Freedom Come Rain

2025 Jamaican Rhodes Scholar Aundrene Cameron is looking forward to making her mark when she takes up her scholarship at the University of Oxford from late September to early October 2025. Describing herself as a ‘nerd’ who enjoys learning, she said she is anticipating learning a lot of things that she believes she is called to do. “I always believed that I was somebody that was created to make change, to create a better Jamaica, to help to create a better Caribbean. And this is something that actually allows me to do that. So being able to study criminology and to look specifically at it, like human trafficking, positions me to be a changemaker in my country,” she shared with Freedom Come Rain. Cameron also informed that she believes this is something that God has called her to do, and she is excited for the opportunity to learn more. Cameron’s life reads just like the Biblical character Hannah, who found it hard to conceive. She prayed, and when God opened her womb, she promised to give her son Samuel back to God. Reflecting on a story her mother related to her, Cameron said her mother also struggled to have a child. Her parents tried for a while, but it wasn’t working out. “And she was in deep prayer and fasting to have me. And the promise that she made was actually that she just said to God, ‘If you give me this child, I will commit this child completely to you,’” Cameron related. Aundrene Cameron and her parents – Andrew and Claudina After she got pregnant, Cameron said her mother had only one request of God, and that was that her daughter should have wisdom. Her parents gave her the middle name ‘Alicia,’ influenced by the word “Hallelujah,” as they were so grateful to have her. Cameron, now 22, grew up always knowing that she was God’s gift to her parents—Andrew and Claudina—who ensured that from the minute she was born, she was groomed in the church. And just in case she would forget the importance of serving God, her mother used every opportunity to remind her. “She always reminded me of the importance of God in my life. And throughout my years of school, throughout any accomplishments that I have gotten, my mother was always the person that would say, remember that it's not your strength that you're seeing this by. This is God's strength. This is God that is giving you these gifts and these talents. And you can't forget God. So she actually ensured that at no point in my life could I forget that God's grace has brought me through,” she revealed. Acknowledging her gratitude for being fed those daily reminders, Cameron said it was the rock that saw her through when she was attending Ardenne High as she shared that she went through a brief phase of depression. This experience, she said, pushed her faith, and she said it proved to be the turning point in her life when she actually started to know and understand God for herself. After attending the University of the West Indies, she acknowledged having “a little struggle with her faith,” but the confidence that God would never forsake her, saw her through eventually, even though she stumbled a bit. “No matter what, I always had this pulling and this nagging on my heart, when my ways were not in line with him and when I wasn't, you know, giving enough time to Christianity and reading my Bible and to pray, He was always nagging and pulling me to Him.” Sharing about the application process for the scholarship, Cameron highlighted that when she was sending off the application, she prayed about it. She prayed and fasted, questioning God if it was His will for her. She revealed that she “prayed a very scary prayer” where she told God that if the scholarship was not what He had in mind for her, He should take it away as she didn’t want it. “And of course, that's a very difficult prayer to say for something that you really, really want. So it was real. But at the same time, a part of being a Christian is being willing to sacrifice what you think you want for God's ultimate plan for you,” were her sage words. A big part of her making the application was conditioning her mind to be ok with the outcome, as she would know that whatever that outcome was, it was ordained by God. “So I had to get to a point of wanting it really badly, but also being able to, at the same time, give it up in a split second if God told me to.” Growing up in a Christian environment from a child, Cameron said it can be lonely navigating your way through school and not being part of the ‘party crowd.’ Although she never had a peer pressure problem owing to her strong personality, it was difficult not having a Christian community around her all the time, as faith thrives on fellowship. “So not having a core group of Christian friends has been difficult. And sometimes it stifles your growth a bit because there's nobody else to say, ‘Okay, I'm not going to this party because it's against my faith.’ Or ‘I'm not going to be drinking. I'm not going to be behaving like this.’ We don't really have that support,” she said. Having successfully navigated her way, Cameron offered advice to fellow Christians who may be in the same situation. “Invest in building a Christian community. Invest in your fellowship and invest in the Word. So you have to ensure that you're investing in, for example, your model of faith. Because when you're in the Word, you're less likely to actually stray. And when you are putting yourself in church, engaging in ministries, going to Bible study, and going to youth meetings, it positions you to actually walk the path that you're supposed to,” she concluded.

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