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THE VIEW of the open Caribbean Sea is spectacular. The high perch gives one a sense of sharing in heaven's bliss as one looks down on the best and most glamorous vantage point of creation.
Team Work Associates consisting of a school, a retreat centre and a church stands enviably on one of Jamaica's most picturesque slopes with a view that is as far as the eyes allow. The drive up the hill is surprisingly steep, contouring and meandering through the upscale Montego Bay neighbourhoods of Coral Gardens and Torado Heights, until one drives a short distance on a road that badly needs repairs.
It is then that one sees the breathtaking view.
The visionary behind Team Work is a man of short stature whose vision far outstrips the simple and modest air he exudes. Menzie Oban does not immediately strike one as a man who dreams big dreams. His modest appearance and simple manner belies the long and hard struggle to get the Team Work centre to where it is today.
One needs to have an appreciation of the divine sense of call that others have, to make sense of how Oban and his wife ended up staking their lives on what is essentially, a divine gamble, or at the very least, a gamble on divine providence.
Definitively, it all began in 1971, though the early seed was sown in 1950 when Oban made the decision that would mark his life forever to live his life according to Christian precept. He made the radical and, in the eyes of many, the foolish decision to return to Jamaica in 1971 after being in England for twenty years. He came home empty-handed.
The move was spurred by a "word" from the Lord to Oban that he was to return to Jamaica to build a Christian Centre. But the Lord gave him neither money, land, nor a blue print, neither did he know what a Christian centre was. The "calling" initially took him living with his first wife who died tragically a few years after returning to the country along with four of their children, in one room in Harbour View in Kingston. He recalls how they took turns dressing in the room, or in the car.
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