Reflections on St Kitts

Hi everyone!

As a week has already gone by in Haiti, I still wanted to let you all know about the last couple of weeks the 12:7 Serve team spent in St Kitts. The rest of our time in St Kitts was productive and effective!

We ran a second Maximum Mission in the village of Tabernacle on our last Saturday on the island. It was a tiring but successful day. We painted the primary school and ran children and youth activities before performing the Lifehouse ‘Everything’ skit and showing the Jesus film at night. Many children chose to accept Jesus after the film, which was great!

Another part of our ministry in St Kitts was going into high schools and giving a presentation called ‘Sex, Lies and the Truth’. This was something important to share with the youth there, as it would be in any country. We also ran workshops for the church during our last few weeks. We gave a workshop on ‘The 7 Practices of Effective Ministry’, and also workshops on discipleship, youth and children’s ministry. It was great to be able to equip and encourage the church to keep working for the Lord during our time in St Kitts.

In only 3 weeks, I learnt so much about myself, the team and about ministry.

But the main lessons I learnt from St Kitts are:

1. The true meaning of culture shock. I experienced many positive, negative and overall interested feelings towards St Kitts in only 3 weeks.
2. We need to find out about the community and their needs. This is so important! We can’t just turn up in a country and expect that everything we come with for them will be effective. Over 3 weeks, we were able to learn about St Kitts and what the church and community really needed – and this gave us the ability to work more effectively.
3. Sometimes people have all the ideas, we just need to encourage them to go for it!

Pastor Grant and I

Sister Carmen and I (The lady we stayed with)

So goodbye St Kitts! May God bless you and keep you always.

I will update you all on Haiti soon. Please keep praying for the team and our ministry!

On the journey,

Dani

St Kitts and Nevis

Hello from the beautiful island of St Kitts!

The weather is warm, windy and occasionally rainy. The people are welcoming and friendly, though curious as to why we are here. But curiosity can be a good thing - it’s through this that people ask questions and we can share our story.

The culture of this island is what you call “Caribbean Culture”. It’s a relaxed lifestyle, with not a lot of structure to it, which is the opposite of what it’s like at home. In conversation, the “Kittitians” as they’re called, are very direct, eg. One girl just shouted out “Who are you all?” as we said hello to her and her grandmother haha. One big culture shock moment I’ve had is the fact that because of the relaxed culture, everyone in St Kitts runs on “island time”, or in other words, behind time. If you know me, you’ll know that I’m always running a little late, but this was a whole new idea of what time meant! Though overall, the Kittitians are well-meaning people.

The church here is in a village called Tabernacle. It is pastored by Rev. Herbie Grant, an elderly man who has been with the church for many years. My first prayer point for St Kitts begins here, that the church would experience growth and development, because at the moment there is none. The people at Tabernacle church are beautiful and really love God, but have no training or tools for evangelism and discipleship of new believers. So part of our mission in St Kitts is to train the church in discipleship and evangelism, and to identify potential leaders to come alongside Pastor Grant.

Lynda preaching last Sunday

Alan preaching at the night service, with Estela translating

Our second, and major task during our now 2 and a half weeks of St Kitts, is to lay the groundwork for a new church plant. This idea scares me! At first, I had no idea how we could even get anything done during such a short time. But after talking it over with our district leaders, we began to plan ways that we could reach the community. We just held an event called “Maximum Mission” – which is community service with an evangelistic purpose. For example, on Saturday we cleaned up the streets, played games and did activities with children, and then at night we showed the Jesus film. Although it was a hard day, that night we had people give their lives to Christ. How great! It’s these types of endings that make me remember why we’re doing this.

So my prayer points for you all:

•  For the Tabernacle Church of the Nazarene, that they would grow and develop together
• For the Buckley’s community (where the church plant is planned for), that they would be open to God, and that people would be discovered and raised up to lead
• The 12:7 team ourselves – We’re still learning about each other, learning to work together, and figuring out where we fit and what we can add to the team

Oh and good news! Jana and Absolu arrived this week! The team is complete!

Until next time,

Dani