Jamaican Christians want to show ‘the church at its best’ as they respond after Hurricane Beryl
Christopher Fong was 12 years old when Hurricane Gilbert made…
Jamaica braces for Melissa
Before the historic Category 5 storm made landfall, Churches of Christ prepared for relief efforts.
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BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS — It was a partly cloudy but calm day on this island in the eastern Caribbean. But minister Carlton Graham’s attention and prayers were focused 1,250 miles northwest to his home island of Jamaica as Hurricane Melissa made landfall.
The slow-moving storm was the first ever to strike Jamaica as a Category 5 hurricane, with sustained winds of 185 mph.
Carlton Graham, a native of Jamaica, works in his office at the Hindsbury Road Church of Christ in Bridgetown, Barbados.
“They are going to be battered. There’s going to be devastation,” Graham told The Christian Chronicle. “It doesn’t really look good. We can only pray that lives will be spared and that the impact will not be as was projected.”
Graham’s siblings and his father, age 90, live in Jamaica. The family hails from the small town of Faith’s Pen in St. Ann parish. He graduated from the Memphis School of Preaching and returned to Jamaica, where he worked in ministry before moving with his wife to Barbados about two years ago to minister for the Hindsbury Road Church of Christ.
“It’s not easy” being away from home when disaster strikes, Graham said.
In Jamaica, church members boarded up buildings and barricaded themselves in their homes as Melissa approached.
“Heavy winds, heavy rains, flooded roads, some deaths … and Melissa arrives later today!” Gladwyn Kiddoe wrote in a WhatsApp message from his home in Jamaica’s capital, Kingston.
After Hurricane Beryl in 2024, a member of the Bull Savannah Church of Christ stands outside her destroyed home and speaks with a relief worker from Kingston.
Kiddoe, director of the Jamaica School of Preaching and Biblical Studies International, and fellow Christians coordinated relief efforts after Hurricane Beryl struck Jamaica’s southern coast in late June 2024. The school’s faculty and church members made multiple trips to the hard-hit community of Bull Savanna to help storm survivors rebuild.
Related: Jamaican Christians want to show ‘the church at its best’ as they respond after Hurricane Beryl
Kiddoe and Francis Yorke, deputy director of the preaching school and evangelist for the Braeton Church of Christ, assembled a relief team to serve in the aftermath of Melissa. Ministries associated with Churches of Christ, including Healing Hands International and One Kingdom also plan to respond.
The home of Delgado Francis, the first convert of the Bull Savannah Church of Christ, sustained damage from Hurricane Beryl in 2024.
Christopher Fong participated in the relief efforts after Hurricane Beryl. A native of Jamaica, Fong was completing a master’s in education at Harding University in Searcy, Ark., at the time. As hurricanes intensify and become more frequent in the Caribbean, Churches of Christ should be ready to respond rapidly, build back stronger and show “the church at its best,” Fong said.
Fong, who lives in Virginia, told the Chronicle he plans to travel to Jamaica as soon as it’s possible.
“We should be there,” Fong said. “The first thing they should see is us.”
For more information about relief efforts, contact Gladwyn Kiddoe at [email protected] or Francis Yorke at [email protected]. Check back with the Chronicle for updates.
