Loud outbursts of “hi”, beaming smiles and a few reluctant and curious stares greeted board members from the Mustard Seed Communities (MSC) USA and their friends on Friday, when they toured the facilities at the Jerusalem! Children’s Home on Windsor Road in Spanish Town, St Catherine.

The group, which has been making substantial contributions, in cash and kind, to Mustard Seed Communities International for some 10 years now, is in Jamaica on a three-day visit to tour the different homes that comprise the community. Among them are Traug Keller, chairman of MSC USA and senior vice-president, ESPN Radio and ESPN Deportes, ESPN, as well as Jack Griffin, who is the CEO of Empirical Media and former CEO of Parade Magazine, Meredith Corporation and Time Magazine.

Father Garvin Augustine, the executive director of MSC International, told the Jamaica Observer, who joined the team on the tour of the 12-acre property, the reason the team is on the island.

“They are here to see where their support is going,” Father Garvin Augustine said.

The last time board members from MSC USA visited the island was three years ago. Their return on the weekend was certainly welcomed by the children at the Jerusalem home, especially Cedric, who greeted every member of the team with a hug and a broad grin that, based on the reaction of each team member, was clearly infectious.

Jerusalem! Children’s Home is one of the several across Jamaica that comprises the Mustard Seed Communities, with another 12 centres scattered among Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Zimbabwe. The facility houses about 160 children, which includes those who are HIV positive and those with both physical and mental challenges. The property features a chapel, adoration rooms, an art centre, a physiotherapy centre, play therapy areas, classrooms, a clinic, as well as a five-acre farm.

Located in a sometimes volatile area of Spanish Town, acting administrator for the facility Suzette Dixon said that although it is a difficult community, the residents are welcoming and are helping to raise the children at the facility.

“We are in a hard community, but the community takes care of us and we take care of them,” Dixon told the Sunday Observer. “The community is good to us here because what we have done is we have an outreach programme and with that outreach programme, we have treats for the community residents and invite the children… so it becomes a bond and we build a relationship.

“They are allowed to come on the grounds, because we have adoration rooms and there is the chapel, which is open to persons in the community. They are allowed to enjoy the lawn because you know sometimes people have to come and just relax,” Dixon stated.

Dixon also noted that the residents in the community surrounding Jerusalem! Children’s Home are keen on taking care of the children at the facility.

“They take care of us,” Dixon reiterated. “You have persons who will call and say, ‘so and so is on the street, are you aware?'”

In fact, when the team visited the facility on Friday, residents were participating in a Day of Recollection at the chapel and members of the visiting team took the opportunity to pray with them.

The US team then got a tour of the property while meeting and interacting with the children. One girl who is HIV positive, was asked, impromptu, to deliver a poem to the guests. She stood upright, recited the name of her original poem, then delivered it with impressive eloquence and diction to a group that was enraptured. When she was finished, it was obvious that every member of the team enjoyed her piece, based on their explosive applause and the grins plastered across their faces. She is 15 years old.

The visitors were also given a tour of the farm, which acts as both a therapeutic alternative and an income earner. The farm has two fish ponds, a chicken farm, which has approximately 2,500 birds, and produces about 2,300 eggs on a daily basis, as well as livestock, which includes sheep, goat and pigs.

Dixon told the Observer that the eggs from the farm are sold to supermarkets and are also used to feed the children at Jerusalem as well as at the other children’s homes within the Mustard Seed Community Jamaica.

“We want to ensure that what we do can help to sustain us,” Dixon said while adding that the children have to be fed four square meals per day because of their medication. The produce from the farm helps to bolster one the most challenging areas for the home, which is getting food to feed the children.

But how do the children end up at Jerusalem in the first place?

Dixon told the Sunday Observer that one of Father Gregory Ramkissoon’s saying is: “From the womb to the tomb” as these children are those who have been abandoned because of their disabilities or because they are HIV positive, and spend their lifetimes within the community.

“The majority of our children will never be able to integrate into society,” Dixon said. “Children come to us through the Child Development Agency as well as through other people who may bring certain cases to the attention of Father Ramkissoon.”

The facility houses children from about six years old to 39 years old or older. If the challenged child is over 18 though, he will not be allowed to join the community. However, once the need is identified for a child under 18 and there is space, he is taken into the community and cared for “for life”.

The property also houses a columbarium, which Dixon explained that since the children are abandoned, relatives do not normally turn up to claim their bodies after they die, so the community then has to cremate and bury these children.

The children at the Jerusalem! Children’s Home are, according to Dixon, from every “nook and cranny” of the island.

Jerusalem! Children’s Home was the first stop for the MSC USA team, which was also expected to tour Jacob’s Ladder in Moneague, St Ann, Mary’s Child/St Anthony on Dillsbury Avenue in St Andrew and My Father’s House on Mahoe Drive, also in St Andrew, as well as attend a mass, while on the three-day visit.

Founded by Father Ramkissoon in Kingston in 1978, the Mustard Seed Communities is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation that is on a mission to “serve and uplift the most vulnerable members of society, especially disabled and abandoned children”. The community has supporting chapters in the United States, Ireland, the Netherlands, and England.