Recap - Belize

The evening after our return. Still a little bit in a 'culture' shock - it's hard to believe how different two places can be when only a 2 hour flight apart. I went to Mosaic this morning and saw our leader Janet, and then Don and Beverly, and Sue and Kevin in the Welcome Center, and everyone I saw seemed mostly recovered. I don't know if this is the best forum for more pictures, but I will put a few more of mine up tonight. As I didn't take my camera to the work site except one day, and to the orphanage at all, will have to depend on others for pictures there. Will also put up the links for the Belmopan Methodist Church and the King Children's Center in Belmopan, in case anyone wants to look for more information on these two places. Both are doing amazing work in Belize, and worthy of support. As for me, I hope to continue going back, and continue building the Methodist high school in Belmopan, as education is extremely important no matter where you are, and especially in Belize. We met some amazing people this past week in Belize - Ethel who cooked at our camp and also made lunches for the kids at the high school, Ray who owns and runs Camalote Camp where we stayed and has been supporting mission work in Belize for around 30 years and been a permanent resident of Belize for at least the last 10. The people at the church who took us to visit some of their older members on Monday, and brought us lunch each day at the church were awesome. Glorie and Amir from Thirst Missions were both great, staying flexible, getting us from place to place, and keeping us out of harms way. Glorie will get to take her first plane trip, and first visit to the US(in fact her first time out of Belize not counting brief shopping trips north across the border to Mexico) in December, despite the fact that we made her late to her visa interview at the US embassy. We're hoping to talk her into visiting Houston along the way. The Facebook page for the Belmopan Methodist Church... www.facebook.com/pages/Belmopan-Methodist-Church/5187318181825
Kings Children's Home...

Final Day and night

Final night! Posting on an iPad - so this will be short with no pictures. What a great way to finish off the week, exploring God's creation in all it's glory in the form of the coral reefs off the coast of Belize at Cayenne Caulker. Everyone enjoyed snorkeling, some for the first time, and we spent several hours after our early morning departure from Camp Camalote, and the the trip to Belize City and then via water taxi to Cayenne Caulker, exploring the second biggest reef system in the world. Caye Caulker and Belmopan are two hours apart and half a world apart, but held together by the same friendly people that we've met everywhere we've been. I think everyone is tired but satisfied in the relationships we've made and cemented, and looking forward to service in the future, hopefully in Belize. I will post many more pictures when we return. Praise God for the opportunity to serve and connect with other people; whether in our own community or Central America, or wherever he takes us! Thanks to everyone for their prayers and their financial support making this trip possible.

Final day of work - we really accomplished a lot.  We dug a bunch of additional trenches, built forms and installed them, as well as setting re-bar into the main entrance so that it would be supported properly.  We mixed several batches of cement by hand on the ground, and poured the concrete into forms and hopefully the remaining cement can be poured tomorrow. We split up and did some additional shopping and made an additional trip to the new children's home so that Beverly could see the babies one more time.  
 
After quickly cleaning up, we then topped it off with a wonderful dinner with our new Methodist family and then a beautiful closing ceremony with them including communion and singing.
  
It is hard to put into words what a blessing it has been to be allowed into this communities' life for a few days, and how neat it was to experience a local church and the children's home.     Hopefully we'll be able to put together a presentation when we return that describes the experience faithfully.    Thanks to everyone who has supported us on this venture, both with prayers and funds.   You have no idea you've helped us make here!

Whoa....what a long but productive day!     Part of the group spent from 8 in the morning to about 4 in the afternoon working on the school fence project, and made a lot of progress there.   Another smaller group went out the the new orphanage site, and spent time with 'the babies', a number of infants to small toddlers who are taken care of during the day by a babysitter, while their mothers go to school.  After lunch at the church, we again split into two with some of the group working at the old orphanage, and some of us staying behind and continuing the fence work.

After a quick break and shower, we shared a bible study with members of the Camalote Methodist church, including several young men from a place called the Freedom House.   It was a blessing to be studying the bible with local Christians in such a setting.     After a late dinner (for us - 8 pm) we had our devotional and made plans for tomorrow.   We purchased groceries the day before for the orphanage and they were delivered today as well.    A lot more babies were discovered at the visit to the new orphanage today, and so the hope is to be able to provide more supplies for those infants such as basic infant toys, walkers and such.

Tuesday! We had a busy day today, starting by working on the completion of a fence around the back side of the school and a gate leading from the church to the school. We first got to the school just as it was starting after their long three day weekend, and the classrooms were buzzing with the kids (all 9th graders this year) as they started their day. We were introduced as people from the US who had helped build the school building the year before and who were coming back to do some more work - as only three of us were returnees, it was nice to be included in that! One of the classrooms burst into applause after that introduction! Many of the kids in this school would not be in high school if this school had not opened, as public school is only mandatory(and free) until 8th grade). Mark (who is one of the three returnees) said it was very gratifying to see and hear the school in operation after where they had left it the year before.

 The entire team worked all morning on digging post holes and concrete footings in some of the toughest 'soil' I've ever seen, or felt, being full of limestone and quartz boulders. After lunch a few set out to shop for groceries for the orphanage, while the rest of us were to begin setting some posts and tying re-bar, but a shower and the lack of materials precluded that. We went back to camp briefly to clean up, then went and spent two hours with the King's Children's Center (orphanage). The center is building a new campus out of town several miles, and seeing the current center we could see why.

 Despite conditions that were crowded (about 85 kids from 3 or so to 18) living with mostly volunteer staff of around 10 people, the kids were very friendly and obviously loved attention. We worked with the school kids on their homework and reading, testing our knowledge of verb tenses, then played bubbles with the younger kids and interacted with some of the staff for the remainder of our time. Staff included 21 year old students from Washington State on a 6 month assignment and a semi retired couple from HI who were volunteering for a month. It is impossible to describe the conditions of the home but will try to post pictures tomorrow when our WiFi is back up. Generally the kids seemed to get along despite the poor and crowded conditions, with many of them attending to chores such as cleaning and cooking.

Due to technical difficulties (no WIFI) I will not be able to publish pictures tonight, but will try to do that tomorrow as we have some good pics.   Good night!

One more time this evening, going to try to post some photos! If they don't show up, we'll try to do better tomorrow. Hope everyone in Houston stayed dry - we heard Texas has had some rain! Tomorrow is a busy day, first day of physical labor, and first time entertaining the kids at the orphanage (beyond the short interaction we had today) so I'd better get some sleep! Good night....

On Columbus Day Belize style we spent the day in a variety of outreach activities, each of us at times pushing our comfort levels, and seeing God working all around us as a result. Our visit to the hospital should probably help most of us quit complaining about the US medical system, at least for awhile. We also saw a number of patients as we split into groups of three, and saw a lot of scared kids and sometimes parents, and we tried to pray over them and comfort them. We visited an orphanage next, the new building under construction, because we wanted to talk to the orphanage director, and because it was a holiday a bunch of the kids from 2 months to 17 years old were around. I became friends with several boys because I played soccer in my bare feet in the gravel and mud, and talked soccer with them. Beverly found several babies that she wanted to take home with her. The new facility of the Kings Children's Home will be very nice, actually, a big improvement over the current facilities, and they hope to be in the new facilities by Christmas. We will be working with both the old and new orphanage locations during the rest of the week, and possibly playing more soccer.

This is the day the Lord has made! Sunday, so we worshiped this morning with the Belmopan Methodist church congregation, which is the church building and running the high school we will be working on this week. After the open air, two hour service, and a quick stop at the 'mall' (grocery store with appliances) we changed clothes and headed over to the Blue Hole National park for swimming and lunch. After our swim in the brisk waters, a few of us decided to take what we thought was a leisurely mile walk which turned a little more difficult than we thought - but all returned safely and had nice meal and devotional this evening. Tomorrow is a national holiday in Belize, so we will be working in a hospital in the morning, making visits to shut-ins in the afternoon and an orphanage in the late afternoon. On Tuesday we will start working at the school construction site, which also has now a 9th grade class, and is working on adding additional classrooms so they can add a sophomore class next year.

We made it! The trip to Belize City was uneventful, we made it through customs and immigration with a minimum of issues - Sue's bag was open upon arrival in baggage claim and the zipper broken, but she apparently didn't lose anything, so all is fine! The ride was pretty, and we made it to Camp Camalote just as the sun set and just in time for our first meal which was great. After dinner and a devotional meeting, we celebrated Don and Beverly's 40th wedding anniversary with a freshly made white cake with lemon icing.... Tomorrow we have services at the local Methodist church at 8 am and then do some touring in the afternoon. Monday starts the real work. Thanks to everyone for their prayer messages and keep them coming!

Less than a week away!

We had our commissioning today and final meeting, and I can tell everyone is getting excited! Me personnally, I have been so busy that I still find myself trying to get through this week - I will think about the trip on Friday as I drive home from Odessa (I normally fly, but I had a customer engagement in Sweetwater, TX - not someplace it is easy to fly to unless you own your own plane and are a pilot), so I am driving 900+ miles this week before the trip. So I'm looking forward to less time in a car..... This is really just a last practice for me posting items to the blog - I'm still not 100% confident I know what I'm doing, so I'm trying to practice a little more. The prayer for the week in Belize is to look for all the ways that God can use me and the group, not just the obvious, and look for God in everything we do. Amen!

Second post - already didn't save the first try!   Will have to be careful about that while in Belize.   Next meeting to go over spiritual prep and logistics details will be Thursday the 26th at 7 pm at JWUMC.   Final meeting Sunday Oct 6th after church at around 1215 at JWUMC.    

Practicing adding photos - we will be just south of Belmopan during our week at least as I understood it.   

This is my first attempt at blogging - trying to create a blog for the October 2013 mission trip to Belize  by mostly John Wesley UMC members.   I am hoping to be able to post a few photos, and thoughts, to this blog during the course of the trip for anyone wanting to keep up with us.    This may or may not be the best forum for this, as I am not an expert at it, and it may be that our computer capabilities may be too limited to do much with it, but we're going to give it a try!  

The most important aspect of the trip is not what we communicate during it, but the work we do and they way we do it, while we are on the trip - however, communication is important and we want to encourage others to make a difference in their world however they can, in whatever small ways they can.  

I will update this a couple of times with news of our preparation for this trip, and will also try to 'sum up' afterwards with a more complete description of our time as well as a few more pictures.   Wish me luck!

FGS