Feburary 6, 2006: Day of Rest

We left camp at the crack of dawn this morning for our trip to Caulker Caye. Henry had arranged for us to take the water taxi from Belize City to Caulker Caye an outlying tiny island. The high speed taxi ride was through bright turquoise water, and we were met at the dock by a fireman who was a friend of Henry’s. He introduced us to Ash from the French Angel Expedition Office, our snorkeling guide for the day. We had a great trip out to the reef in his 21 foot, canopied, runabout and spent several hours in the water. He fed sting rays in the water and we could pet them as they soared around us. We then moved to a mooring ball very near an active reef. There were parrot fish, trigger fish and a myriad of other beautiful creatures God put here for us to enjoy. We saw sea urchin, large purple sea fans and huge brain corral. It was wonderful.

After the snorkeling, we walked around the small town, enjoying the white soft sand, coconut trees, royal palms and lobster pots. We all stopped for a chocolate covered frozen banana on our walk to the end of the island. Then we sat at the “Sand Pit”, a restautant and drank coffee. We met a gentleman leaving the restaurant who had a beautiful parrot that was riding on his bicycle handle bars. We laughed as he told us that the parrot would make the sound of the phone ringing and then the sound of him answering it – it must be an island answering machine. The wind had kicked up and it was really quite cool. The palm trees were bending as if a Nor’easter was setting in as we left for the trip home.

February 5, 2009: Finishing Up

We saw Julie and Eric's daughter, Ceira, who lives at the Baptist Training Center where we are staying this morning. We had a gift of some books for her as she was leaving for school. The trip to Margaret’s Village was exciting this morning. The big white van was overheating and we had to stop on the side of the road to add water to the radiator and let the engine cool off. Hal has called Henry and they are arranging to get a new water pump installed.

Thursday was our last day at the church. We prepared for the day with prayer and Neil told us a thought for the day based on an old orchard we passed on the way each day. We had seen so many beautiful orange trees heavy laden with brightly colored fruit in Belize. But in this grove, the trees had been neglected. They were covered with vines and had little fruit. The trees can not tend themselves, but our lives are like the trees. We need to nurture our relationship with the Master Gardener to bear fruit.

Today we completed trimming door frames and hanging the doors, caulked windows, and did masonry finishing work. We really wanted the project to be done so that the church could enjoy the results. We hung bulletin boards in the children’s classrooms, cleaned the little chairs and swept the floors. Once again, a member of the congregation brought us lunch – today it was stewed chicken, beans and tortillas which we ate in the sanctuary sitting in a family circle. This afternoon, we went home with Santos to visit his sick wife, Clair. She was sitting in their large sparse kitchen, concrete floor, earthen oven with a lit fire, grayed plank walls with wide gaps. We sang How Great Thou Art and prayed with her. She seemed cheered by our coming and Santos was very grateful.

Pastor Ed had told us that the elders of the church wanted to come and have a closing service with us, so at 3:30 they came. We had a sharing time talking about God’s blessings, and receiving their thanks for our partnership. Our financial support as well as our presence was keenly appreciated. They are very poor in earthly goods, but have a great vision of serving the Lord. They brought us homemade pizza and fruit juice for the celebration and we prayed together. We told them we would be back again.

February 4, 2009: Wednesday in Belize

We started our day with eggs, bacon and delicious fresh pineapple and papaya melon for breakfast -thanks to our awesome chef, Roger. We made another trip to the hardware store, this time to the big one in Belmopan to buy concrete screws, a machete and other hardware before heading up into the mountains to the church.

Today the main job was to the hang doors but we also had to frame out the new door openings cut through from the Sunday School rooms into the sanctuary. Two more of the door frames completed yesterday were trimmed out in molding and the doors hung. We also got the line run for the water although the water was not currently available at the street so there is more to be accomplished there. Roger started running the wiring to put lights in the new classrooms which will allow those rooms to be used on Wednesday nights. There was a little extra time for tossing the football with local kids and a visit to the next door neighbor with a gift of a baby blanket during the day.

At 4:00, we hurried home to get ready to return for the 7:00 service. A Belizean woman named Jane is cooking for us and had prepared our dinner of fried chicken, baked beans, potato salad and pineapple juice. She and her husband and little girl Hannah joined us for the feast.

But the highlight of the day was Wednesday evening prayer service. Tonight we were joined by a congregation of around 40 kids and adults. Most of the congregation arrived on the bus, and after a brief introduction took a moment for everyone to tour the new construction in the back of the church where we had been working. They were all excited about our progress. We sang songs together and they gave us each a gift, a mug from Belize. To honor our partnership between Lagoon Road and Trinity, they presented Hal with the key to the church building, which was wonderfully symbolic of our sharing and building up the one body of Christ together. Ben shared a message with a point about the importance of remembering what is temporary and what is not. He showed a Belizean dollar bill with a little sticky note that said TEMPORARY. Then he took two little notes that said FOREVER and gave one to an adult and one to a little girl on the front row. It was a good message encouraging us to tell others about Jesus, but we knew God was working when another little girl came up after the service and wanted a slip of paper that said FOREVER. We presented each of the children there with a book as a gift from Trinity and they were all smiles. We talked to one of the children’s teachers about starting a church library with the remaining books, and about mounting bulletin boards in each of the class rooms for them to use for teaching. It was a wonderful service which ended with a testimony from an older man in the congregation who had only been a Christian for a year. He said when he looked into the face of his grandchild he wanted to make sure that he learned about Jesus.

It was a day of progress and growing and fellowship with God.

Message directly from Hal

PEOPLE: Pastor Modesto and Assistant Pastor Ed are wonderful men. They took an almost abandoned church building several years ago and decided to begin an English speaking church in St. Margaret village that had only Spanish speaking churches (4). The result has been awesome. Modesto lives in St. Margaret and works at a sawmill during the week. Ed lives 45 minutes away in Dangriga, where he is also a college teacher and campus minister. Both are bi-vocational and receive no compensation from the church. The congregation has many more participating men than in Honduras. Lots of children. They LOVE to sing, just like Trinity. They have a campus of about an acre in a village that is very poor - about the same as in Honduras. St. Margaret is truly 3rd world, in a country that is a little better. We had a church full (around 100) on Sunday morning. WORK: When we arrived we quickly saw that the openings for the windows were not the right size. Some we had to cut the concrete away to make larger. Some we had to frame in after we set the window at the top, and pour cement in the bottom up to the bottom of the window. Now we have put in all the windows, door frames and trimmed up all the doors (very hard wood - we've burned up two skill saws - mahoganey I think). We have finished drilling and cutting the holes in the doors to mount the hardware. The trench to lay the pvc water pipe from the street to the rear of the 100 foot building is finished and we will lay the pipe today. (the two restrooms we are finishing are at the rear of the building) Today we will also mount all the 7 doors, run electrical lines for lights in each room. Thurs will be our last work day and we'll put trim around the doors and finish up all projects not complete. Roger is a GREAT foreman.

BAPTIST TRAINING CENTER: the place we are staying is great. Jane is a Belizean woman cooking for us and doing a super job. That's all for now. Gotta go to work!!We're praying for you, please continue to pray for us.

February 3, 2009: Ready to do His Will

Our wonderful breakfast this morning was cereal, milk and freshly gleaned oranges and grapefruit. We enjoyed our drive to the church up the road through Belmopan into the mountains through the orange groves. We noticed some fruit stands along the way where we planned to return. The drive is exciting where there are one lane bridges, including one that has no railings!

At the church site, we continued working on the windows. Three of the window openings were too small so we needed to make forms and pour concrete to make the openings smaller. We framed the doorways plus drilling the six paneled doors for adding the door knobs and hinges. Unfortunately we are having skill saw problems and burned out the second one today, but we did get one of the doors hung.

Sister Polita from the church sent us lunch that she had made for us – beef stew and beans and rice. It was delicious. Two of the boys from Sunday School on Sunday, Earnest and Ismeel, came by to see us this afternoon and they were delighted to see pictures of themselves on my computer. They told me that the huge palm tree in the church yard was called a Kahoon (Calhoun?) tree. It is really magnificent. They used palms from it to create the roof for their shade arbor by the church, where the youth meet. Hal had fun showing the kids a magic trick and Neil discovered a new game with the kids this afternoon. It looked sort of like dodge ball, but they called it stoning (played with a nerf football). We are making good process on the building.

Tonight we stopped by the fruit stand and bought pineapples and bananas for breakfast tomorrow morning. After dinner, John led us in a devotion from Luke on the Good Samaritan. Then we listened in as a group of Mennonites who are sharing the camp with us had their evening service. We could mainly hear the large congregation singing which was wonderful. They sang some good old hymns like “Ready to go, Ready to stay, Ready to do God’s will” in four part harmony. It seemed like a good close to the day.

Feb 2, 2009: Working for the Lord

My heart is overflowing with new insights into Belize, the life of the people, the culture, and the workings of the church. Today we began our work at the church.

The day started with a trip to a large hardware store to purchase a concrete blade and some other supplies. Arriving at the site we met Peter and Santos and began our day with prayer. The living situation in the neighborhood is very poor and across from the church and next door, the houses are made of sticks with palm branch thatched roofs. It is exciting that the congregation of the church is expanding and people are being reached for God. Roger, our fearless construction leader, put us all to work. John and Ben volunteered for the difficult job of digging a trench 78 feet long in rocky soil to lay a water pipe. Others the assembled the white louvered windows and chiseled out the concrete to enlarge the openings in the block walls. We also began framing in the doors.

We were tired at the end of the working day, but decided to go looking for the Blue Lake of the Blue Lake National Park sign we passed on the way to the church. To do this, we continued up the rocky road in front of the church headed away from the highway. Wow what a bumpy ride we had driving up into the countryside. We never found the lake, but we did follow along a shallow river through several miles of orchards. We saw oranges, grapefruit, limes and pineapple. We also saw the harvesting process with trucks driving up on the end of a pier to dump their load of oranges into a larger truck which would haul them to the factory. There were also large gardens with corn that was 5 feet high (this is February!) and just planted green beans. We saw some white Brahma cattle grazing in a fenced in pasture. Someone had tied a branch around the neck of one the cows to keep her from putting her head through the fence.

Tonight we went to the home of Pastor Ed and his wife Jane about 12 miles from the church. He is a bivocational pastor and teaches religion during the week at the local high school and serves as their chaplain. Jane works in the office of the local processing plant which makes orange juice concentrate. They had beautiful flowers growing in their yard. We took showers at their house and then all went out to dinner together. When they started at the church, there were only 10 people coming and he and his wife and children were in that number. They are excited about the growth of the church and looking forward to the partnership with Trinity.

February 1: Sunday: Worship at Lagoon Road

From our balcony this morning we had a beautiful view of the green country side of Belize filled with palm trees in the distance. We had a great breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast courtesy of Ben and Roger before heading out to church. We passed a couple of peletons, clusters of racing road bikes, along the highway to church. Cycling is the favorite sport in Belize.

What a wonderful experience we had at Lagoon Road Baptist Church. It was the first time that I had seen chickens attending Sunday School. Pastor Ed Mohabir came out to meet us and told us a little bit about their Sunday School program. The church was planted with the intention of it being an English speaking congregation, but they had Latinos who were coming, so they had started a Sunday School class in Spanish. They were meeting in a school bus parked next to the church. The two children’s classes were in their new concrete block rooms where we were going to add the doors and windows this week. We are also going to run water to the new bathrooms to replace their outdoor latrine.

Their young people were meeting in a shade arbor, roofed with palm branches, in the church yard led by Peter (which is where I saw the chickens) while there was an adult class held in the sanctuary. Pastor Ed asked us if any of us played guitar, because they have no music for their service. It would be great if they had a CD player.

Around 10:30, the pastor rang a bell and everyone brought their chairs into the church for worship. My, they loved to sing! Each of the SS classes “reported” by saying a Bible verse and singing a song. The youngest children’s verse was “God does great things” (Psalm 136:9) – what a great thing to know. When it was our turn, we sang “Give me oil in my Lamp, Keep me Burning” and I shared my testimony. Then Hal gave his sermon on letting God change your life – by living out the song Jesus puts into each of us. It fit well with their theme for the year: “Let your light shine in 2009”. There were 97 of us praising God through the service. Their hymnals were battered, obviously donated by a church that was replacing their own. It was great that they had them, but some were missing pages and the backs were off. Neil was able to bond with some of the kids right away. We will worship again with them on Wednesday.

After church we took the van to St Ignacios and went across the river on a hand drawn ferry. This was our opportunity to visit the Mayan ruins Xunantunich which was abandoned around AD 950. These were amazing stone structures, and we climbed to the top and could see into Guatemala from there. There was actually a Belizian soldier, complete with machine gun, there watching the border. It was clear that the location was well chosen originally to be able to watch for intruders. We were very hungry by 4:00 PM when we reached Hodie’s Restaurant for dinner. The place was in the middle of an orange grove and the aroma was very sweet – like honeysuckle at home. The most interesting thing about these orange trees was that they were blooming at the same time they were bearing fruit. We had orange juice for lunch/supper that was fresh squeezed from the trees in the orchard. Ben and Hal had fun comparing all the hot sauces and picking the hottest to spice up their fajitas.

Jan 31,2009: On our Way

We left Raleigh this morning at 8:30 AM flying Delta out of Raleigh/Durham’s beautiful new terminal. Thanks to Charlie DeFancis for being our transportation to the airport at the early 6:00 AM when we met. The Trinity van delivered us and our 14 bags and trunks full of tools, gifts and sustenance for the week.

We changed planes in Atlanta and got a little off schedule when they discovered that someone had checked baggage but not boarded the plane. It took an hour of unpacking the cargo compartments under the plane to find and remove it. We thought that was a good idea for security though, so we didn’t mind waiting.

Our flight from Atlanta took us over the Gulf of Mexico to Belize. The great circle arc of our flight path actually traveled over Mobile Bay and then the majestic Mississippi delta south of New Orleans on our way. From our windows, we could see the sandy white barrier islands south of Mobile. We could also see huge ocean going freighters cruising up the channel through the delta towards the heartland of America.

Landing in Belize we gathered all the luggage and made it through customs in about 45 minutes. It was great to verify that all the signs were in English! They actually had us unpack several of our bags, but we were glad to be passed without problems. We did have to pay charges for some of the gifts we had brought, and need to work out how to get permission to bring things in to churches in the future without the customs fee. We were met by Cecil who had a large white van to collect us and all our stuff. Cecil is an associate of Henry Bazair, the Executive Director and Treasurer of the Belize Baptist Association.

Cecil drove us to Henry’s home, a pretty white fenced compound with palm trees and flowers, but Henry was still at the pastor’s conference. My reflections on the hour ride towards Camelote include seeing a cricket match with the competitors all dressed in white, beautiful brightly colored homes interspersed with rundown shacks, circling large brown hawks, a highway with little shoulder and no middle line, coconut trees, snowy white egrets in the marsh grass beside the road, and children on bicycles.

Cecil drove us towards Belopan where we found a roadside restaurant that he recommended for dinner. There were amazing “fan palm trees” beside the road that looked like they had been carefully maniured to be a huge beautiful fan. The building was quite an interesting place with a high thatched roof and “Amigos” in lights on the side of the entrance way. Inside, the walls were paneled with a bamboo like honey colored wood and the floor was dark wooden planks. Here we met briefly with Henry and Carolyn Bazair, as they were returning from the Annual Pastor’s Summit. Henry was in the military for 15 years, served as a policeman and has been the Fire Chief for the country of Belize before he became a pastor.

For dinner, I had barbequed chicken, rice and beans, potato salad and a flour tortilla – the guys had similar things including homemade lemon pie. After we ate, Hal became our chauffeur on to the Camelote Baptist Training Center. It was dark when we arrived, so I will have to send pictures later. Eric Maas with CBF met us here and showed us our arrangements. We will be sleeping on the second floor (yikes – all the suitcases had be be carried up stairs) in one building and have use of a large yellow kitchen for our meals and gatherings next door. For our devotion we read Psalm 139 and reflected on how we are blessed and why we had come on mission and prayed for each other. Rick Jordan from the Christian Education staff of CBF from North Carolina came by for a visit. Eric showed me that I can get wireless internet in the yellow kitchen, so hopefully I can update the blog everyday.

Pray for us as we lead in worship at Lagoon Road Baptist Church on Sunday, and we will pray for you.