When my husband and I went to Jamaica again we had gone through a lot in a short time. When we had travelled to Jamaica before we had been married for a year and I was starting to go through my cancer journey and was going through a very long drawn out miscarriage. It was an amazing trip for us, but it had a lot of challenges for me. I was weak and sick and not sure what was happening to my body. I also was helping get ready for a wedding. It was very very hot where we were staying. When we arrived home I immediately started chemotherapy and my life was changed forever.
We decided to go to Jamaica again, because we wanted to visit our friends and see the children we had met the time we had been in Jamaica previously. In our hearts we wished to adopt them but adoption in Jamaica is almost impossible without living there for years and years.
At this time in our lives our friends had moved to a new town to start a church and I was very newly pregnant with my first son and we were also going to adopt our daughter. This time we went to Jamaica in the rainy season. Our friends didn't have a vehicle yet and so any time we were going to go somewhere we hired a driver or took a taxi. It rained a lot. It rained so much that our clothes wouldn't fully dry and the cement walls were weeping. I had pretty intense sickness from my pregnancy and while I was there someone I loved took their life. I could not attend their funeral which was very very hard for me. I was mourning and just feeling so heart broken.
There were also such beautiful moments. We loved getting to see the children we had connected with. They were in a children's home and we so wished we could adopt them but that was not to be. We loved our time with our friends who continue to live in Jamaica to this day and have a seventeen year old church that is thriving. My husband and my friend's husband are kindred spirits and had so much fun dancing and sliding in the rain just getting to act like kids (which really we all still were) and have the time of their lives.
Something else we did that was impacting to me was we attended a funeral for my friend's husband's grandmother up in the mountains. We rented a car and drove as far up as we could. The road was rough and more like a track. We caused some damage to the car for sure! We ended up going to the top of a mountain where a church was perched. It filled with people who were dressed beautifully and many women wore hats. The funeral was unlike any I had ever been to. There were many speeches and songs. It was a cultural experience that was totally sincere. Afterwards we also saw where our friend's grandmother had lived. There were small places close together and built with whatever material could be found. There was no running water or electricity. There were fires for cooking. It felt like a different era.
This was the last trip I took before I had children. After that I didn't travel again until my oldest was nineteen years old.
Going to Jamaica and suffering so much there (twice) made me never want to go back. My husband has gone back three times and taken my three oldest children. It has been really incredible for them. Our friend's live on fifty acres now ( or something like that) and are camp directors. The property is beautiful and a wonderful place to raise children. They are amazing people and have been so impacting to thousands of people in their life time.
I am thankful for the two times I was able to travel to Jamaica because I was able to be in my friends' wedding and see the country she adopted as her own. I also am thankful that our husbands could become life long friends because of these trips.
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