War Cry - February, 2015 Page 40

humble yet awe-inspiring chapel sits on the
shore in Georgetown, on the island of Grand
Cayman. It is the oldest church of any de-

nomination in the Cayman Islands and holds a distinc-
tion of not one, but two iRonies for us to consider.

Known today as the Elmslie United Church, its

organized congregation dates back to 1845. Several
buildings served as the sanctuary for its first 80 years,
but hurricanes kept sweeping them away. Not until
the 1920s was the present church built, and it endured
storms of varying power, including Ivan in September
2004, a category 5 hurricane.

The arched roof, designed by a naval architect, re-

sembles an inverted hull of the wooden ships that fre-
quented this port for centuries. In fact, the mahogany
beams were salvaged from shipwrecks and are a pri-
mary reason for the ceiling's strength and beauty.

Equally striking are two stained-glass windows

behind the platform. One depicts the Risen Christ on
Easter Sunday, and the other shows Jesus ascending
into Heaven.

Affixed to the walls, on either side of the platform,

are memorial plaques of church members lost at sea
over the past 170 years, among them teachers, lawyers,
ministers, laity and the island's first dentist.

The belfry's bell rings on New Year's Eve and

special occasions throughout the year. Several mem-
bers of Great Britain's Royal Family, including Queen
Elizabeth II, have worshipped here.

One iRony is that this church is growing by add-

ing congregations. In an age in which many Christian
churches suffer division and separation, residents on
this island band together; three formerly separate
church families now call Elmslie home.

However, the more interesting iRony lies in the

fact that this church, and any other church on Grand
Cayman (for those first years, anyway), was built by
accident.

In 1845, the Presbyterian Church in Jamaica at-

tempted to send missionaries to Africa to preach and
plant churches. The first stop on their long itinerary
was supposed to be Nigeria. But, they never made it.

Their ship wrecked on the reefs just off the Cay-

mans. Fortunately, the missionaries survived, com-
ing ashore and finding indigenous people who had no
church. No Christians had made it there to establish
a church of any kind. To these Jamaican missionaries,
it was a redirection from God. "Why go all the way to
Africa when we need to plant churches here in these
neighboring islands?" they reasoned.

And so an act of God brought Christianity to the

Cayman Islands. Were it not for a hurricane that
shipwrecked a group headed halfway around the
world, some years--perhaps decades--would have
gone by before Caymanians could benefit
from "the gospel the wind blew here!"

iRony

............

The War Cry | FEBRUARY 2015

MAJOR FRANK DURACHER

Shipwrecked Church

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