portraits at this local restaurant: The Pork Pit. We wanted to take some videos and take more pictures so I was looking at how much space the memory card had left, but I think that I accidentally formatted the memory card and deleted all the pictures. :( So this is one of two pictures taken after that. The Pork Pit is written up in a book called 1001 Places to See Before You Die. It is a total local hangout and the Jamaican Jerk chicken and pork was out of the world, the hot sauce burned the lips right off of my face. We had a great Valentine's Day in Jamaica... it's just too bad we only have one picture to prove it. ;)

Prayer for India and the Dalits

This morning, John and I started a new prayer time on board to specifically pray for India and the Dalits. Before joining the ship, John and I were intrigued and interested in India as a country, but over the past year and a half of being on board, our passion has grown immensely for the country of India. Much of it was due to our love and friendship for one of our Indian ship sons, BK. Over the last two years, we've had nine Indians on board, and in the past weeks eight of them have left. John and I felt like this was the right timing to initiate a small group of people to start praying for India, our Indian friends that have gone back home and for the Dalit people. We'll meet on Saturday mornings, so this morning was our first morning together. It was a God filled time. Our ship's community sponsors 30 Dalits children that are a part of OM India's Good Shepherd Schools for Dalits. Each week, we'll pray for one of the children we sponsor. This morning we lifted up sweet 3-year-old Kumar. May this also inspire those of you reading this blog to lift up India and the Dalits in your prayers.

Internship for New Crew Members

This morning, we kicked off an internship program for our new crew members. This is Training Services (my department on board) second go at the internship program. We piloted it when crew joined last September. I'm happy to say that as part of my job on board I'll be coordinating the internship for this round of new crew members. I'm quite excited about it! There are three elements of the internship - Spiritual Formation, Community & Lifestyle and Ministry. The internship will last 18 weeks and throughout these weeks, the interns (a.k.a. new crew members) will go through the study book Experiencing God, work through several community goals and also choose a "ministry steam" to focus their time. The choices are kids' ministry, public speaking, creative ministry, sports ministry, personal evangelism and study group leadership (which I'll be leading). What an experience for me and the new crew members both! :)

New Ship Family Children!

Let us introduce you to our three new ship family children!


Setting up our ship family table for our new children.


Our three new children - Paola (Peru), Jo (Germany) and Kathryn (Northern Ireland)


The whole crew ;)

Logos Hope in 60 Seconds!

Watch this awesome new video that our videograher just made about the ship. It's just 60 seconds! :)

http://www.omships.org/share/index.php?id=2009-12-Logos-Hope-In-60s

Pictures from Training

All of the new recruits were put into small groups for fellowship during the training. Here is my small group! What a fun bunch.


Just a snap shot of me training!

Back on board!

We arrived back on board the ship last night! The training for the new recruits was really awesome. We have 69 crew members on board as of yesterday! I (Jennifer) was on shore for the training for 13 nights and John was able to join us for 5 of the nights! So great. Highlights for me was training on team work and goal setting. We also had little small groups during our time there, so that was a real highlight too. John trained on hospitality and partnership, so he really enjoyed that as well. Please keep the new recruits in your prayers as they settle into ship's life.