The Mission & Vision of ACE

The Mission & Vision of ACE

We’ve just released our latest video detailing the mission and vision of ACE. Even after 35 years, we’ve remained focused on our four main impact areas — education, wellness, micro enterprise, and spiritual development. 

Please take a moment to watch the video below and discover what we’re currently doing to strengthen each of these impact areas.

Thank you for being a part of our mission and helping us meet the educational, physical, and spiritual needs of people in St. Mary, Jamaica. There’s always a way for you to be a part of what we’re doing at ACE. You can volunteer and plan a trip, sponsor a child, or show your support with a financial donation.

Many Hands Make Light Work

Many Hands Make Light Work

Many hands make light work

This old saying portrays a picture of what ACE has experienced this spring on the ground. For the first time in years, we have been blessed with many incredible volunteer teams in a row! Ranging from families, high school students, college teams, and a great mix of young adults, they came to help us get caught up on our many outreach programs. They worked tirelessly around St. Mary at the schools, on our farm, and even preparing for some new businesses and items coming online later this year. We’d love to highlight some of the many projects they worked on.

For those of you have contributed to many aspects of the Peace House, the update is that it’s almost complete! Yes, you have heard this before, but it’s true; we just had no idea how much back and forth it takes to complete a building like this. The final touch this week was the addition of the front doors. Thanks to some friends and donors of ACE, our doors were purchased and ready for painting. Granted, we still need a door opener and glass on the side, but just looking at these doors makes all of us swell with pride.

While all that was going on the Peace House, some of our volunteers focused on the Campus right next door, where our interns and long-term volunteers stay. It has been challenged for years with popping floor tiles and cracking in the main hall and the dining room. We decided to commission a group to chop it up and remove the tile, and what we found underneath was a beautiful terrazzo floor. It’s been there since the early 90s when the house was built. Anyone know how to make it come alive again? It’s dull but has potential. Every time we get this kind of help, we are pleasantly surprised at what our teams uncover. Thank you for making the old new again.

In the last few busy months, it’s been fun to see how our Jamaican ACE staff pulled together in such a great way to work with them and each other. Ms. Foster, our Executive Director, has done an excellent job training, teaching, and coaching all of us to work as a team. Charity and Brian Zalk and family have continually increased their availability on the ground with the ACE crew. Things are going so smoothly that Allen and Marla sit back and smile, pleased at how everyone is beginning to own their own lane. Keep all of us in your prayers as everyone is learning how to operate as a team.

Teamwork makes the dream work, another old saying… and in this case, we are so grateful for such a successful and fun start to the year!

Back to School!

Back to School!

While the Ministry of Education is maneuvering the system and making changes daily, our students hardly seem to notice as they enjoy the official start of the 2023 school season. It feels great for us and for them to have a sense of normalcy finally. Smiles and laughs greeted us at our annual (again!) backpack distribution event, where we gave out book bags, supplies and books to each student in our Child Sponsorship Program. Thanks to our sponsors, the day was not only well received by the many students but their parents as well.

ACE staff seemed to enjoy the event as our own Arlene was present with her camera, taking pics of each child as they displayed their name on a sign to identify them after all this time. If you have ever had a child, you know they can grow rapidly from one year to the next – try two!! We loved to see how much they’ve changed and how ready they are for this new year ahead!

Remember all that PB&J we ask each team to bring down? Well, every student received their own PB&J to take home and share. ACE will always find a way to utilize what teams bring down, and this has been a long-standing traditional donation from our volunteers. Kids learn better when they are fed and happy, so we are starting the school year on the right foot, thanks to all of you!

Click image below to scroll through photo gallery

Marla’s Minute: Melrose is a Rose

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 volunteers come down and even have had members serve on our Board for years, I had never gotten to know Melrose that well until recently.

Melrose has suffered the loss of her daughter and her husband over the past few years, but she is one of those people who never lets loss keep her from finding joy. She is thankful for every day and finds her purpose in making others happy.

Melrose journeyed to Jamaica to serve ACE and help us with our conference and all the day-to-day work that comes with it. When she got home, she wrote a little journal entry about her time here. With her permission, we thought you would enjoy her perspective and outlook on life. I know we did. Thank you, Melrose, and we look forward to seeing you in Jamaica soon.

Blessed

Do we go on mission trips to serve or be served?

Do we go on mission trips to bless or to be blessed?

I thought I knew the answer to that question.

I did not.

The last night of the prayer conference, I asked the women in my small group to list their prayer requests so I could take them home with me. You might think the women would ask for prayer for things that might make their lives easier, but they asked me to pray for them to know God better and serve Him more.

The Jamaican people we met have very little, yet those who know Jesus praise Him through circumstances we cannot imagine surviving.

Their requests humbled me:

“To listen and follow God’s way, not my way.”

“Give me opportunities to be Your servant and an example.”

“To serve God more.”

The women I was supposed to serve, served me.

The women I was supposed to bless, blessed me.

“You will be blessed when you come in and you will be blessed when you go out.” ~ Deuteronomy 28:6

Click image below to scroll through gallery.

Paying off the Farm

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 how we are doing in raising the $700k needed by 2024.

Take a look at the graph to see how it’s going. Pretty impressive, we think. It’s also a faith-builder for ACE and, hopefully, for all of you who gave the funding to help us reach these goals. So far, with the help of many generous sponsors, we went over the $100k mark in 2021. Thank you!

If you are led to help us get to the $350k mark by summer and $500k by December, we would be grateful. After all, seeing is believing – and seeing is always a confirmation that it was completed in the supernatural world before it became visible in the natural.

Just watch what God will do this year… and it’s all good!

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28