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I'm Fr. Jim Bok and I'm
a missionary for our province in Jamaica.
Born and raised in Cincinnati, went off to the seminary for 9 years
after high school, 5 of those within 40 miles of
Cincy. And then after ordination, I was sent back to teach in our high
school at Roger Bacon,
was there 17 years and I was in an administrative job for the province for
17 years. And
then I went to Jamaica. Where I came from
in all my life growing up, I didn't grow up in a
rich family, but I never wanted for anything. And my parents valued education
and I got a good education. And,
and I always had food on the table. And had
a mom and dad who were there for me all the time and and who cared for me and
and brothers and sister who
who love me. It's not like that in Jamaica for so many people
and just some the fundamental basic needs
they're not able to fulfill.
One day our parish Womens League
called me over to a meeting and they told me they wanted to start a soup kitchen.
Well, I had sort of had that in the back my mind, so little by little we got that
going. And so we're serving 5 days a week now
about 130 people a day lunch. And
because of the children that were coming to the soup kitchen,
we were concerned that they should be in school.
So were sponsoring 40 kids with the help of their mothers and
helping the moms to pay for their taxi fare, their
lunch. That's been a been a great blessing and that sort of developed. The
kids come in the morning.
We have a bus now thanks to the Rotary Clubs in Negril and Grapevine, Texas.
We have a fifteen-passenger Toyota HiAce.
It's a school bus. It transports 15 children to
one of the schools every day and at the end of the day they go up and pick up
the kids. But, on the way to school they stop in our
Saint Anthony's kitchen and have breakfast. So we're serving breakfast to
about 40 kids before they go to school.
First, I should say that the Catholic Church in Jamaica is very small, it's about 2 percent of
the population
and so all of the Catholic communities are
are small and Mary, Gate of Heaven where I am in Negril
I always tell people we have about 70
Catholics in the church. It's important to me that we continue to
build our
parish community and we're growing. We had,
during the Easter season, we had 11
baptisms. And so I'm hoping that that will continue that
we keep bringing more people into the, into our community.
That's not why we do it. I'm not into proselytizing. That's not, not my
style at all but, if the byproduct of
treating people with some good Christian outreach, and good Christian attitude, and
Christ-like
care and concern, if that brings people to
to Mary, Gate of Heaven Church, I think that's, that's terrific.