Saying goodbye...

It's an emotional moment (the male version of an emotional moment) as we begin the drive through the bumpy gravel roads out of San Antonio, Belize.  The last glimpse of Armando's hometown is a small Belizean boy diving off the dock into the blue green river emerging just in time to give a small wave to the pair of passing vans.  As the air conditioning begins to cool our burning skin the parting words of Pastor Josuè (Armando's pastor and our sidekick through our whole time in Belize) continues to ring in our ears.  His parting words to us were: "continue to search the scriptures it will be the washing machine or your life, thank you so much for coming and encouraging us, we will be praying for your safety as you return to Canada".

The last 24 hours has been a blessing filled time.  It  started with a meaningful farewell to the church in Blue Creek and then 20 minutes down the road we had an absolute blast meeting the church in Shipyard.  We had a chance to tour their school and store and we felt that we were able to understand more fully the ministry that EMMC is having in that community.  The ministry workers in Shipyard (Dietrich and Nettie, along with Percilla and Abe) encouraged our group by spending time with us (giving us the opportunity to plant some trees, do some fence building and bringing us to one of the best Belizian Taco places around).  Our program was well received along with Herman's testimony of leaving the old colony religion which was a powerful faith story to the Shipyard church.  The young people invited our group to a midnight volleyball match (well, it wasn't really midnight, but it was still really dark at 10pm).  The street lamps lit up the volleyball court as we played amongst a community united by faith.  We then traveled late into the night to reach Armando's home town in order to get a few hours of sleep before our program in Armando's church Sunday morning.  The highlight in San Antonio was seeing Armando's face as we stood before his church while we blessed them with our program.  The community swimming down at the river capped off a perfect day as we loaded into the vans to begin the journey home. 

The time is 3:36 pm Sunday, May 11, 2008.  We have approximately 44 ½ hours to navigate the Mexican maze of roads and two international boarder crossing in order to get Aaron to Texas in order to catch his flight back to Detroit (the rest of us will continue by vehicle to Canada).  Please pray for us as we travel.  Please pray that we will stay awake and make wise decisions as we drive.  Please pray that the vehicles will not break down and that we will see every speed bump on the road.  Pray that we will be protected from the other drivers on the road.  Pray that the border crossings will go smooth and fast. It´s going to be a marathon to the American border but it´s a marathon we feel we are able to do with God´s help.  Thank you for praying, we will try and keep you up to date as best as we can.

 

(update: as we post this entry we are sitting in the mall parking lot of the first city into Mexico.  Praise God that the border crossing into Mexico went without a hitch.  We are now saying goodbye to Armando.  It´ll be about 7pm before we begin our first real leg of the journey.)