Sail Ho! | Although Christopher Columbus lost the Santa Maria to coral reefs off the island of St. Kitts, the crew of the Anejo found that sailing included peaceful hours between islands.

The evening began peacefully enough. We'd docked our sailboat and begun showing the JESUS film on the Caribbean island of Antigua. Darkness fell, and stars spangled the sky.

Suddenly my left leg exploded in pain. Apparently I'd been standing on a nest of fire ants, and they swarmed over my shoe, my sock, my trousers. When I tried to brush them off, more of the little critters tied into my fingers. Fire-ant bites pack a wallop, and I had at least a dozen.

So much for the "tropical island paradise."

But I hadn't come for a vacation. Our multinational team was sailing from island to island showing the JESUS film--a feature-length film based on the Gospel of Luke--and we had a mission.

The project originated when Campus Crusade for Christ staff member Judy Starr looked into how The JESUS Film Project® could help take the gospel to every person in the islands by the end of the year 2000. She decided the best way would be to send a film team to each island, no matter how small. But flying would be too costly, so Judy asked God for a boat. A few weeks later God provided. Nobody knew of her prayer, yet a retired doctor called to see if The JESUS Film Project could use his yacht to show the film in the Caribbean.

Judy quickly set up a cruise from Grenada in the south to the Bahamas in the north. People on the boat would show the film at islands along the way, surveying the state of Christianity in each place. Campus Crusade ministries around the region, most of which already planned to help evangelize the Caribbean, provided people to serve two-week slots as film-team members and boat crew.

One of those countries, Guyana, sent two young men to join our team--Murtland Sobers, a pharmacy student nearing graduation, and Jules Gibson, a wiry newspaper photographer. They were joined by American staff members Brad and Lynn Jankowski, who serve with Student Venture, as well as two of us from Worldwide Challenge. John Kotze, a South African, piloted the boat and taught us all to sail.

"It's well known in the sailing community," says Captain John, looking up from his charts, "that sailing is a test of character. The best way to test your marriage is to go on a sail together. You either come out divorced or with a much stronger marriage."

	Go Ye | "The Bible commands us to go into all the world and preach the gospel," says 32-year-old Jules Gibson. "If we don't, we'll be judged. So when Joe Johnson [Campus Crusade director in Guyana] asked me to come, I made myself available." "We had always wanted to reach the islands," says Joe Johnson, "but the cost was prohibitive. So we were happy to find people to go on the boat."

The same might be said of a JESUS film team. A sailboat's living quarters are cramped, even on a 39-foot catamaran like the Anejo. Personal quirks soon irritate crewmates. And the team had come together from different cultures and backgrounds. But our common goal--help take the gospel, through the JESUS film, to the Leeward Islands--bonded us together and helped us trust God to overcome problems along the way.

Guadeloupe

We rendezvoused with the boat on the French-speaking island of Guadeloupe, 300 miles southeast of Puerto Rico. Brad and Lynn quickly tangled with the realities of living in a space half the size of their bathroom back home. That first sweltering morning, Lynn awoke and crawled out of the tight sleeping alcove. Suddenly the little plastic fan on the wall sucked up her hair. "Brad, Brad," she called, pulling his foot. "Get me loose!" Struggling to unsnarl the knot of blond, Brad finally grabbed a razor-blade knife and hacked off two inches of his wife's hair.

We talked over the situation while munching crepes in a dockside café, wondering just how challenging this adventure would be.

As we prepared to sail, a motor mount busted. "We'll have to get the part from Martinique," said the mechanic. "It will take several days."

But churches in Antigua, some 75 miles to the north, expected us to do film showings the following night. Brad called the team to pray. "Lord," he said, "if the part is anywhere on this island, help the mechanic find it."

An hour later the mechanic showed up with motor mount in hand--he'd found it buried in a corner of his very own shop. "Maybe there's something to this prayer stuff after all," commented Captain John dryly, and asked us to pray for the weather. We'd come during hurricane season, and our leg of the journey would include 10 days with no hurricane-safe harbor.

Lynn soon had more immediate worries, for her Dramamine® didn't work, and as the Anejo rolled through the ocean swells, her stomach mutinied. "When I got sick," she says, "there was no place to be alone. So I just laid on the deck and kept my face in a bucket."

Antigua

Frigate birds coasted alongside the mast as we sailed into Falmouth Bay, a half-day trip north of Guadeloupe. Moravian missionaries first came to Antigua in the 1700s, but today, according to Antiguan believers, people's faith has grown shallow. "Moral conduct is very bad," lamented local pastor John Lee, adding that immorality runs rife in the church. "We have a high rate of teenage pregnancy," adds Lynnette Springer, an official with the Antigua Ministry of Health. "Most births are out of wedlock."

Jules and Murtland contacted pastors, for Campus Crusade of Guyana had organized the visit to this former British colony. We seemed to have arrived at a bad time. "It's been hard to schedule shows," says Southern Baptist missionary Jim Moslander, "because people say, 'This is hurricane season, and everybody stays put.' And several have said, 'We already have the video, and we show it at Christmas and Easter.'"

Nevertheless, Jim scheduled several shows, including one at the site of my fire-ant fiasco and another at a boys' school based out of an old sugar-cane plantation. Of the 38 boys present--most in their teens--about half indicated decisions to follow Christ.

"Our God created the elements," commented Jules, reflecting on the hurricane problem. "He did not bring us this far to see us fail."

After the boys'-school show, we set sail for Montserrat, a volcanic island 75 miles southeast of Antigua.

Montserrat

"This place is a death trap," muttered Captain John, looking at the unprotected beach. A volcano destroyed Montserrat's capital city in 1995, and the few hundred people remaining on the island had fled to the northern tip. At night, explained the skipper, ocean swells could sweep the boat to shore, possibly destroying the Anejo. With no safe anchorage, we turned to the wind and sailed on.

As the trade winds pushed us north to Nevis, Murtland clung to the rigging, watching flying fish skitter from wave to foamy wave.

The pharmacy student, we later found out, had a secret--he couldn't swim. He'd come expecting a motor launch, not a sailboat. "When we came on board and I saw we'd be sailing, I was concerned," he says. "Then when John said the boom could swing over and knock me in the water, I thought it was time to begin praying."

Nevis

Colorful houses nestle on quiet lanes, boys play cricket in a schoolyard and a cloud-shrouded peak towers overhead. No wonder locals call these the "islands that scrape the clouds."

Heave Ho | Transporting film equipment by boat can be challenging. On smaller islands with no marina, Captain John had to make several trips to transport the team and equipment to shore.

We anchored several hundred yards offshore, then motored in by dinghy to meet pastor Eric Maynard of Shiloh Baptist Church. While waiting for him on shore, the Jankowskis explained the gospel to a taxi driver by the Four Seasons Resort.

Pastor Maynard had arranged interviews with both secular and Christian radio stations. One disc jockey seemed intrigued by the boat concept, asking perceptive questions about living conditions, team relationships and whether we were fearful of the weather. "Yes, we are," replied Brad, "but this is when God gave the boat, and we are trusting Him to keep hurricanes away."

That night, at a schoolyard film showing, fireflies danced overhead and a shooting star split the sky. The crowd of 120, many of them nonbelievers, watched the film intently. Nobody on Nevis had seen JESUS, and people soaked in the message. Ten people indicated decisions to commit their lives to Christ.

The next day, we found that anchoring offshore made Nevis a challenging place to shop. "I can't get things back to the boat [easily]," says Lynn, "for you have to transport it by car, then by dinghy." And just as Lynn stepped into the dinghy with a load of groceries, a storm swept in and soaked the dry cereal.

Nevertheless, Nevis provided a tropical respite. Coconut palms lined the shore and calypso music danced across the waves. A late-night swim around the boat turned up "sparkles," a luminescence that formed as we swam. Two days later we sailed across the bay to the next island.

St. Kitts

First settled by Europeans in 1623, before any other Caribbean island, St. Kitts offers vast sugar-cane plantations that once provided sugar to the entire Caribbean. Today the sugar industry has fallen on hard times, and Basseterre, the capital city, felt grittier than other places we visited.

But churches were filled with gracious believers eager to show off the beauty of their island, and responsive crowds of 300 to 400 came to film showings held on basketball courts and soccer fields.

"Did you see all the young people here tonight?" asked bank manager Analdo Bailey after a show in the village of Saddlers. He stood in the dark for a few minutes, trying to help me understand the St. Kitts youth culture. Analdo explained that youth have little interest in religion and no longer want to work in the cane fields. Yet jobs are scarce, so they wind up getting into trouble. "We need to take the message to where people are," he concluded.

And that was just our mission--helping take the gospel to "where people are." The Caribbean may seem a tropical paradise to some, but to millions of others it's just a place to live. We prayed that as islanders began living for Jesus, the Leeward Islands would become paradise indeed.

Give or take a few fire ants.

By the time the voyage ended last December, six teams had shown the film 50 times to 6,920 people, with 176 indicating decisions to follow Christ. For information on future projects of this type, contact Judy Starr at (949) 361-7575.