- CLAUDINE HOUSEN PHOTO
Caroline Jolley.
Avia Ustanny, Outlook Writer
SUITED IN burgundy and smiling, Caroline Jolley is an unbelievable 48 years old. Proportioned like a mature model, there is nothing to indicate that here sits a fire-breathing Pentecostal pastor.
Caroline Jolley, pastor of the Christ Temple Evangelistic Centre in Ocho Rios, was born in Houston Texas. She says she is here in Jamaica strictly 'by the will of God'.
The missionary was enjoying the good life in Houston Texas, a recently-married woman and a mother of two when, she said, "I got a burden for Jamaica and did not understand. He (God) said come and when I put my foot on the soil he would give me clarity."
Jolley had previously met a Jamaican who had extended an invitation to her home but otherwise, she says, "I did not know anyone here."
She came to Jamaica in 1997 to see what could be happening and, while in prayer at this friend's house, she again heard, "I have called you to this place."
Now, unless one knows the distance that Caroline Jolley has travelled from - a life of dissolution to one of faith - one cannot appreciate her unquestioning obedience of a mystic calling.
A woman fortunate in her looks, Caroline, as a young woman, was an individual dedicated to her own pleasure - with a capital 'P'. Although she had come of age in a stable home where mother and father taught all the right values, her primary interest was in tasting the world's pleasures - nothing less.
The seventh of eight children, Caroline recalls: "I had wonderful parents who took me to Sunday school. I never knew what it was to be without." She was also baptised for the first time at age eight.
But Caroline fell into drug addiction and 'sexual perversion' not long after she could afford to live away from home. Her survival in a desperate world of addiction, she says, was purely miraculous.
"I was never arrested. People around me were getting shot, scarred, getting HIV/AIDS. I was never affected."
During her years of dangerous living, she recalls that she was also in car accidents in which the cars were totalled and yet she was able to walk away unscathed.
Caroline Jolley says that she was 25 years old and still enjoying what she thought was the best life when God called her and by 1978 she felt convicted. She started attending church with her mother, but even while attending, she was plagued by the same desires.
Right after leaving church, she would be back at home smoking drugs. One Sunday, she burnt a hole in her brand new dress. She recalls saying: "I cant go on like this."
Caroline continued her double life until one day in 1982 while driving around town in her car, the presence of God came into her car. A voice asked her: "Who do you think you are?"
The Lord's voice, Caroline said, informed her that He was the one keeping her out of jail. He also said that she should either "come to Him now or remain and die." Caroline responded with alacrity, moving from where she was to live in another area and informing her friends that she was "turning herself in."
"I was like a fugitive. I bought a Bible, bought gospel music and stopped going where I used to go." Salvation, however, was a process, as her addiction held her tightly.
One night she recalls she was in a club, accepting drinks from her friends, when everyone around her started looking like beasts. "The Lord was showing me their true nature," she states. Caroline went back to church soon after and prayed that she would not die a lost person. In December of that year she was baptised "in Jesus' name" and filled with the Holy Ghost. That she says "was the beginning of everything."
The Holy Spirit she says, has helped her to defeat what was a very big ego. "Everything was about me and what I wanted to do." Now, that has changed.
Married two years after her 'Jesus' name' baptism, Caroline feels today that God has blessed her with contentment. She has a vested interest in obeying His every word. Furthermore, she feels she owes God big time.
"To whom much is given, much is expected. I never went to drug rehabilitation or Alcoholics Anonymous. God did a thing in my life. Salvation is one of the greatest miracles on the planet."
Caroline came to Jamaica permanently in November 1998, having sold the family's recently-purchased home and their cars, in addition to holding a few fund-raisers for the new mission. She retired from her job at Verizon in Houston and held a garage sale of their furniture.
Her husband, an army retiree and a lawyer who also had decided to submit himself to God, also resigned from his job as an attorney in Texas. Arriving in Jamaica, the family stayed at the home of the local general secretary of Pentecostal Assemblies of the World until they moved into a place of their own.
Their vision, Caroline says, "was to establish a place of worship and spiritual enrichment. We would also get involved in education, providing food for the poor, clothing, support for the family structure.
"We wanted to preach and teach the word of God so that people could understand how to come out of their negative situations. The Lord told me: 'Here is a people who have needs to be healed and to be saved'." Caroline set out to establish a 'Total Man' ministry.
The transition period for the couple has involved building a church, constructing a kitchen structured to feed large numbers of people and the pursuit of outreach activities. The couple has worked with the Windsor Girls' home and held seminars and conferences for youth.
"The focus was enlightenment impacting on the kingdom," Caroline notes.
Since their arrival in 1998 the Jolleys have experienced break-ins at their location in Ocho Rios, prejudices from other religious bodies and enough problems to make them want to go back home. Currently, they have also run out of cash for their building projects. But, they have decided to persevere, as certainly the Lord must know what He is doing. The couple envisions providing locals with health care, nursery facilities, counselling and training programmes for entrepreneur skills.
"We are having to trust God for everything," Pastor Jolley says. They will remain, she says, as they want to be a part of the transformation of Jamaica. "God wants us to have dominion over poverty and ignorance. People who are not employed are involved in promiscuity, drug abuse and criminal activity. It (the problems) needs to be touched and ministered to. The hurting needs to be healed."
Although the missionaries have long exhausted the funds which they brought with them, Pastor Jolley is extremely optimistic. The God who delivered her from drugs can surely rescue others.
"We believe that if we can create the perfect blend between love and truth, we can make the mountains shake. Yes, there are lots of churches in Jamaican, but some of them are dead. We can make a difference, not just to spiritual lives but also to families," she states.
