To Jamaica II

Unless it's possible to somehow bring along my personal sleeping, cooking and sanitary  facilities, I'm very reluctant to travel. Even in  a well-equiped motorhome with sufficient funds at my disposal I would, more often than not, prefer to be home. I,m not saying that I don't enjoy the people, places and things that we encounter when traveling. It's the different and mostly unknown cultures, customs and laws combined with the possibility that facilities might be found wanting to an extent beyond our personal level of preference. Let's just say that if an "opportunity" will take me out of the U.S. I'm going to think more than twice before visiting thetravelry.  And to me, Jamaica is WAY out of the U.S. The Rasta's compound is way outside Kingston but, I'm told their facilities are quite good, even by my measure. Chalk up one (a BIG one) for the "yes" side.
But we're still unable to state what it is we hope to accomplish by this trip. It goes without saying that we do not seek, nor do we offer salvation. We recognize that it might very well be that they'd like to have us as members of their church; perhaps operating as their S.F. congregation. Unlike Gates of Eden Congregation, the Rastafarians belong to a real church. In fact, they are one of the most recent manifestations of the oldest Christian Organization, the Coptic Church. (details at Marcus Garvey and Haile Selassie) GofE is a legal congregation of Universal Life Church, chartered in 1970 as ULC6054 and was active in community services often associated with churches but, while you might catch one-or-another of us in what seemed like prayer you were just as likely to hear some names taken in vain. While some there could very well have been devoutly religious, my take was that the great majority (asked about their  religion) would say "agnostic". 
     To be sure, we held no religious services at GofE. We provided our "congregants" with most of what they needed to feel human, and if not  "at home"at least welcome and comfortable and looking forward to hopefully better days. But our church had no facility to impart God's messages and while I'd say all of us loved what is called "the creation" it was not our work to glorify any one person or entity for having created it. Considering the differences between the Rastas and ourselves we were all having some misgivings about a trip to the Rastafarian compound.          
                                   end of To Jamaica II