Photo by Abigail Thomas

Abigail Thomas of Eagle Rock has provided some pictures of her mission trip to Jamaica earlier in the summer. She spoke to The Botetourt View about her mission trip.

She traveled with the Caribbean Christian Centre for the Deaf in Kingston, Jamaica. "I met a team from First Presbyterian Church out of Macon, Georgia." She didn't know them until they met in the Atlanta airport. "It was really cool for me to look out for the team shirts. It had a Jamaican flag on the back." The hugged her as soon as they met her. She had been before so they were quizzing her about what was to come. "We got there and spent Saturday afternoon getting to know the kids." There were 27 members on the team she joined.

A typical day: they arose at 6:30, ate at 7 a.m., got to work at 8:30; broke for lunch, went back to work until 4:30, had dinner went to bed at 11. "We were tired."

"Blake Woodmere is the project manager and he was the new missionary there at the Centre. He was in charge of sort of everything," she said.

She described her trip. "The sun got up earlier at 5:30 -- no daylight savings time. I watched the sun come up over the wall. I read my Bible and did my devotional book. It was so quiet. Pigeons and turtledoves came up to my feet. It was funny to watch their heads bob back and forth when they walked and especially when they picked up speed."

"We worked on the old office building; it was too small and had holes in the roof. We took the old roof and old outside walls so they could build up to ceiling height to get it ready for renovation. Previous teams had the walls ready. They have about five teams there per year. I got to see the finished dorms we worked on last year. It was really cool for me to see how they had built up the new office. We were the demolition crew and rebuilt the walls. We poured some concrete floor there. We used a concrete mixer and used wheelbarrows first with gravel and sand to the mixer and brought back the concrete to the floor."

They also cleaned the library and properly put away the donated materials. She had to clean out a mildewy cabinet. She said it smelled horrible, especially mixed with the smell of bleach. When everything was put back everything looked really clean. "I hope when I go back next year it will still look nice." Painting and installing rebar grates over the windows was another job her group did to keep out burglars and flying debris during hurricanes.

"Playing with the children, those wonderful kids made all of the hard work worthwhile," she said. "Sometimes when the kids got out of school they watched us for two hours until we were through. Then we played. It was fun. They liked to play kick ball, soccer, a jump rope and climbing mango trees. The picnic shelter with a tin roof sits under a mango tree. The banging mangoes as they dropped on the tin roof caused the group to leap!"

On Friday they traveled to Ocho Rios for some fun. They went to the straw market and bargained; it is an open air market. They bought lots of Jamaican-type souvenirs there. They also went to the Dunns River Falls and beach.

On return they ate a meal prepared by the students at the school and watched them do a sign language song. "We had real Jamaican jerk chicken with corn dodgers and cabbage salad."

Thomas plans to return next year for another mission trip.

For more photos, visit The Notebook on botetourtview.com.