Recipes for Living Christin Jamison

My life story, at the time I was nine years old, is in the Recipes for Living book of 1997. We lived in Murray at that time, and I mentioned that my dad, Gary, was going to marry Katy on July 5 of that year. Now I am 15, live with them in Crane, Missouri and am a sophomore in Crane High School. I am in Iowa this weekend to visit Grandpa and Grandma Jamison in Weldon, and Grandma Celeste Jackson in Osceola. My mom, my brother Seth, sister, Lindsay, and my halfsister Jamie wanted to drive from Minnesota to see me before I go back, but it is sleeting there and they probably will not be able to come.

It feels like a very long time ago when I was nine. A lot has happened since then. I have become much more spiritual and very interested in children. I would like to help them with their problems, especially kids that have bad home lives. I kind of know what it is like, and I want to give them hope for a future that is going to be good.

Mission has also become a big interest for me. Last summer seven kids in our youth group and 13 adults went to Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, which is on the opposite side of the island from San Juan. We went with an organization called World Changers. There were groups who came from four other states. There was a group from Tampa Bay, Florida, a couple different groups from North Carolina, and a group from Washington, along with ours from Missouri. There were about 140 people altogether, and we split up into six different groups.

World Changers had certain things for us to work on. Our group built a house. There were three different tasks on three different weeks. The first week our group tore down the walls. The reason they had to be torn down was that there was so much bat guana that if someone breathed it in, they could get an affect like breathing ammonia. It could cause various lung problems and could be fatal. We had to wear masks to protect our breathing and gloves as we handled the old wood. We had to get rid of some cement and then build the walls. Another group came and finished the roof.

Right behind the house was a little shack where a family of five lived - a dad and mother, two kids, and a brother-in-law. It was really hard to picture somebody having to live in a tool shed and realize what it felt like to do that. It was definitely life-changing, knowing that we built a house for somebody. We didn't get to know the people. I think they were working most of the time. And also, they spoke Spanish, so we couldn't communicate well. We had two translators my age, and they helped us talk back and forth, and there was another gentleman there who helped us with the cement. The cinder blocks we worked with are different than ours, and they had to make special cement. Their houses had to be sturdier because of the hurricanes. That man also spoke Spanish, so he helped us a little. I know a little bit of Spanish, and we talked about how hot it was and how different it was from Missouri and that kind of stuff, but we couldn't communicate as much as we wanted to.

I was the Evangelism Leader and that was definitely a sign, I guess, that God wanted me to do a little more with missions. When they asked for people in our group who would volunteer for evangelism, my hand went straight up. Suddenly I thought - I've never evangelized before. What am I doing? I wanted to change my mind, but it was too late.

It was a wonderful feeling going around and talking to people, when we didn't even speak their language, but they knew we cared and that took some of the tension. They were willing to listen a little bit. One day - our last day there - we were just finishing up, and everybody kept turning their heads from us and asking us to leave. I was getting very discouraged. I kept wondering, "Where is God? Why can't I get through to these people like I did yesterday?" The day before (Thursday), we tried to talk to a lady who said she was having a bad day and maybe we could come back later. We didn't want to push, so we left. Friday we were picking up everything, and I was on the other side of the house getting a drink of water when the Crew Chief, who sort of directs us and makes sure we stay on task, came running over and said, "Christin, somebody is here to talk to you!" I said, "Somebody is here to talk to me? I'm in Puerto Rico! Who knows me?"

It was the lady we had talked to and Victor and Cynara - the people who had worked with us. They live in Aguadilla. Victor is the son of the preacher of that church. I had seen them talking to the lady, and she had come to say she was sorry that she was rude. I told her not to worry about it. She had someone with her who turned out to be her sister-in-law. She told me that her son had lung cancer and didn't have a good chance of making it. They had just found that out the day before. The lady said that as she sat there that night, she was thinking, "I just pushed away God's people and that's who I needed the most."

She asked us to pray for her. I asked her if she knew God, and she said, "Yes, I'm Catholic." So I said, "I don't want to push you, but here is a pamphlet. As long as you know God, I don't care what religion you are. I know a lot of people want you to be a certain religion, but I don't think God cares, as long as you believe in him and you know that Jesus died for you." She said, "I know all that," and I said, "Good." She asked that we keep remembering her in our prayers and told us she was very grateful that teen-age people would come, leave home during the summer to work hard for a whole week around this beautiful land, and never do anything but work and wish we could go swimming in the ocean. It definitely showed that we made an impact on people's lives - not only the people whose house we were working on but on the whole community. It was an eye-opener.

The report to our congregation was delayed because, when we returned, our preacher left for Belarus. This is a republic in eastern Europe, north of the Ukraine. He has been there three times, and those people are definitely a big concern on his heart. Our story was delayed until he came back, and then I was in Iowa, so I wasn't there when the group reported.

I was a freshman in high school that fall. Our school is small. There are 800 students including pre-school to twelfth grade. There are 52 in my class and the largest classroom size is 22. I had Algebra, English 1, Spanish 1, General Science, band, and keyboarding. Last year I played in a flute trio in a contest in Columbia, Missouri. Our trio was Heide Vaught, me, and Ashley Rundle, who was a senior, now in college. First we played for in a little festival where schools get together so we could get some experience, and we got a 1 rating there. That made us think we sounded pretty good so we tried district, SWCL that was held in Springfield, at Southwest Missouri State College. We also got a 1 there, which gave us the opportunity to go on to State. About every other year somebody from Crane goes to state for music. That was in Columbia, Missouri, and we had to go to the school board for permission to perform because they have to pay our way. They listened to us and said, "Well, it's pretty good, so go ahead and give it a shot." In that competition, they rank differently from district. You are basically competing against yourself, not against other people. They ranked one to five. We got a three, so we were pretty happy that we got in the middle, which was average.

In 2004, I am back in school for my sophomore year, and looking forward to this summer when I will go with our youth group to Puerto Rico again. The same kids who went last year plan to go again and there will be a couple more. We also plan to go to St. Louis. There are some adults who go to Puerto Rico, but when we go to St. Louis, there will be more youth and fewer adults. We will work mostly with children who don't have an opportunity to attend Vacation Bible School. We will be around the bad part of St. Louis, but the church where we will be staying will be on the safer side. I think the plan is that the first couple days we will just go out and find children and talk to their parents about what we plan to do. The kids will ride the bus to the church, but some of us will go along to make sure they are ready and their parents know where they are being taken. About 10-12 kids are planning to do that.

I will go to college when I get through high school. I really want to go to SBU, Southern Baptist University. My former youth leader went there and his wife is currently attending, and I have a friend who was accepted there. There are a couple reasons I want to go there. It is a Christian college, and in the senior year they give you hands-on experience of teaching. The first semester they help you make lesson plans. When I heard that, it was a major plus. I also know people I could talk to. If I've had a hard day, it would be great to be able to walk over next door and talk to one of my friends. It seems to me it would be a major education.

Next year I will go to a technical school and take classes I can get credit for. Most other technical colleges accept the credits. I expect to take children's classes - preschool through first grade. It could help me decide if I want to work with that age or a little older.

I stay in touch with my family in Stacey, Minnesota. Seth is doing well. He is 11 now and playing basketball, which is good. He really likes that, and he is really into snowmobiles. Lindsay is five, so she is in kindergarten. She is having kind of a hard time in school. She told Mom Friday, "I don't think I’ll be able to go to school Monday. I think I might be sick." Jamie, my half-sister is a little over a year old now. Mom is going to counseling and is in school. She will be graduating this April. I'm not exactly sure what she will be qualified for, but I think she may be like a doctor's aide.

I wish I could spend a little more time with my Grandpa and Grandma Jamison when I come to Iowa to visit. I either get here really, really late one night or really, really early the next morning. Grandpa has had lots of things going wrong. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s about two years ago. He had heart surgery, knee surgery; he had started losing sight in one eye, and then got diagnosed with Parkinson’s. I can see a big difference from when I was nine. He had become depressed and just kind of given up on life, but lately he has been on medicines for Parkinson’s and he is getting out a little more. He has sold most of his machinery and his cows. Katy's sister was moving and asked if he would take care of her cat, so he goes outside three times a day to feed the cat. Lately he's been driving to the restaurant on the Weldon corner, to talk with the guys. He is starting to be his old self.

This afternoon I am going meet a friend, Christy, who's been my best friend since fourth grade. We're going shopping in Des Moines for awhile. Then late afternoon, I'm driving to Chariton and watching a movie. I don't know what we will see, but I really want to see "The Passion of Christ" when I get a chance. Because I am young, I know that I will probably drift off once in awhile and put God in a less important place in my life. But I think, if I see it, it will draw my focus on him and if I start to drift away, visions from the movie of what happened to him will pop into my head.

I went to a Christian concert not long ago and Rebecca St. James was talking about the movie. The week before it came out, she said a nun had gone and watched it. The first thing that popped into my head was, a nun knows everything about God. There couldn't be any person closer to God, and she said the nun had prayed, "Lord, forgive me. I had forgotten." For a nun to say that, I thought, "Wow! What am I missing? What am I not thinking about?"That made me want to go see it more. I think it would drive a deeper passion in me than I could ever imagine.

I have a lost friend that I've worked on for so long. I've gone through so much pain and agony of her pushing me away and criticizing me, and other times she will come running to me and asking me for help. I try to find the strength to say, "O.k. I'm still here." Wednesday she came up to me and said, "Christin, I saw 'The Passion.' I don't know what happened to me but will you pick me up for church tonight?" I was like, "You're darned right I will! I've been working on you for over a year now, and it was a simple movie that got you to change your mind?" There has to be something powerful in that movie to change people's lives. I know there is a lot of criticism, but I think it is going to change so many people's lost lives that the criticism won't really matter at all.

One part is when Jesus is in the Garden, praying that God would let him avoid the torture he knew was ahead. The Bible says that he was sweating blood. It isn't a metaphor. It is actually a medical condition caused by stress. It causes the skin to become very tender and sweating blood can happen. Even when I read that I think, "And I put you behind friends, behind school - what was I thinking? You actually went through that! If I had to do it, I'd be saying, 'Forget you people. I'm going home!"'

Our youth leader asked us one time, "Would you leave everything you have right now, this great life you have, go live homeless, live on $5 that would last you a month, and live out in the cold street?" I was thinking, "I would have to be insane to do that." It didn't make any sense, and I wondered why he would ask such a question. Then he said, "That's what Jesus did. He left his kingdom, his glory, and came down, entered this world as a crying, naked baby, and left the world being humiliated." I would have to have a lot of love to do something like that! I believe the movie would help me focus more on Jesus, knowing that if I put him first everything else will fall into place.

I've always gone to the Methodist Church. The first time I went to the Baptist Church was in Crane. One Sunday I went to the Methodist Church with a friend in the morning, and then another friend asked me to go in the evening to her church, which was Baptist. I felt something I'd never felt anywhere else. I don't think it is being a Baptist, but just the church. We have an awesome preacher, and he helps us think of lots of things we wouldn't often consider. We spend the whole time worshiping. The last time our preacher went to Belarus, the whole Southern Baptist church from a little tiny town of Hurley, came to our church, and we had a huge morning service with banjos, Blue Grass music, and it was really fun. I have grown a lot being in the church I am in now. If I hadn't moved to Missouri, I don't think I'd have been this involved in church activities or this much in love with God. I don't think it could have happened.