For our last month of ministry, my team “The Gathering” was assigned to do Unsung Heroes in Belize. What this means is that our ministry looked very different for the month of June, because our main objective was to find new Christian hosts (people living in Belize who were in charge of a church or some other ministry), see if they met all of the qualifications to partner with our organization, Adventures in Missions (AIM), and connect them with AIM so they can send out future World Race teams, Passport Teams, or other missionary teams to new places in Belize.
Our squad was only the second group that AIM has ever sent to Belize before, so it was our job to find them new hosts so that Christian organizations in need of help and missionaries in need of a place to stay could be connected. I was assigned the role “Unsung Heroes Coordinator” for our month in Belize. What this meant is that we would all take turns meeting up with potential hosts, seeing if they needed help, seeing if they met AIM’s qualifications, and then I would gather all the information and fill out the majority of the forms to send back info. to AIM about whether we believe they would make a good possible host or not. I also had to check-in (video call) my old teammate Steph Lang about once a week to let her know where we were staying and how we were doing finding hosts in different parts of Belize. Steph was the “Unsung Heroes Leader” for the whole squad, so she had to check in with all the teams who were searching for potential hosts during the month.
So basically, our month in Belize looked like a lot of traveling, meeting up with people, and helping out with various ministries while we stayed with potential hosts. We stayed for a night in Belmopan, Belize with a ministry host who was hosting one of our other World Race teams for the month. That team was doing Unsung Heroes ministry as well, but based in Belmopan, whereas we mostly had free range of the country, so long as we stayed away from Belmopan, since that team was specifically assigned to that city. We had made friends with the driver who had taken us to Belmopan, and he reached out to a few of his friends and by the next day, we were on the road again headed to the Mango Creek and Independence area of Belize, where we were blessed with a beach house in Mango Creek for a few days while the house in Independence was being set up, and then we spent a few more days in Independence, Belize. Both of these homes we were graciously allowed to stay in for a very low price by the Zabaneh family, who became our favorite hosts for a week and a half while we reached out to several of their contacts in the area and found 4 potential hosts, including their family!
Liz Zabaneh is originally from New York City. She went on a mission trip to Belize in her 20s; met Emilio Zabaneh, a local Belizean who later became her husband; and ended up staying there to get married, have 3 kids, and together they started a ministry called “Awaken Belize“.
From Independence, Belize we took a bus to San Ignacio, Belize. There we met with a few potential hosts and helped out with a free HIV clinic, where we passed out fliers to tell people where the clinic was going to be hosted with a nurse and a few volunteers on staff who tested people for HIV, blood sugar, and blood pressure.
From San Ignacio, Belize we took another bus to Belize City. There we spent two nights in a woman’s home that turned out to be not the most ideal living situation because she was over-charging us to stay with her and we ended up feeling like an imposition to her because we realized after the first night she had given up her bedroom and spare bedroom for us to sleep in while she slept on the couch. But since we had already paid up-front for the first two nights, we spent two nights there and spent the days trying to find new potential hosts and a new place to stay, using the wifi from a hotel within walking distance of her house. Why didn’t we stay at the hotel? You might ask. Because on a missionary’s budget, we could barely afford the 2-3x our normal budget staying at the woman’s house, and the hotel would have been maybe 50x our normal budget to stay in a fancy touristy hotel.
After 2 nights and 3 days of prayer, God provided us with both a new place to stay and an amazing new host! Our squad leader, Darcy, called up Julie on our last day at the woman’s house. We had been given Julie’s contact information by the other World Race team who was spending the month in Belize City because she was looking for volunteers to help her out and seemed to have a Christian feeding program in the area. When Darcy called, she asked if Julie’s organization was a Christian program and if we could meet up with her and help out for the time we were in Belize City. Julie told us that she definitely needed some help since we were the first volunteers to reach out to her, and the sign had been posted outside her ministry for about a month!
Then Julie asked if we needed a place to stay, and we told her we were actually looking for a place to stay within budget by that night, and she told us she had an air-conditioned store front that her family owned that we could stay in, so long as we didn’t mind sleeping on the floor. We told her that would be perfect! We hadn’t experienced air-conditioning all month besides two nights in Placencia when the Zab family graciously allowed us to stay at Emilio’s brother’s place while we searched for hosts in Placencia. And let me tell you, Belize in late May and all of June is hot! Picture what you might consider hot, maybe an 85-90 F degree day in New Jersey with 50% humidity. Well, in Belize during the summertime, that would actually be 100 F that feels like 120 F with the 99% humidity! So God definitely blessed us with a place to stay, and the cool thing was we were an answer to Julie’s prayer looking for volunteers, and she was an answer to ours!
For our final leg of Belize, all 46 members of K-Squad, plus our leaders from the U.S. traveled from Belize City to Caye Caulker, which is this gorgeous island in Belize for our last 5 days on the World Race, called Final Debrief. There we were told a little bit about what to expect with re-entry (mostly that it looks different for everyone, but to prepare ourselves for weird moments of forgetting how to be an American in certain situations, how community might look very different at home, and tips on how to cope with reverse culture-shock after being away for 11 months in 11 different cultures).
I also got to sing with Neon Sign, our K-Squad worship team, for the last time for a while. I got to go the beach with some friends to try to process this big transition that was coming up. We went to sessions where we shared testimonies of how God changed us and impacted the lives of ourselves and others on the Race. God actually gave me the courage to share a difficult part of my story with the 45 other members of my squad and our leaders, and I was met with encouragement and smiling faces, many of whom had helped me walk through it. We had a closing ceremony that included a commission to keep doing big things for God’s Kingdom, whether that looks like doing ministry full-time, going back to school, working at a regular job, or whatever God has in store for us next. We also had to say many, many hard and sad goodbyes. Which we then tried to justify by making them into indefinite see-you-laters.
This past month, the month of July, is what a lot of us returning Racers called “Month 12.” It has been a month of transition, a month of growth, a month of processing hard goodbyes to not just my squadmates, but to all the friends we met along the way, a month of rejoicing “hellos!” to my friends and family back home, a month of wondering what it’ll be like to not have to pack up and move at the end of the month (that part’s actually a very good thing), a month of trying to figure out how to be this new me in an old place (New Jersey) and in a new place (since my mom moved while I was away).
I am so, so grateful that I was able to go to Project Searchlight, which was a re-entry conference held in Georgia by Adventures in Missions for returning Racers. I was able to see some of my squadmates again and go to sessions about re-adjustement such as: re-entry into family, processing the hard things you experienced on the Race, how to be intentional with your community back home, what to do when serving God means waiting, and how to move forward into the next season God is calling you into. About half of Neon Sign came to Project Searchlight and we got to lead worship together one morning! That was such a blessing because I had missed singing with them so much and it was also the most official place I have ever sang in. We had bright lights on us, microphones, instruments plugged into amps, and about 300 returning Racers and AIM staff people watching us. Thankfully, some of our squadmates prayed for us right before we went on, and God gave me the courage to chase away any stage fright I was battling with.
Without further ado, I give you my last month’s wrap-up video about Belize! As I mentioned above, I couldn’t film most of the ministry this month for privacy reasons since our main ministry was interviewing potential hosts, but I did get some good footage of what our off days looked like in Belize. I hope you enjoy it! I have only one video left after this, and that will be my long-awaited for World Race Blooper video!
