Newforest Retreat

This weekend was SOO amazing. A group from the DTS in MoBay came here to Stones Hope to help with a retreat as part of their outreach. The retreat was for Nadeen's class at Newforest School. Nadeen took her first year of TFNJ last year and is now teaching a class of 14 boys and one girl, their ages range from about 15-17 i think, and they have all come back to school to learn how to read.

Nadeen has been having alot of issues with this class. These kids have all had a rough life and are going through alot. Some of them have their own little farm and they use the money from that to pay for school fees. Others live in abusive homes. It's a really sad situation. None of them wanted to go home today, they just wanted to stay on the base where they knew they were loved!

The weekend started Friday night at 6:00. The kids came and we ate supper and then did some 'team building' activities. We did the trust fall, and a unity game. They were fun games to loosen everyone up and get to know eachother. It went really well, and they kids really did loosen up. It was fun!

Then yesterday we started with the serious stuff. We were grouped into 5 groups and we had 6 different sessions throughout the day. They were all based on relationships. The root cause of why families are falling apart in Jamaica, consequences of bad relationships, like fornication and adultery, and other things surrounding how to have a pure relationship.

I had two boys in my group, Garnett and Hugh. It was obvious right from the start that Garnett had been believing alot of lies about relationships. he thought it was okay for a man to hit his wife, and he didn't believe that the Bible was true. We had alot to work through, but I think that both of the boys learned alot, and they both know that sex before marriage is not good.

Last night we had a bondfire and something really amazing happened. One of the boys never actually wanted to come, but then last night, after learning so much about God and relationships he began to pray at the bondfire, just in his head. He prayed that God would prove to him that He really is as powerful as the leaders were telling him that He is. And right after he prayed that the wood in teh fire made a huge explosion and pieces of hot wood flew up in the air all around us. No one was hurt! And then he prayed again taht God would make it really obvious that He is that powerful, again. And after that prayer the fire exploded again and a huge peice of wood flew out of the fire and landed away from everyone. Now this boy knows that there really is an awesome God who is so powerful, and still listens to our prayers.

Today we had our own church service and gave the kids an opportunity to commit their lives to Christ and turn from their wicked ways. Most of them made that commitment and it was sooo amazing. God's spirit was really working in their lives this weekend. I'm so glad that I was a part of it. We plan on doing discipleship with these kids and we were telling them about the 2 week camp that YWAM has called Access that they could come to and they sounded really interested in that.

I love my life. Reaching out and helping those who really need to know that they are loved is the best thing ever!!!!

I'll have pics about this on www.dropshots.com/krissisatjamaica2