The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod began work in Jamaica in 1993, through the Nebraska Lutheran Mission Society. In 1997, the LCMS awarded Lutheran Ministries in Jamaica (LMJ) a community health outreach grant. Subsequent grants subsidized a women’s micro-enterprise project, agriculture projects, and hurricane relief and reconstruction. Since 2007, LAC’s longest serving alliance missionary, Rev. Obot Ite, has been planting churches alongside wife Abas and daughter, Goodness, through a partnership between the Lutheran Church in his native Nigeria, and the LCMS. The island boasts two congregations in its capital, Kingston: Faith, which worships on the second floor of a building in the heart of downtown; and St. Andrew, which worships in a multi-use facility near a bustling transportation hub. Pastor Ite also visits an extended family in Bois Content once a month for catechesis, and a community of believers gathers weekly in Westmoreland, on the western side of the island, under the leadership of Jamaican native and pastoral candidate Claudious. September 2019 ushered in the first academic year for Parade Gardens Lutheran School, a basic school run by a member of Faith that was spared from closure and brought under the Church’s umbrella thanks to generous partners. LMJ’s outreach is closely aligned with the activities of Lutheran Hour Ministries (LHM); Director Ancella works out of an office in the same building as St. Andrew as she oversees a radio program and shares the message of Christ with children in an ever-expanding circle of schools using materials written from a Lutheran perspective. Short-term teams assist with ongoing renovations to LMJ facilities, support the faculty and students at Parade Gardens Lutheran School, and multiply the reach of LHM.
We are grateful to God for his protection and guidance through the last school year at Parade Gardens Lutheran School (PGLS) in Kingston, Jamaica. Just before the close of the last term, the school organized a sports day event in which the children participated in many races and won several awards and prizes. Now we look forward to God’s blessing for the new term that began on April 12 and will continue into early July.
Thank you for your steadfastness in upholding the Church’s work in Jamaica, prayerfully and with your sacrificial gifts. We pray you and your family are healthy, well, and finding the blessings in these unprecedented times. Pastor Ite shepherded both Kingston area congregations and Parade Gardens Lutheran School (PGLS) through the peak of COVID-19 and continues adjusting to the joys and challenges of a new normal.
As part of the celebration of Reggae Month in 2020, Lutheran Ministries in Jamaica decided to celebrate their children. Pastor Obot Ite, an alliance missionary from Nigeria, who has served in Jamaica for well over a decade, had the idea to work with Parade Gardens Lutheran School to provide opportunities for the children to express their faith during worship services at nearby Faith Lutheran Church.
The very first Lutheran School on the Island of Jamaica was recently dedicated in the impoverished area of downtown Kingston, known as Parade Gardens.
Soon after beginning service in Jamaica Rev. Obot Ite, a pastor of the Lutheran Church of Nigeria and funded by the LCMS, put his faith in God when he set out to plant the island’s second Lutheran church in downtown Kingston.
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