Friday, May 2, 2008, 8:09 p.m. Jamaica time (Montego Bay, Jamaica) — Jesus’ disciples were out on a lake when a storm blew up, so severe that it threatened to capsize their boat and end their lives. Then they saw a figure moving toward them. Jesus was walkng on the water, coming to save them.
Miles McPherson is talking to a huge crowd (we’ll get a final estimate of the numbers by the end of the evening) at Dump Up Beach. He’s telling them that Jesus has come to rescue them from the sins dragging them down to hell. He’s saying that if they will take Jesus’ hand and let Him pull them up, they too can walk on water, and live a victorious life full of joy.
“You are like the disciples out in the boat in the lake with the storm coming out and they can’t handle it,” he says. “You can stay right where you’re at, and die and go to hell. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. Or you can accept that Jesus died for you, and walk on water.”
He reminds them that the evil one tries to convince us that whatever we’re putting in the place of God is no big deal. That sort of thinking is a trap. God has something better for us than anything we keep holding on to. Miles shared from his own life, telling the crowd that he had been a 24-year-old professional NFL football player sucked into a cocaine habit he knew was wrong. He kept hanging on to it, until one day he turned his life over to Jesus. God healed him of his addiction, and guided him into a new life.
“The Bible says trust. Action number 1 is to give your life to Jesus. Action number 2 is, start walking on water,” said Miles. “Come on, let’s pray. Give your life to Jesus now. Now is the day of salvation. You might not have another chance. Tonight is your moment. Turn to Jesus. He can help you weather any storm; he can help you walk on water.”
After the alter call, Miles invited people who had made a commitment to Jesus Christ to raise their hands. Thousands did. He told them to wait for volunteers to give them a book for new Christians.
Friday, May 2, 2008, 7:14 p.m. Jamaica time (Montego Bay,Jamaica) – Prodigal Son is blasting from the main stage. Dump Up Beach is jumping. It’s packed with rocking Jamaicans from the shore to the street, from the stage to the parking lot. Lord, let everyone You want to be here, be here.
Earlier, local leader the Rev. Conrad Pitkin introduced Robert Levy of Jamaica Broilers. Mr. Levy welcomed Miles McPherson and Miles Ahead to Montego Bay, and DJ Nicholas made the crowd roar. People continued to pour into the field at Dump Up Beach, tranforming it into a concert hall under Jamaican stars.
The event is part of an island-wide 50th anniversary celebration funded by the Jamaica Broilers Group, the region’s premier food manufacturer. Three major family-oriented festivals are being presented between April 26 and May 4. Andrew Palau addressed the Mandeville Festival April 26 and 27; and Miles McPherson will be at Montego Bay’s Dump Up Beach on May 2 and 3; and Luis Palau will be on the King’s House grounds in Kingston from on May 3 and 4.
Friday, May 2, 2008, 6:34 p.m. Jamaica time (Montego Bay, Jamaica) — In the VIP tent behind the main stage, a friendly athlete named Evan Kuzava (who explains below how his name is pronounced), plopped down and said hi. Turns out he is one of two Untitled Skateboard riders, which provided entertainment during the family fun time preceding the concert and Miles’ message. We invited Evan, who’s from Colorado, to post a guest blog post, and this is what he wrote:
Untitled Skateboards riders Evan Kuzava (Koo Zah Vah) and Professional Uriel (Yur-El) Luebcke (Lub-kee) have skated in 2 demos in the hot sun today alongside “Stunt Dudes” John Andrus and Mike Montgomery. These dudes threw some technical maneuvers and tricks all over the first skatepark in Jamaica built by Untitled Skateboards’ founder, Jud Heald, and the team. Right next to the skatepark was a 20 ft ramp for the “Team Faith” Motocross freestyle riders to launch across a 70-ft chasm in the field, causing a loud roar from the Jamaican locals who’ve never seen such a show live. The riders main purpose was to preach the Gospel and share much more than Extreme sports. Three of the guys spoke on the mic about their freedom from sin and death through Jesus. Radical skills, radical faith. Nuff said.
Friday, May 2, 2008, 5:44 p.m. Jamaica time (Montego Bay, Jamaica) – It’s time. We’re at Dump Up Beach in downtwn Montego Bay. The stage is set, literally. The event Miles Ahead has been working toward for months is here; the Jamaica Crusade is ready to launch.
Miles McPherson just taped his daily video blog overlooking the Dump Up Beach park in front of the stage. Thousands of families are there, enjoying an extreme bike demonstration, jump stations, juggling, face painting — all sorts of fun things.
This morning a heavy rain prompted us to pray that God would bless the festival with clear skies. Now? Let me tell you how beautiful it is here right now. The sun is low in a luminescent blue sky. Sunlight is sparkling over the bay’s crystal water — water that laps right up to the boulders rimming the park. Seriously, the festival is right on the water. A gentle sea breeze is nudging away the humidity. Did I say it was beautiful? God clearly answered our prayer for the right weather. Stay tuned! (We’ll be blogging throughout the evening…)
(Tuesday, April 29, 2008) — The sweat was dripping off David Bilodeau’s nose and running down the side of his face.
In fact, all of the dozen or so Miles Ahead crew members at Farm Primary and Junior High School in Montego Bay, Jamaica, were wet with perspiration, and splattered with paint, flecks of scraped-off plaster, and schoolyard dirt. Preparing Farm School’s girls and boys’ lavatories for renovation in 100-plus heat and humidity is like doing pushups in a sauna — for hours.
“The conditions when we got here [on Monday] were horrendous,” said Bilodeau, the Miles Ahead project manager for the site. “The smell and sanitary conditions were unbelievable.”
Bilodeau, a compact and solid dark-haired man, was so depleted the frst day of operation that the Miles Ahead medical team hooked him up to an IV of fluids last night (and ordered him to drink more water). Why were Bilodeau and his volunteer plumbers, electricians, painters and carpenters working so hard?
The answer is this: So that the 900 or so children of Farm School could have dignified facilities restrooms — with newly installed lights; with freshly painted cream-colored walls and no graffiti; with 14 new toilets that actually flush and have seats, in stalls with latching doors.
Absolutely basic stuff to American sensibilities, but for Farm School, absolutely unattainable.
Farm School is nestled in a poor section of the rolling highlands above downtown Montego Bay. Not only had its restrooms fallen into disrepair; its campus has never been secure. So while Bilodeau and his colleagues were spending three challenging days renovating the bathrooms, Miles Ahead was arranging for a 400-foot-long, 10-foot-high cement wall with razer wire on top to encircle the compound.
The public primary and junior high institution sits next to a ravine-like flood channel overgrown with folliage. There are lots of places for bad guys to lurk before sneaking past the school perimeter, and unfortunately they have. They have intruded into the school to steal lunch money from the younger children and threaten the school girls. A gang of teenagers bent on revenge burst into a classroom this month and dragged out a 14-year-old boy, attacking him wtih a machete. (The last news was that he was doing well in hospital with a large gash on his shoulder.)
“The wall was so needed,” said Ida Rhoden, the morning vice principal. (The principle, Samuel Reid, and the afternoon vice principal, Mrs. C. Eastmoore, weren’t on campus when we were visiting.) “Now the children can have more of a sense of security.”
A group of children, in crisp emerald green uniforms, clustered around the MilesAhead.tv crew visiting the construction sites on campus. Their shy wide smiles lit up their faces.
“There’s a sense of pride with these children,” said Bilodeau. “They’re amazing and curious. It’s truly been a blessing for all of us. They’re giving us as much as we’re giving them.”
JAMAICA - MILESAHEAD 2008 – Childrens Ministry
The childrens ministry went to New Haven, a home for developmentally disabled kids. When we got there, we didn’t know what to expect at all, and there didn’t seem to be anyone there to give us direction. There were 4 houses, each housed about 21 kids, and only 2 workers in each house. You could tell that the caregivers are very over worked, and at first none of them would even smile at usl You could tell also that some of our team didn’t quite know how to react to some of these kids. There were a lot of kids with cerebral palsy to varying degrees, some mental retardations, one boy with cancer, and a couple autistic kids.) We decided we couldn’t really do our lesson as planned so we all just started loving on them. I saw two boys in wheel chairs, went over to them and tried to talk to them. Neither of them would respond or even look at me. I learned from the caregiver their names were Javon and Renaldo, and that of the 83 kids there, only 5 of them have any relatives that come to see them – I knew then that these kids had to be starved for affection. So I just did what I would have done to my grandkids . I pulled their wheelchairs by my sides and started rubbing both their backs at the same time. We connected. As soon as I stopped, they both turned their heads and looked at me, and started rocking in their wheel chairs. So I continued– really we had a Touch Ministry.
Then I saw the physiotherapy room, so I ventured in and met Mrs. Cummings – this teacher was extremely loving, when I met her she was helping a little boy write a love letter. Then she introduced me to Carrie (who was severely crippled – but was very bright, and she had a beautiful voice, so I asked her if she would sing a song to me, she began singing…..”this is the day that the LORD hath made, I will be glad and rejoice in it”, that’s when I shed my first tear. After she finished we went outside and Mrs. Cummings brought the music outside, she put on a Christian kids CD, and that started the Dance Fest!!!! The kids all came over, they loved to sing and some of them could really dance, they started teaching us their moves. We had so much fun, during that time I saw tears in almost every team members eyes. When we first got there we were focused on how different these kids were from us, and then when we were all praising God, and dancing before him I realized—there is no difference — we are all God’s children - all of the same spirit! Wow, what a moment, I just felt Gods love pour out all over me. Here we were to minister to these kids, and it ended up that they ministered to us.
What an awesome God we serve!
Penny Richardson, Children’s Ministry Team
Jamaica’s stunning geography — a strip of coast lapping the feet of lush tropical highlands — does not lend itself to straight and level roads. Need to get somewhere? Fasten your seatbelt.
What ratchets up the adventure further are the roads themselves. They’re narrow, curving, pot-holed — and full of Jamaican drivers! For the last two days our MilesAhead.tv crew put our lives in the hands of Noel, our van driver, who somehow managed to avoid the goats and children wandering the lanes while dodging the speeding compacts weaving around stopped vehicles alongside streetside shops and shacks. Most of us couldn’t watch.
While at a project site, waiting to depart for our next location, I mentioned to Noel that I didn’t think I could do what he did for a living, and that it must take a lot of courage to drive all day.
He smiled and nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I am very brave.”
We thank God that all the Miles Ahead teams have moved around Montego Bay safely so far, much to the credit of drivers like Noel.
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.
Steve Poppert is used to running big projects efficiently.
So when the paint for the Miles Ahead painting project at Flankers School in Montego Bay wasn’t delivered at the start of the work day, Poppert, a busy San Diego contractor, knew he could react in either of two ways. He could blow up, or look for a blessing.
He chose the latter, and here’s the blessing he found. In the five hours that went by before the paint showed up, Poppert’s 50 or so volunteers cheerfully began to look for ways to redeem the time. Without complaint, “they started to think of plans themselves,” said Poppert, a friendly barrel-chested man who looks as he’s used to working outdoors. “Somebody came up with the idea of cleaning up the school yard. They started picking up rocks and broken concrete. Someone found a broom and began to sweep. They pulled weeds. It’s neat to see.”
The “God moment” is why he volunteers on a regular basis. “I love watching people become empowered by these situations. You have people who have never gotten into this sort of work, and it pulls them out of their comfort zone.”
He was pulled out of his comfort zone many years ago, and now regularly “gives back what the Lord has given him. God wants us to be the body together,” he said. In fact, he has a construction operation that donates time and materials for needy projects. “I see a light switch come on in them. They suddenly get it.”
The principal said the event was “like Christmas in April.”
Mr. Hugh Miller, who has led Flankers Primary and Junior High School in Montego Bay for 20 years, shook his head today as he stood in the school’s weed-filled yard. The gray and coral paint on the institution’s exterior was chipped and faded. Its metal railings were rusty; its foundation and steps were crumbling.
“We are in very much need of a face lift,” said Mr. Miller, whose dark hair was sprinkled with gray, “and we couldn’t do it ourselves.”
Fifty paintbrush-wielding volunteers from Miles Ahead began lifting Flankers School’s “face,” as well as the spirits of its 746 primary and junior high students and teachers.
The crews are scheduled to work at the school for three days, April 28-30. Steve Poppert, a general contractor in San Diego who was volunteering as the project’s site coordinator, estimated that the Miles Ahead helpers were prepping, sanding and painting 20,000 square feet of wall surface, plus hand and guard rails – a job that would take a typical paint crew a month and a half and use 20 to 30 gallons of paint.
A dozen artistically inclined volunteers worked to restore five faded murals on the school’s exterior walls. Some of the wall paintings were simple animals, birds or flowers. The students’ favorite mural was of Jamaica’s seven national heroes and a map of the country, which Mr. Miller said helped build national pride in the children.
Volunteers also had plans to repaint the school’s motto of “Ambition – Performance – Success.” Steve said they had been given permission to add some scripture to the motto, to inspire the students.
Flankers School is a public school in an area of Montego Bay where many families struggle to make ends meet. For many of its students, Flankers is the most stable element of their lives — a home away from home.
Today the young girls in royal blue jumpers and boys in khaki swarmed over the volunteers, smiling shyly and asking questions. Amanda Ogden didn’t know what to expect when she and her fellow volunteers arrived at the school. When about 20 kids climbed all over her in greeting, her apprehension disappeared.
Amanda thought the children would be more reserved. “I was surprised at how friendly the kids are,” she said.
As the day progressed, the paint arrived and the painting went quickly. In fact, some of the proposed tasks that Steve had set aside — such as painting the interior of a large classroom — were put back on the to-do list. “These people are fired up,” he said. “Their spirits are so great. It’s been wonderful seeing what God has done through them.”
Mr. Miller stood for a moment in the warm tropical sunlight, his dark blue shirt gently flapping in the ocean breeze. Looking up into the residential hills facing the school’s barricaded entrance, he said, “The school is influential in the community. They see what happens here. They notice. It affects the entire neighborhood of Flankers.”
“We are very pleased.”
