By Leslie Wagner, member of Jerusalem, Schuylkill Haven, and the Leadership Development Ministry Team

With these words, printed on the title page of our agenda, our group of pilgrims from Jerusalem realized the long-planned trip was really happening. From June 20-24, 2005, we would be on a pilgrimage to the poor in Jamaica.

Our final meeting at the church was an exciting one. We were given name tags, travel instructions (meet at the church at 3:30 a.m.) and the agenda. A group of five adults and eight teens, we posed for a photo in our mission t-shirts and were off.

A pilgrimage is “a long journey or search, especially one of exalted purpose or moral significance.” Our trip was, indeed, a pilgrimage. While we had scheduled a work project for one of our days, the journey itself was more a pilgrimage than a mission trip. We may have lifted the spirits of the dejected or forgotten temporarily, but those whose lives were changed were not the visited, but the visitors. We were seeking a better understanding of third-world poverty; to become more enlightened about the state of the world and to find our place in it (from the small corner we currently occupy).

Our Jamaican trip was arranged through Food for the Poor (FFP), a Christian charitable organization headquartered in Florida. Food for the Poor is the fifth-largest international charity in the USA. A multi-denominational relief and development organization, its primary service areas are South America, Central America and the Caribbean Islands. For 21 years FFP has ministered to the poor of Jamaica. It partners with more than 5,000 churches, schools, orphanages and service organizations throughout the island to help meet the needs of “the poorest of the poor.”

We traveled throughout much of the city of Kingston on a bus with Sylvester, our FFP guide, and experienced first-hand the desperate economic reality of Jamaica — where the weather is hot, the people warm, and the children beautiful (with soft brown eyes and amazingly long, curly eyelashes). This was not the Jamaica of cruise ships and resorts. This was the REAL Jamaica.

We were kept very busy from 7:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. as Sylvester shepherded us from site to site. We toured private and government-run facilities, girls and boys group homes, homeless shelters, group homes for the handicapped, the mentally ill and the elderly, a fishing village, a school, the FFP central warehouse and offices, and newly developing communities, bound together by mud and cardboard.

At each place we were given a tour and overview of their mission by the staff and then had time to interact with the residents/patients/community members. It was these moments that had the most impact; sometimes leaving us tearful and frustrated, sometimes breathless and awe-struck by the resilience and beauty of the human spirit.

As brothers and sisters of Jerusalem, we are forever bound together by this shared experience. We all have our own stories to tell about this journey and would gladly share them with any group that is interested. We come prepared with PowerPoint presentation, lots of amazing photos and memories of a country bowed down by need, but lifted up by spirit and a strong sense of national pride. (“So how do you like my country?” was a frequent refrain.)

If you would like a presentation about our trip, contact the Jerusalem church office at (570) 385-2657.

The pilgrims: Pastor Daniel Bell and daughter, Christiana; youth leader Sandy Seitzinger and daughter, Cali; Leroy Coleman and children, Kevin and Meredith; Jairia and Alison Tobash; Noelle Augustine; Leslie Wagner; Lauryn Shay; Jane Arcalay