Tonight I had my first official meeting with my Virgin Island/St Croix team!! Let me first just say that God is AWESOME by already working on my heart with this team and giving me the JOY and excitement I haven't had. My team consists of 10 people fired up for God and His plan for us. There are 6 girls (myself included), 2 guys, and a married couple Josh & Melissa who are our fearless leaders. I don't know everyone very well as of yet, but I'm certain that soon enough we will get to know each other better. Our point of getting together tonight was to really focous on prayer for the island and the people there as well. I also found out some interesting fact and information about the Virgin Island, St Croix that I've ever known and am going to share with you............
The people are a wide varity of nationalities and social stand points that populate this island. I will try to tell you their history in a quick, non-boring way. Here goes. In the 17oos and 1800s there was a ton of slavery and slave trading that took place on this island as well as piarate influences being that this was a "safe place" for them. The pirates were a strong influence with slavery and how the island was governed...leading to control, more slavery and distruction. This left the islanders in a state of depression, oppression and poverty. The Virgin Islands have also been owned and bought several times ending up with being a teritory owned by the United States since the early 1900s. Since then the people of these small islands have been fully dependant on the government.
The mindset of the people is that of "If I'm in trouble or make a mistake the government will bail me out". So, for example, a mother might spend $100 on a haircut but run out of money for her children at the end of the month and have to ask for food stamps. Also, the way that a man is respected and builds his pride, is by the amount of children he has...so there are a lot of rather large families and children who then cannot be properly taken care of. The island I'm going, St. Croix, is mostly these poverty stricken people...the other two islands are tourist traps that contain resorts, hotels, and luxorious places for vacations. If you are not rich "enough" or homeless, the people will be actually shipped to the island of St. Croix so as to take away any appearance of poverty and homelessness from the tourist areas. This is messed up to be sure.
As a team we have several different ministry opportunities to take part in there with another small YWAM base. We have the opportunity to serve in a orphanage with children who are aged from new born to 18 years old, as well as some with mental disabilities. We can assist and minister in a nursing home to the elderly, help feed the homeless nearby, open a health clinic and any other random things we might come up with. As you can see it is a broad variety of ways to serve this community....what we will be doing for sure we don't know but are continually praying about.
Besides getting to know each other, when meeting together for the first time, we also began praying for these islands and certain things we would like to see in our team. We prayed for courage, fearlessness, that we would be one as a family, to build one-one relationships for the people there, and that we as a team would be marked with JOY. This especially is something that I believe our group will be...a group of JOY bringers and that people will see the JOY of Jesus in us...I'm excited to get going with our plans and ideas for this place God has called us! I cannot wait to see what He has planned. I will keep you all updated!!
Peace out.
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