Welcome to the month of May blog! May has been a time of using our “new eyes” (see February blog) to arrive at some conclusions as to how God has led us to see two initial projects that, with your help, will enable the Church here to deal with some of the issues in our community.Youth Camps are a large part of Youth Ministry in Grenada as well as on other Islands in the Caribbean. The PCG has held successful camps for some years. They have been using the camp of another church dreaming, at the same time, about their own camp on six acres of land which had been deeded to them. Camps provide an ideal setting for learning not only for our church children and adults but also for the people in the community around us. Learning about Jesus Christ; learning about medical and social issues such as Aids, diabetes, and nutrition as well as the need for exercise, etc.; about the need, in short, for an individual to have a healthy body, mind and spirit so that they may live, worship and work to their fullest potential and be at peace in God’s good creation.
Through the offices of International Ministries of the PCC we will be trying to raise funds to support the PCG camp this August at its usual site. We have tried to structure our project in a way that might encourage you to help. A donation of $50.00 will send a child to camp. $65.00 will send a child to camp and help us provide equipment for such games as cricket, soccer, netball and volleyball. $125.00 will send a child to camp, provide sports equipment and help build proposed wooden housing on the new camp site. These amounts are in Canadian dollars.
Belair P.C. is a small church with no funds with which to outreach into their community, Conference; it is a community rifled with poverty. 80% of the children go to school hungry, have little English language and math skills and absolutely no computer skills at all. This is an immense problem when they go to high school as they are expected to do research and work on computers there. They then get waived through the school system and become stuck as they are for life.
So, we are looking, with the blessing of International Ministries, for
six lap top computers to conduct a test of a future project. We need lap tops because Belair P.C. is not secure and we will need to carry the lap tops back and forward with us for now. At first our aim is to achieve only a few things with the computers. Ann can teach basic key boarding, I can teach basic computer skills. We have been promised a programme that will teach computers skills, as well as two others that will teach English grammar and conjugation and math skills. The computers obviously do not need to be brand new but should be able to withstand a bit of a pounding!We are also hoping this outreach will put some new bottoms on the pews at Belair and, of course, help “our” kids there too.
We give thanks to God though that May was not all work! The Youth Fellowship at Belair hiked up to St. Margaret’s Water Fall. We hiked, straight up, for just over an hour, across chasms and streams, fighting with mosquitoes, gorgeous dragon flies and birds as well as some small lizards as we all gasped for the same air there! We fed the fish in the pool beneath the falls then jumped in beside them! The hike down lasted almost ninety minutes and culminated in us drivers, walking on our own to where our cars were parked so that we could pick up the rest of the group where they had fallen! We are all agreed there will be no more hiking for a while, at least not till next month.
Our Youth Fellowship over the next few weeks will be making and selling ice cream to raise funds for the camp in August. Does ice cream sell well in Grenada’s 28c temperature? We have an ice cream making machine that looks like an old wooden butter churn from the farm in the 50s. Is the ice cream good? Is there a line up to clean up the churn? You just know it!
In Romans 12 Paul writes that if we will allow ourselves to be transformed by the renewing of our mind then we will be able to test God’s will for us, his good, pleasing and perfect will. People care for people they know well. God cares for each of us well.
God has known us from before we were conceived. What has Grenada taught this month? God’s loving grace and the renewal it brings each day is the only sure foundation for ministry everywhere. Like most ministers I work hard at the projects I am involved in even as I need the affection and approval of others. I know though that what may be brought about by God’s steady hand in Grenada will not be achieved by any merit or need of mine but by God’s will and the support of my family, friends and colleagues, who may be some distance from both of us but hold us safely and securely in their prayers.Pray, please, for the renewal of our minds, the contentment of our hearts; the gift of eyes that see both new things and things in need of renewal. Most of all pray for the people of Grenada, help them to see that renewal is available to them with each new day by the will and grace of God.
