Monthly Archives: May 2007

Well, it wasn’t all fun, fun, fun – there was some work as well – but it was full of joy. We all met at a government-owned training hotel in Runaway Bay on Jamaica’s north coast (what a great idea that is – 90% of the staff are students training to work in the hotel industry across the Caribbean – each has to spend a few months doing all the various jobs needed in a hotel – from the front desk to cleaning the rooms via the kitchens and waitering). There were around 80 delegates on the conference, from around 7 or 8 different denominations and representing the whole island of Jamaica.

United by Language

This is the only country that i’ve visited with Langham where English is everybody’s first and only language – and what a difference that makes. In fact, Bishop Harry Daniel, one of the leading lights behind Langham’s work in Jamaica, told the story of how years back he was filling an application form to study at an American college which asked him to fill in a box on the standard of his English – he left it blank because it seemed unnecessary. For he was from JAMAICA, after all! The truth is, from my little experience of being there, many Jamaicans have much better English than Brits, let alone Americans. But far more significant that simply sharing a language, it really felt like a meeting of minds – sharing the joys and challenges of ministry with people who face similar issues despite huge differences in culture and context.

Cross-Global Impacts

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