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During their weeklong mission trip in Jamaica, the members of First Baptist Church of Whitsett didn’t run into many other Americans.

They spent most of the time in areas away from the safety and comfort of resorts.

Every day, people offered the missionaries drugs. And sometimes they were frightened. Two men were abducted from churches in the area and killed the same week the missionaries were there.
Yet they can’t wait to return.

“I’d go back tomorrow,” Derrick Benson said.

Many people they spoke to truly accepted the gospel and were grateful for the message of hope, the missionaries said.

“It was scary, but it was amazing to see how God was doing it all,” Benson said.

Twenty-nine people from First Baptist Church of Whitsett traveled to the impoverished island country in July.

The group worked mostly in the Montego Bay area on the northwest coast. The church members helped renovate the home into which Cletis and Tammy Titus of Greensboro will move later this month to become full-time missionaries.

But their main focus was evangelism.

“We went over there to see people genuinely saved,” the Rev. Tim Stevens said.

Unlike many mission groups who distribute food or medicine, the group focused simply on spreading the message of the New Testament.

“They have a great physical need, but they also have an even greater spiritual need,” said Josh Eller, the church’s youth pastor.

The group organized a one-day vacation Bible school event and got a huge turnout. “They just kept coming and coming,” Eller said. About 120 children joined in the Bible study, crafts, games and music.

The kids were ecstatic just to receive a piece of candy or a trinket, Jessica Brown said. Brown said she was struck by the families’ poverty compared to the riches of Americans.

“It makes you feel kind of sad,” the teen said. “You take it for granted sometimes.”

The missionaries also spent time going door-to-door, and they gave out Bibles and gospel tracts.

They said they noticed a difference in the way people reacted to them, compared to many of the Americans to whom they’d tried to talk.

“The people in Jamaica are honest with you, and if they don’t go to church, they’ll tell you that,” said Candace Stevens, the pastor’s daughter. “If they don’t believe something, they’ll tell you, 'I don’t believe that.’ ”

Many people were open to their message, members of the group said. When they returned home, they brought back the joy of the experience to the rest of the congregation.

The first service they held upon returning was almost four hours long and was “29 people sharing and crying,” the pastor said.

“It kind of opens your eyes to the need of the world,” Candace Stevens said.
The church is considering another trip to Jamaica in 2011.

Contact Jamie Kennedy Jones at jamie.kennedy@news-record.com or 449-4610.