It really is mind blowing to even think that on this day last year, I was living in Belize for an entire month, before going to live in 10 more countries over the following 10 months. My sister-in-law had gone there before a while back, and I was fascinated with the country ever since! Little did I know a little over a few years later I’d be on a plane headed right there.
Where were we?
Belmopan, Belize. For the entire first month, my team and two other teams lived here.
It was gorgeous! Hot, but gorgeous.
In all honesty, when I was preparing to leave on the World Race I was expecting to pretty much live out of my tent the majority of the time. We kind of prepared for the extreme situations in our training camp.
When we arrived, we found out 18 of us would actually be sleeping in bunk beds within a variety of rooms. It was really nice. We were able to sleep in comfort, so long as we kept the fans going to help with the lack of air conditioning.
Once we got situated, all the of the neighborhood children realized that they had a bunch of new faces and instantly flocked over to play with us. We were tired from the recent few days of traveling, but gladly obliged.
What did we do?
Our first month on the Race was definitely an interesting one. My team actually had multiple ministry partners we ended up working with. One of them being Marla’s House; a place for at risk girls. For their protection, we never took any pictures or videos. We just spent time with them, helped with their homework, braided hair, and played any games we felt like playing. My heart fell for these girls. They were just so sweet and I instantly connected with one of them. I have a note she wrote to me tucked away in my Race journal. Needless to say, I was very emotional when we had to say our farewells to those angels.
When we weren’t at Marla’s House, we worked with a certain man and his family. Pastor Craig. What an amazing man. He has such an amazing story, and it was absolutely great to see how God brought him all the way to Belize. The ways he’s been serving the local community is what I could only describe as inspiring.
We did a variety of things with Pastor Craig and his family. We helped with cleaning and organizing construction materials he was getting ready to update a small house for a single teen mother so she would have a nice place to stay and raise her son.
One day was a little frustrating to say the least. Belize got a lot of rain during this month, which didn’t help with one of the projects we had going on. Specifically, making cement. We put in so much work to get the mixture put together only to have it ruined with a downpour. We never did finish that project, but we did manage to finish other landscaping-type projects.
We also helped with his daughter’s dance class, which not only was a fun ministry, but it was a good opportunity to get some exercise in.
Something amazing that happened in our first month on the World Race was that we ended up being an answer to prayer for a couple of things. Bethany (Pastor Craig’s daughter) needed a video to present for her dance class as well as class photos, which having three of us on the team with cameras worked out so well. And Pastor Craig’s wife’s ministry had been praying for months for someone to come to make a video for them!
Literally our first month and we witnessed an answer to prayer! How utterly amazing is that to see God providing for the needs of those who ask.
