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Our First Home is finally going up at the Village!!
After a shaky start and escalating costs of building supplies, ACE is completing the first of many homes at the Green Life Village for our single moms and families. We’ve been through the ringer with building hurdles, but at last this week, Allen, Bulla, and men from...
Marla’s Minute – VBS is back for the Summer!
When I think of Vacation Bible School, I think of high-pitched squeals, laughter, and tons of energy, mostly derived from sugar. When our teams think of VBS, they think of creating an atmosphere of orchestrated fun and learning about God and His creation. And that’s...
Marla’s Minute: Big Red is Dead
Farming is not an easy business to be involved with in Jamaica, especially if you are trying to raise a herd of beef cattle and grow a business so more Jamaicans can earn and help their families. ACE and Green Life Farms are not exempt from struggle, no matter how...
iQuest comes through again!
iQuest has proven to be one of the best leadership programs ACE has to offer young adults looking for a 75-day life-changing opportunity. Over the years, ACE has seen incredible young adults invest their summer in Jamaica. They learn how to grow and serve in a...
Movers and Shakers
Summer has barely begun, and we are already in awe of our volunteers and staff! We believe that success starts when leadership leads, and that’s exactly what Courtney and Emily Simmons, board members for ACE, did to get our season going. The Simmons brought their own...
Marla’s Minute: Melrose is a Rose
I love those moments where special people make an impression. One of those for me this year was from one of our wonderful partner churches, Trinity on the Hill, during our Men and Women’s Conference last February. While we’ve been to Trinity many times, have had...
Our Community is Transforming
ACE’s vision from the beginning has been “changing lives and transforming communities” one person at a time. One of our most needy communities that lines our farm property is Hampstead, and one woman we met there through our sponsorship program is a testament to that...
ACE goes DEEP and not WIDE
How many times have you heard ACE say “ACE goes deep, not wide” about the way we do life with our community? In three decades, we’ve never changed that direction of depth vs width. We can’t reach every single person in St. Mary, but we hope that those we DO reach and...
Marla’s Minute: My Parents are Here!
Funny how statements like this take on a different meaning depending on what stage of life you are presently living in. As a teenager, that statement meant hide the (you fill in the blank) or, quick, turn off the TV and break out the books. But today, in this stage of...
Child Sponsorship Fun & Friendship!
Curfews and mask mandates have ended! ACE is so happy to restore something we always did before the COVID years, and that is to hold a pool party for our sponsored students and staff families. Our friends and volunteers from the States took full advantage of the...
At the Last Minute
As soon as the previous Men and Women’s Conference wraps up each year, we are already setting the date for the next one. So, 2022’s conference dates had been on our calendar since last March, with lots of interest brewing and the format in the making. Our friends from...
Wellness Comes in Many Forms
For the first time in two years, ACE has enjoyed having friends come to Jamaica to serve our lonely residents and needy families in St. Mary. This month, Dr. Steve Guy, our Chairman of ACE, brought down some neat friends of ACE. Some were new, some return volunteers,...
Recycling an Old Tree
There are a lot of beautiful over-100-year-old trees on the Green Life Farm. One of the most beautiful and sought-after trees is called a Guango. To us, it looks like the Tree of Life in Avatar, where everything lives in it and under it. A few months ago, Allen and...
Cloud 9 gets crankin’ again!!
It’s been a while since Pat has been making chocolate in our Cloud 9 chocolate factory. But this week, the lights were on, the machines were grinding, and the sweet smell of Jamaican chocolate was in the air again. Bruce Smith, our founding ACE chocolatier, arrived on...
Until We Meet Again
Pastor Kermit Jones was such a special man to all of us at ACE and our community. He transitioned to Heaven on January 26, 2022, at home with his daughter Enna and his long-time friend and caregiver, Orlando, by his side. We are still processing his passing and...
Paying off the Farm
Remember the ask ACE made to all of you the last quarter of 2021 to help us pay off the Green Life Llanrumney Farm? As you know, the farm is the place where all our micro-businesses will flourish to keep us hiring more and more Nationals. We want to keep you posted on...
Christmas and Celebrations
Thanks to ACE’s dear friends, Tina and Luke, all of our sponsored students and friends celebrated Christmas in style! As the COVID syndrome continues globally, the Rebel Ministries team came through unafraid, full of life and energy. The last week of 2021 ended with...
New Year, New Faces
ACE is always changing! That is to be expected when people are involved in the lives of others, and this year will be no different in Jamaica. Remember our own Anthony, the beekeeper? Well, Anthony is all grown up, out of school for the moment (he graduated), and he...
A Year in Review (Happy New Year 2022!)
2021 brought a bit more normalcy to our lives, thank goodness! As many of us can relate in our own lives, we aren't quite "normal" yet, but we continue to take baby steps with hope and faith. Thank you to all of the volunteers who never gave up praying for ACE and...
Skill Sets We Wish We Had
Many of us are good at cooking, writing, organization, and even decorating our homes, but what about repairing a 150-year-old bridge with stones found in the yard? At Green Life Llanrumney Farms, another micro-business of ACE, we have been finding all kinds of...
The Second Container is Coming!!
We are not sure if you remember the drama around shipping the first container to Jamaica a year and half ago, but the good news is there is NO DRAMA this time! We purchased the 40-foot container for ACE before the prices on containers more than doubled, AND we were...
Marla’s Minute: Change is Good!!
If you’ve ever been on a volunteer trip with Marla or her staff, you will hear almost every day, “Change is good!” The rain might come and the outdoor work may stop – no problem, because ACE always has a plan B… and C…and D…and so on. ACE is a friend to change and...
School and AVC Progress Report
Are the students attending school in Jamaica? We get this question a lot these days as most of the families in the States are dealing with the same back-and-forth issues. The answer is: it depends. Each school is making its own decision on whether to be in session,...
And the Help Goes On
ACE is known for following up on what they promise and this is a story of one of those follow ups. Pat and her sponsored boys have been living in a beautiful home her sponsors and other supporters built for her and her family several years ago. Yet, with water only...
ACE Micro-Business: A Vision of Success
How can a not-for-profit invest in for-profit businesses? This is a question that comes up from time to time when our readers see the impressive businesses popping up through the ACE ministry in St. Mary. ACE calls them micro-businesses as they are small and only have...
Maddie joins the iQuest alumni family!
As our 2021 iQuest intern Maddie finishes up her remarkable summer, we wish her well and will miss her smile! She has definitely been a blessing to our staff and volunteers, and her hard work on VBS, the coconut walk, and many other projects was outstanding! At the...
Marla’s Minute: Something We’ve Not Done Before
This month, we did something I don’t recall us ever doing before: polling our past interns with the iQuest program to catch up with them! I must admit, as I read the responses of the survey our ACE office sent out, I got a little teary-eyed. And as most of you...
Marla’s Minute: Finally, a Breath of Fresh Air!
It’s been a breath of fresh air this summer with so many volunteers! There is just something about seeing people you admire and love buying into the same vision that God has been giving us for 30 plus years. We love the photos of friends smiling, especially when we...
Families & Friends
July tends to be a very dry and hot month in Jamaica. This year is no different. However, as friends and families begin to come back down to serve with us, we only feel the warmth of returning (and new) friends everywhere! We – your ACE family on the ground – are so...
Graduation, VBS, and Sponsorship
It’s mid-summer, and while that may not seem like Spring to you, we have felt the subtle changes that normally come with the new growth the season of Spring offers. You’ve heard of Christmas in July? Well, we had Spring in Summer! Spring is normally the time for...
Help Comes in Large Packages
Our dear friends from Rebel Ministries arrived this month to help us out with clearing our coconut trees of bush and debris, all the while assisting a sponsored family with pouring a floor for their new home. While we have been so grateful over the past year and a...
VBS in July!
It’s true – the first VBS for the ACE students and community since 2019 is going to happen. Just a few days ago, the Government of Jamaica opened up the country to allow up to 100 people to be part of an outdoor gathering and lifted the curfew to more reasonable and...
Little Faith, Big Faith
Everyone seems to know what the word “faith” means. In daily conversations, some say, “keep the faith,” others say, “just have faith,” and, during the last 15 months, many have used the phrase, “I’m losing faith.” Often, we highlight what our child sponsors have done...
Marla’s Minute – How many “i’s” in Mississippi?
For the first time in years, Allen and I did something we wished we would have done before now: travel by car to see friends of ACE who have been MIA since the COVID pandemic hit. We started out in Ringgold, Georgia, where we spent the night with some friends who,...
Final Good-bye to Pastor Watson
After years of service to his community and touching the lives of countless people along the way, Pastor Winston Watson transitioned to Heaven on May 13 after a battle with cancer. Winston served on our ACE Board of Directors for a season before moving on to new...
Our Patrene Exits, Stage Right
Patrene, our wonderful administrator for ACE, is leaving for a season to take a position in the work-abroad program that the Jamaican Government offers adults to work in the states. Patrene will be gone for at least six months. We gave her a party at our own bamboo...
The Green Life Village
Is it finally happening? After all these years of hearing Marla talk about her Children’s Village, a place for families to live together and grow together, it is finally happening. Note that the illustration above is from our original artwork drawn up in 2013. We are...
God’s Little Creatures, Great and Small
As pet owners and animal lovers at ACE, we would be remiss to leave out our incredible vet, Dr. Ryan Chanona. We met Doc and his wife Kristin – also a vet – many years ago at an animal-spaying event sponsored by Sandals Resort in Ochi. Since then, he and Kristin are...
The Seniors of St. Mary
A year ago last month, we were told we could no longer visit our senior family at the St. Mary Infirmary. While it’s understandable, all of us at ACE have felt a tremendous loss. Yet, with the needs mounting, we’ve continued to visit the many “shut in” seniors in the...
A Silver Lining For Our Families During COVID
Every once in a while you read something or see something on TV about how COVID actually helped someone in a way totally unexpected. This is exactly what has happened not just once, not just twice, but several times with our sponsors helping their sponsored children...
Marla’s Minute – Mother’s Day in Jamaica
Mother’s Day always comes in May, right? Except this year… my Mother’s Day came early. My mother (Mommy) and Fred (my dad) and five friends landed in Jamaica a few weeks ago to lend us all at ACE a hand on the ground. I love that my mom is still very much alive and...
It’s iQuest Time Again!
Are you a college student seeking a life-changing experience? We are looking for you! With teams filling in on our 2021 schedule, we are ready for a new group of iQuest interns to come from June 5th to August 19th! Working with ACE staff and volunteer teams for the...
Marla’s Minute: The Widow, Flour & Oil
The other day I was reading a story in 1 Kings, Chapter 17, about the widow who, when the prophet Elijah asked her for a drink and a piece of bread during a severe drought and famine, her reply was “I don’t have any bread – only a handful of flour in a jar and a...
Jamaican Cowboys
It sounds funny when you read the title. A Jamaican cowboy? Our age is showing when we think of TV shows like Gun Smoke and Bonanza or all of those John Wayne movies where everyone is Caucasian with fancy boots, spurs, big hats and a horse to ride. But when we talk...
Marla’s Minute — Holy Cow!
Whenever Allen and I travel to KY to see my parents, we usually go to a place my dad loves to go for breakfast. We don’t have these restaurants in GA anymore, but Bob Evans is our place and their slogan used to be “Down on the Farm.” To me, that phrase meant eating...
Meet Sarah!
ACE has been fortunate to have extra helping hands from time to time. Sarah has been one of the people who has been down to Jamaica several years in a row and saw a need that she might be able to fill temporarily. We would to take this opportunity to introduce you to...
A Tale of Two Sisters
We’ve been blessed to have Emily and her sister, Mary, as leaders and contributors to ACE for many decades. Both have led multiple teams – Emily through school mission groups and Mary leading medical trips – and both recently came down to serve with ACE together....
Marla’s Minute: How The Pieces Fall Together
ACE always has a great impact story every month. Personally, however, I often wrestle about how much to share. So many things happen on the ground that change our lives and my perspective daily that I struggle to give the details of how ACE made a particular person or...
More Than A Vacation
When ACE first came to St. Mary, we called it a Vacation with a Purpose. This was pre-Galina Breeze Hotel; we were staying in an older hotel across from the main road with a view of the beach and some garbage. We knew that when most people take a vacation from work,...
HAPPY NEW YEAR?
Is it really a Happy New Year or, rather, a new year with the hope of happiness? That’s what our staff was talking about yesterday as we enjoyed the last chapter in our book club, before flipping over the old year of 2020 to the new year of 2021. As the discussion...