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.)

Entering the Sub-Culture

It's been a wild couple days as we run on a hectic ministry schedule driven by Armando.  Our time at Kings College came to a close faster than everyone wanted.  The staff and students at that school impacted us.  As we stood in a circle to pray our final blessing on each other, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of things God was planting in our hearts.  A few of the members of the team expressed that they could see themselves coming back to work at a place like Kings College, Lord willing.  But before we knew it we were on our way to Blue Creek.

Entering this colony was like entering a different country.  The bumpy gravel road turned into a beautifully paved road as we rolled up to a (what we thought) was an Americanized gas station. We stopped for a few minutes before heading up to Valerie's house and immediately began meeting people we knew or friends of people we knew.  This was just the first round of a 24 hour Mennonite Game finding people who knew people who were related to people we were and on and on and on.  Wow, it actually get's pretty fun and it made us feel at home.

The program in the evening went very well with the highlight being Lyndon, Tony and Scotty P sharing some very powerful faith stories.  Our non-musical voices blended together for one of the first times, making us pretty excited about how everything went.  But the most exciting part of the night was still yet to come.

A couple of young people offered our group the opportunity to go croc hunting.  I felt that I didn't have the necessary skills to do this since I didn't have an Australian accent.  But my excuses feel on deaf ears as I was dragged to the truck to search for these menacing creatures.  With spot light and shot gun in hand we followed our guides into the rice fields to look for these "pests".  In the end we didn't end up shooting any crocodiles but we did have the opportunity to catch a release a few.  Herman had the "privilege" to wrestle a 4-5 ft croc which didn't want to cooperate.  We caught a small (~1 ft) croc and Herman said that he wanted to feel what it was like to get bitten by one.  He placed his hand in front of it's mouth and it lunged for him.  You can ask him what it feels like, but I can tell you he jumped and yelped from the pain as the teeth marks began to bleed on either sides of his hand.  We ended the day falling asleep under the beautiful Belizian stars knowing that the day was used wisely.

Tomorrow we begin the trip back to Canada, but don't ask us about it because it's a taboo topic that no one wants to come to terms with.  Please pray that the next few hours in Blue Creek will continue to be an encouragement to the church.  Tonight we head to Shipyard to do a program there and then we're of to Armando's home church in San Antonio for Sunday Morning.  Thank you for how you are a big part of this ministry by your prayers.  You have blessed us.  We are having a great time!!

Into Belize

I feel that I should complete yesterday’s story (scroll down to get context). After waiting for the mechanic shops to open we bought another car battery. Andrew and Tony installed the new battery in a couple of minutes and we were on our way (Total setback: 4 Hours). We made it to the Belize border and started the lengthy process with many different steps. The biggest concern was that Armando was supposed to meet us in a certain building on the Mexican side and he was nowhere to be found. So we continued through the process without our Belizean guide fairly smooth (except for Steve mistakenly claiming there was Beer in our cooler). With Armando’s name written into the dust on our van’s back window we ventured into the beautiful country of Belize. The first thing we noticed about this country were the friendly people and warm blue water in the body of water we quickly jumped into (about a mile past the boarder crossing we found a body of water (river? Lake? Ocean? We don’t know)). Along the way we found people who directed us towards Orange Walk the town we thought that we could find Armando in. Then it happened. Sitting on the edge of the highway in the middle of nowhere Armando jumped out at us. He said that he recognized it was us by our driving and had been waiting for us for about 30 minutes. We are all pretty grateful to have him along with us. He swiftly took us to eat some authentic Belizean food and then we were off to his home community San Antonio about 30 minutes outside of Orange Walk. It’s like we are living in paradise. Armando showed us the best swimming hole, and introduced his father to us along with his local pastor. We have a soccer game already scheduled with the locals for Sunday afternoon. Should be a good time! We absolutely love the people in this country, the fresh fruit, the Mayan ruins and the snakes (we met a crazy snake charmer who had a ton of snakes crawling all over him)!! We’ve just spent last night and will spend tonight at Kings College (Christian boarding high school). Tomorrow we are excited to head out to Blue Creek where Valerie (student from SBC) is waiting for us. We have been shown such a great time here and feel blessed to be taken care of so well by these brothers and sisters. We are loving every minute of our time here and wish so much that the internet connection would allow us to post a ton of photo’s!