Eight months after Hurricane Melissa ripped through western Jamaica, reducing homes to rubble and shattering lives, Crystal Morrison-Spencer still ends each day in the tiny office of an unfinished church hall in St Elizabeth, praying that her family of six will one day have a place to truly call home.

The 35-year-old mother of four has been living inside the makeshift shelter since the hurricane destroyed both the church building and the adjoining manse where her family had been staying.

“I have been living in the church hall... it’s like the pastor’s office,” Morrison-Spencer told THE STAR, explaining that after the hurricane destroyed the church home behind the sanctuary, the unfinished hall became their only refuge.