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.