Tomas

This week our lecture was titled "The Cross: Giving Up Rights". It was a week of rediscovering/remembering the One who paid the ultimate price for us, the perfect example of sacrificing rights and how our lives should model His. We dealt with things like repentance and clean conscience as well.

On Thursday we did our first "Street Evangelism". It was so nice to finally get out there on the streets and interact more with the locals. We basically just went around one area in Montego Bay focusing on the key spots people gather (the mall,KFC etc) and tried to start conversations and invite them to the park where we were having music and testimonies. I enjoyed the afternoon although it will take a while to get used to approaching randoms on the street.It was kind of discouraging that none of the people my group talked to showed up at the park. There were some amazingly funny and cute kids there though that we all enjoyed hanging out with and singing with. I'm praying that God will give us all a heart for evangelism and that he will also guide our conversations in the future so that we can effectively share Christ and reach people for Him.

The main reason I wanted to update this was because I am presenting a prayer request before you that is of a certain urgency. I mentioned in earlier messages that we are in hurricane season. Thankfully, we haven't experienced too much other than the tail of a hurricane which was basically heavy rainfall. Even so that heavy rainfall was enough to wash away roads, flood homes and knock out power and water. Last night we found out that a tropical storm Tomas is headed straight for the Caribbean that has a huge potential to become a major hurricane. The projected path of Tomas is pretty much straight for Jamaica(The eastern side) and it is already doing damage on islands like Barbados and St.Lucia.Here's the thing: The projected path also takes this hurricane to the south side of Haiti AKA Port Au Prince. According to the news last night this storm could turn into a category 3 or 4 Hurricane (Hurricane Katrina was category 5). I don't think I need to tell you what this could mean for Haiti.

This storm is expected to reach our area by Wednesday.I know this all seems like its just a chance but please pray that God will keep Tomas at tropical storm level and turn it back towards the open sea. Pray that he will spare the people of Haiti from more devastation!

Here are some links if we want to join us in watching and praying for this storm :

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Tropical-Storm-Tomas-near-hurricane-strength

http://www.weather.com/outlook/videos/watching-shary-and-tomas-6584

http://www.weather.com/maps/maptype/satelliteworld/caribbeansatellite_large.html



Satellite image of Tomas (The red spiral on the lower right) as of today.