Glasset Davis wants to be a journalist. She doesn’t like math very much, and tolerates science, but she loves to write. “My teacher says I am a good writer,” she says, shyly. Her round brown face lights up.
Glasset is a 14-year-old student at Farm Primary and Junior High School in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Her crisp school uniform is as emerald green as the tropical highlands her poor neighborhood nestles in. I met her today while visiting the school to gather information on the Miles Ahead project to build a 400-foot-long wall around the institution, which has been threatened by young gang members, sexual predators and thieves. The volunteers also are renovating the school’s dark and dank concrete-block lavatories, whose toilets are waterless and broken.
She asked me what she should do to reach her goal. Of course I told her to practice, practice, practice; and to read and read. But I was thinking. Around us swarmed some of the 900 or so other children who attend Farm School. They mostly come from desperately poor families who barely subsist. What will they grow up to be? Only God knows.
But I do know that God knows Glasset’s dream. Glasset’s favorite scripture is Psalm 36. “Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens,/your faithfulness to the skies. / Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, / your justice like the great deep. / O LORD, you preserve both man and beast. ”
I believe God’s love and faithfulness can reach past Jamaica’s lush mountains and prepare Glasset’s way.
April 30th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I just read the “reaching to the heavens” journal and I want to thank you Medical Team 4 for sharing your experiences. It is truly a blessing hearing the impact that you are making on these people’s lives and on the opposite side the impact on your lives and ours here in San Diego. Blessings to all,
Amelia Porras