Beans and rice or rice and beans
who knew there was a difference? Apparently there is here in Belize!
It’s hard to believe I’ve only been in Belize 5 days!
Here’s a recap on the last few days since I’ve been gone (October 12 is the best)!
Friday, October 5- Monday, October 8
We were in Atlanta for Launch. During these days we had the rest of our training (yes, the 11 days in August wasn’t enough). Our parents were also invited to sit in on sessions to learn more about the heart of World Race and logistics of safety and insurance and everything that parents worry about. So my mom and sister came to spend as much time with me before I was gone for a year. Bitter-sweetly my brother couldn’t come, but that’s because he was on his own missions trip in Colombia, South America!
On Sunday we had a set apart time to have lunch with our family members who came and say our final goodbyes. Then they all had to leave. Monday we had our last day of training/ sessions and then packed up.
Tuesday, October 9- Wednesday, October 10:
The start of our never-ending travel “day”… 31 hours for our first travel day!
Amazingly, a non-stop flight from Atlanta to Belize City is only 3hours. That’s just not how we travel world race style..
So we left the airport that we stayed at for launch weekend at 9:30 am. However, our flight did not leave until 9:45pm. World Race just didn’t want to waste our budget on another day in the hotel since we weren’t staying the night there, therefore we had to leave at checkout time. So allegedly we sat in the airport for 12 hours. We played cards, made friends with employees, prayed with people and simply got to know the people we were about to spend a year of our lives with.
Then we had our first flight: a whopping hour and a half flight to Orlando. We then had a 7 hour layover, so we got to have our first ever airport sleepover in the Atlanta airport! Thankfully, we were switching airlines, so we had to pick up our bags at baggage claim and got to use our pillows/sleeping pads/sleeping bags overnight until we rechecked our bags. We then woke up at 4 am to check our bags two hours before our flight which was taking off at 6:45. This flight was a whole 45 minutes! WOW! (please understand my extreme level of sarcasm lol). We flew to Miami and then had another 5 hour layover. Our last fight was then 2 hours to Belize!! We finally made it!
We arrived at 12:45 pm Belize time (which is equivalent to Mountain Time in the U.S.) We then packed 19 people on a 15 passenger bus for an hour and a half to our host home!
We then went out to dinner at a little restaurant (which was just a patio of someone’s house where they cooked right around the corner and brought us food. Our team of 6 all ate a FULL meal each for a grand total of $15.
Thursday, October 11:
Our host allowed for a “adjustment day” on this day team leaders went out to meet with ministry partners, made connections with locals. We hadn’t made our ministry schedule yet, so while the leaders did that, the rest of us got to settle in, recoup from our long travel day, and spend time with Jesus. This month we are BLESSED with what our budget got us as a host home: we all have bunk beds!!! with pillows and sheets provided by the host, full bathrooms, and even a kitchen. Each Belizean dollar is worth $2 of ours, so if I take out $20 from an ATM we actually only spend $10.
We don’t have hot water or air conditioning though- no one does here in Belize- it’s quite the adjustment for us to get used to 95- 105 degree temperature here. So we have fans. Everywhere. And we sweat. A lot.
We ended our night with worship together. We gave thanks to God and then sang songs of praise to him and interceded for the nations we are going to this year.
Friday, October 12:
FIRST DAY OF MINISTRY
This month we have 3/6 teams all living in the same host site, but we all split up and do different ministry. My team, Team Agape, went to do manual labor at a missionary pastor’s land. We moved wood and organized his tools for 5 hours. We started to build a box to lay cement in to keep his washer and dryer in outside of the house. We were cleaning up and building to make the space useful for the pastors to hold youth group with the local kids.
Then we went back to our host for 2 hours to wash up and breath before we went to Marla’s House.
Marla’s is a house for girls who are in abusive/ dangerous homes and it’s essentially a safe home for young girls to grow up in. They have girls from the age of 4-16. The oldest is actually a mom who has her 2 week old son there too in order to keep them both safe.
These girls have my entire heart, and since this is along the lines of the dream I have to create an orphanage/ safe home for children in Africa, I felt right at home. We got to sit and play and talk with the girls when they got back from school until their dinner time. They all told us their favorite Bible verses and even started to teach me some in Spanish. Then it started down pouring, it is rain season here, so we all ran under the pavilion. I made the comment “oh now I’m cold!” So the girl who was sitting beside me, Karen, wrapped her arms around me to keep me warm, and then looked at me and said, “I feel like you’re my sister!” (brb while I pick up my heart that’s now in a puddle.) I responded, “We are, because we both have God as our father since Jesus is in our hearts! We are all sisters here.” And she so excitedly said, “You’re my sister!” and when we went inside, she told all her teachers, “Look it’s my sister!” Then as we sat on the couch, she started singing Reckless Love, and everyone joined in. Then we started singing mighty to save and it was just the most beautiful moment that I have ever been apart of, just the fact that these young girls would spontaneously just begin worshipping out loud was astounding.
Saturday, October 13- Sunday, October 14:
Every Saturday this month is set aside as an adventure days, and every Sunday is our sabbath. Since this is a marathon and not a sprint we have to set aside time to rest and recoup in order to be refilled so that we don’t get burnt out. This was weird for us since we technically only have done one day of ministry and not a week’s worth yet, but because of the way our schedule is laid out, there was no ministry that was planned for us to do this weekend.
Adventure days are for us to learn more about the history and culture of the area we’re in, so we got to go to a national park called: the blue hole. This isn’t the Great Blue Hole found in the ocean, but a smaller one just 8.3 mi away from where we were staying. We got to swim and then went into a cave and began singing worship which echoed off the walls of the cave and amplified the entire park with songs of praise to God our King. It was truly beautiful.
Today my team went to church with the same pastor we worked with on Friday, and then came back to work on videos/ blogs/ quiet times/ and quality time with each other.
Our team’s verse of the week is:
Habakkuk 1:5
“Look among the nations and see. Wonder. Be astounded. For I am doing a work in your day that you would not believe even if I told you.“
