The first day.

We are in central Jamaica in the town of Bensonton, in the St. Ann Parrish, in the minister’s house, sitting down to dinner with him and his family. We are eating the fried chicken, rice and salad on the front porch, looking out over the valley. It is dusk on our first day here and we can barely see the rise of the next mountain.

Some of us will be sleeping out on the tiled, polished porch since there is not enough room in the house for the ten of us, a mission team sent by our home church in Georgia. Justin and I volunteered to sleep on the porch for several good reasons: the fresh air, the view, and the sights and sounds of the night.

Earlier this afternoon, as we drove the 80 miles from the airport to Bensonton, we saw many residences damaged by the recent hurricane – just shells with no roofs. I could imagine them as being under construction, so neatly had the upper structure been separated by the wind forces and blown away in the storm.

The area here is very hilly with “our” church, as we came to regard it, the one we would be working to repair, sat on the highest hill in the village. Built by the British in 1917, they couldn’t have chosen a better site for those worshipping here. I could imagine sitting in one of the old wooden pews, alternately paying attention to the minister, then being drawn by the beautiful view from the open door and windows.

Today, though – that required a lot of imagination. The hurricane had ripped the ancient tin from the roof, exposing the beams to the sun, as the rib bones of a corpse. There was water from recent rains still standing, pooled on the tiled floor of the sanctuary. The sad wooden pews, their finish clouded and peeling by moisture and the sun, stood piled near the back wall.

It is dark – a moonless night -- as the two of us lay talking in our sleeping bags on the cool tiles of the porch. The lightening in the distance occasionally illuminates the far away mountain face. The thunder rumbles convincingly as the clouds pass over into the valley and hide the one bright star we had seen a few minutes ago after we blew out the lantern. Tomorrow we begin work after walking the one mile up to the church – I fall asleep imagining our church, roofed, tight and dry, housing the small congregation, on a sunny Sunday morning not far away.