Your Jamaica Mission Team visited the Robin’s Nest orphanage on Monday. It was our first trip to an orphanage. We knew there were many repairs to be made and went with tools in our backpacks…ready to work/serve wherever we were needed. I envisioned a day of service work. You know, helping the missionaries who were in turn helping orphaned children. I should have known that God had other plans by the way He had been working in my heart before we ever arrived in Jamaica.
Before we began our work, we received a tour of the orphanage facilities. God broke my heart before the tour was ever finished. As we were completing our tour of the orphanage facilities, we stopped at an empty room. One could not help but think of the children who would be in the room later that day. The impact that being abandoned must have on these young lives brought tears to my eyes. I was at once thankful for being raised in a Christian home in the United States, yet immensely saddened at the plight of these children. I’m not sure where this burning concern for these children that God has placed in my heart will lead, but I plan to follow His leading regardless.
I’m grateful for this orphanage and the devoted missionaries who have uprooted their families, given up their “normal” way of life in the States and chosen instead to provide both Christian guidance and compassion to these needy Jamaican children. I’m grateful that we were privileged to work together as a team to install flood lights on two buildings and move sand rock for erosion control around another building. I’m grateful for the sweet ladies on our team who helped feed the children, wash/hang out laundry, change diapers and perform various other tasks as servants to our missionary friends. All of these are wonderful memories from the visit today, but I cannot get out of my mind the last haunting words the children cried out as we left: “Are you coming back tomorrow? Are you coming back tomorrow?”
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