Tesha Thompson – Destined to change lives

SHE describes herself as being melancholic by temperament, but her warm personality and devout passion for transformational learning, leadership, teaching and impacting the lives of children, youth and young adults shrouds that element of her character.

SHE describes herself as being melancholic by temperament, but her warm personality and devout passion for transformational learning, leadership, teaching and impacting the lives of children, youth and young adults shrouds that element of her character.

Born and raised in Mandeville, Manchester for the first eight years of her life before relocating to Kingston, Tesha Thompson told

All Woman that when people think of ‘melancholy’ they imagine someone who is sad, but she explained that her personality goes beyond that and encapsulates someone who thinks deeply about life, is very compassionate, structured and grounded.

As a result, from as young as age six, Thompson said she was conscious that God had a plan for her life and she wanted to be baptised. But though it didn’t materialise until she was 12, she said the foundation of her Christian life made her eventually realise that touching the lives of people was part of her destiny.

However, the format in which it would be done was not cemented in Thompson’s mind until she entered Calabar High School as a French teacher — a job she held for 13 years before moving on to Shortwood Teachers’ College where she now lectures and coordinates the teaching practice programme in the Modern Languages Department.

“I went to the University of the West Indies, did languages, and decided I was going to teach for a year. I went to Westwood High and truly loved the experience because I was moulding and coaching young minds, which I enjoy. I love seeing transformation and growth. But then I left Westwood, came back to Kingston, worked at a hotel for a year, then took on Calabar for 13 years. It was there that it was cemented that this was where I belonged. I started to understand that our boys need someone who won’t give up on them. Many of them, I had to intervene several times, and mothers relied on me. Then I was a moved from form teacher to supervisor. I realised the influence I had, parents believed in me, and I was really helping them. I realised my next calling was to help coach and train teachers, so that more persons can have more influence,” she said.

Thompson, who is competent in Spanish, French, German and Japanese, has a bachelor of education in Spanish and a master’s in adult learning. She also works as a missionary and coordinator of the Caribbean Field of the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, which focuses on child development, disaster preparedness, disaster response, the needs of the community, and training teachers/leaders to help to maintain or restore dignity to children.

Additionally, through her work as a missionary, in 2011 she decided to write a book —

Broken for Service: 31 Daily Devotional Reflections for Child Development Professionals, published in June 2016, after what she described as a heartfelt experience in 2010 while serving in the Dominican Republic (DR).

“In 2010 I went to the DR as a missionary in the compassionate ministries. I went to child development centres and the DR has the most Nazarene child development centres — over 30. I went to about 20 of them. I was sponsoring a little girl and you’re not supposed to meet your sponsor, but because of my position they showed me, and when I saw where she lived and other places I broke down and was inconsolable,” she said.

“I was here in Jamaica sponsoring this little girl in DR and you think you’re doing a good job until you meet upon eight, nine persons living in one room. It’s so different. Sometimes we think we’re poor here, but poverty is real in other areas, so we have to look at other perspectives. I thought about that and persons working in the child development centres, what they had to do. I felt like milk running through a jar; I was broken.

[But then] I realised that everything God used in the Bible was broken — the broken bread, broken alabaster jar, David’s spirit had to be broken, the temple curtain was broken in order for people to have direct access, broken tombs, broken years of prosperity when Egypt experienced lack, the broken silence of Job… My book is an inspirational tool to parents, teachers, child development professionals, anyone who wants to be an advocate for a child and managers,” Thompson said.

Thompson, who’s also the owner and operator of a new company, Trésors et Cadeaux (treasures and gifts), enjoys making her own creations which she names off notable Bible characters and gifts them to individuals who may have similarities to those characters.

Also a wife and mother of one son, she has worked as a reporter for the now defunct Jamaica Herald where she contributed to a section in the Love Herald called Childlike Faith, where she interviewed children who had accepted Christ or were making a difference, and worked as a co-host with her pastor for 10 years on Love 101’s Nazarene Connection before it was cancelled. She currently contributes to TBC Radio’s Holiness Today.

Thompson, who has been to every continent except Australia and Antarctica, also holds fast to a saying she coined — ‘Channel Only, God will get the glory’, and the motto of Quebec — Je me souviens (I remember).

“I call myself the Channel Only author. Everything I do is channelled through Him and if you think of it that way, you think of serving people. Je me souviens — if I’m having a bad day, I remember I also have good days. If I feel like I don’t want to be your friend, I remember when you were there for me,” she said.