Revelation in Jamaica

By Francine Kiefer, Guest Columnist

Sometimes, you just don't see a blessing coming down the road - which makes it all the sweeter when it arrives.

It arrived for me on a recent Sunday, when I sat among more than 700 women in the New Beulah Moravian Church in Mandeville. These ladies, dressed in white finery, had come from all over Jamaica to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Moravian Women's Fellowship, an islandwide church organisation dedicated to doing good works.

My three sisters and I had travelled from the United States for the occasion. Months ago, out of the blue, I had received a phone call from Jamaica inviting us to honour the fellowship's founder, Mrs Edith 'Eda' Kneale - our grandmother, who died before we four were born.

Until now, I had only a vague notion about the women's fellowship and its army of supportive 'sisters'. Indeed, Jamaica is far removed from my everyday life as a journalist in Washington, D. C. And it is decades distant from the years of my island forebears - Moravian missionaries whose roots went back to England and Switzerland.

When we arrived at the Montego Bay airport, we fell into the outstretched arms of the Rev Joan Smith, of the Bethabara Moravian Church in Mandeville, and of church sisters Monica Brooks and Joy Brooks from St Elizabeth. We had never met, yet everyone poured forth love like the torrential rain of Chantal that bathed our little bus as it wound toward Mandeville.

And it kept on raining - love, I mean. The fellowship held a reception for my sisters and I in advance of the big day. They showered us with song, dance, and traditional Jamaican food. As I talked with the church sisters from all walks of life, I had a chance to learn more of what the Moravian Women's Fellowship is all about.

Their motto is, 'With goodwill, giving service to the Lord'. This can mean a local church organising to help provide school supplies, shoes, and uniforms to children. It takes shape in visits to shut-ins, nursing homes, and the hospital. This year's Annual Fellowship Day helped raise money for four scholarships for girls.

The women's fellowship links generations and communities from St Andrew to Westmoreland. "There is a binding among the sisters," explained Floris Meikle, a former president of the fellowship. "It binds us spiritually and socially. If we should not have it, there would be a void."

Not one centimetre of void could be found in that joy-filled church on that Sunday. New Beulah's panel doors opened wide on both sides to an overflowing crowd. White hats, decorated with beads and bows, moved in rhythm to a succession of spirited hymns. Messages from the pulpit encouraged everyone to carry out the year's theme, 'Rejoice! Rise up and Build!'

Our input

One of my sisters, a cellist, played a Bach solo; I offered a heartfelt greeting; my other sister framed a youthful portrait of our grandmother in her white cap and Victorian-looking black dress; and my oldest sister, an energetic minister with the United Methodist church in Topeka, Kansas, brought down the house with a rousing message that rejoicing should be first, not last, in our work.

I have been to Jamaica twice before. Once in the mid-1980s with my sisters, father, and mother, who was born and raised here. I visited again in 2006 and toured the Bethlehem Moravian Teachers' College and various missions where my ancestors played active roles in the spiritual and academic education of Jamaicans.

While I have loved learning this family history, it always felt like the distant past - a fascinating, consequential past, but nonetheless, unreachable history.

On this trip, history roared into the present as I met people who were baptised by my grandfather, Bishop John Kneale, or who remembered his genuinely kind wife, Miss Eda, who founded the fellowship in her latter years. "When she shook your hand, you really felt it. It wasn't fake," recalled Lurrel Crawford, of the New Beulah church.

I never knew my grandmother. But on Sunday, I finally came to know her and to experience first-hand the rich legacy of love and giving she left behind. That was the unexpected blessing. But I've come to see another one - that Jamaica itself is blessed with these strong, committed, and spirit-filled women of the Moravian Women's Fellowship.

Francine Kiefer is the Op-ed Editor of The Christian Science Monitor.