Dear Family & Friends,
Thank you so much for supporting me and my team in Jamaica. We had a lot of fun sharing God’s word with the Jamaicans. We had a group of interns from the Jamaica Youth for Christ who helped us with puppets, played in the band (because my team was so small we didn’t have a band) and helped us figure out how everything worked. In Jamaica, we put on shows for students in schools, orphanages and for disabled children. The children really loved the attention they got from us. It was hard leaving sometimes because it felt like you were betraying the children. We put on puppet shows, acted out silent dramas and the band played songs. While we were there every student on our team shared his/her testimony. Giving my testimony in front of all those people was hard but God helped me and I made it through! At night we put on a show in a church yard for the surrounding neighborhood. These shows were mainly for the adults in the audience but we still did puppet shows for the children, which they loved. It was cool to see the openness of the Jamaicans. If you asked they would boldly say "Yes, I am a Christian" or "No, I am not". After the shows we would go around and talk to people and help them figure out the meaning of the dramas, puppets, and music.
During this time God taught me to be flexible. We would be told we were going to go to this place at this time and we’re going to do this. Then five minutes later it was “We’re going to go there and do that and at that time.” I had to learn to say “Ok, cool, let’s do it". I also learned to be more open with people and talk to total strangers (I had learned the lesson “Don’t talk to strangers” too well).
I also learned to trust God and know everything’s in His control. On the way back our 1:00 p.m. flight from Jamaica to Florida was delayed until 3:00 p.m. Because of that, we would miss our connecting flight. So instead they got us on later flight out of Florida. We went and got lunch and had a debriefing. As we were doing some last minute shopping, we discovered that the plane out of Jamaica was delayed again until 6:00 p.m. If all went well, we could get on our new connecting flight out of Florida. We didn’t make it. So we spent the night in Florida in a hotel that the airline paid for because we had travel insurance. The next morning half of our group left at 6:00 a.m. (I wasn’t on that flight (YES!!!)). My group left Florida at 10:00 a.m. but we had another stopover in Dallas before going on to California. At LAX my parents were there waiting for us. God took care of everything and even gave Amy, the secretary who bought the tickets, the foresight to buy the travel insurance.
Besides the adventure in Florida, the trip to Jamaica ran smoothly and everyone had a great time. God taught us all lots of very important lessons that I know I will never forget. Thank you for making the whole trip possible.
God’s Little Missionary,
Emily Sudman
