Church in Jamaica

Since I got here in Queens, I’ve mainly been going to the Jamaica 1^st ward (as in, Jamaica, the neighborhood in Queens. I don't move around that much). The Saturday before my first Sunday here, I just looked up the meetinghouse locator to try to find the closest ward to where I’m at, and the closest one I happened to find just happened to be the Jamaica 1^st Ward, which is absolutely amazing. First of all, it’s in a totally different-seeming part of the neighborhood—St. John’s (the Catholic university we’re being housed at during our training) and the immediate blocks around it are pretty middle- to upper-middle class, down to the street (Hillside) where there’s a subway stop. From then on, it slowly becomes more and more inner city, until you get to Jamaica Boulevard, which feels a lot like the main drags in cities I lived in in Brazil and Mozambique—full of street vendors selling everything from ice cream to falafel to halal food, and full of storefronts of those types of stores that sell a bit of everything, especially if it contains plastic or was made in China. And the crowds, too, especially after church—it just feels joyful, the huge groups of people, I love it.

And then there’s the ward itself—I’ve seriously never seen a more multicultural congregation in all my time in the church. There’s the Indian-descended guy from Guyana with his family (the ward mission leader), the Ecuadorian guy who speaks Portuguese and is really into capoeira because his wife is from Rio (he’s the young men’s president), the gaúcho bald white brasileiro with a goatee with his family (the ward clerk), the black Haitian guy in the bishopric, the hilarious Jamaican guy in the bishopric, the numerous Caribbean-sounding women, the very academic and smart man from Trinidad (who’s the High Priest rep in the ward), the older, frail-looking white woman with a German accent (who’s the bishop’s mom), the older man from Haiti who bore his testimony about feeling healed after a problem with his spine, the African-American guy who works in security who teaches Sunday School, and a number of other folks from all sorts of backgrounds (various parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, a lot more African-American and Hispanic folks). The first week I went, there was also a visiting black lady from London named Sylvia who’s a member and who sat next to me (she was in town visiting her brother who lives nearby, and got excited when she saw the chapel so that she knew where she could go to church). Seriously, it’s amazing what a melting pot this ward was. I love it—I remember thinking, on my walk back from church on that first Sunday here, this is the gospel, all of these different types of people together, working together and loving together and building Zion together. And above and beyond the diversity, there is the openness and the friendliness and the love that I feel there—more so than any other ward I can think of, it often seriously feels like a family. I can remember many leadership meetings where it was discussed how we could build more the feeling of “ward family”—well, this ward gets it. I have felt more loved, and welcomed, and accepted as family in this ward than I have in most (if not all) wards I can remember—seriously, especially my first Sunday I left it with that comforting and warm feeling I have only ever felt by being with family. How could you not fall in love with that? My only regret is that this isn’t where I’m going to be working, so I can’t transfer my records here. I would love to live in this ward—the familial feel of it is what I picture heaven being like.