Thursday and Friday...our last blog entry

I'm quite sure this will be our last blog while in Belize. Thank you so much to all who have followed us in this way and faithfully lifted us up in prayer. I'm not going to post pictures with this blog because the pictures I've loaded recently take about an hour to load. Those of you who have family members on the trip can rest assured that there has been no shortage of pictures taken so you'll get to see plenty of them in a couple days. Please let your children tell their stories...ask them lots of questions when they show their pictures.

Thursday was our last day of VBS at both of our sites. Pastor Wayne brought kids from Hope Creek over to Pomona for our last day as well. The singing was ear-piercingly loud and the kids had a great time. I doubt there has ever been that many people in Pomona Christian Community Church. Saying goodbye was tough for many of the students as they formed relationships quickly. A few tears were shed and many hugs were given.

Between our 2 VBS's we had an opportunity to tour the Marie Sharp's factory which is just a mile from Hope Creek. We supported their little gift shop quite well!

Today we got a chance to see glimpses of God's glory in some of His creation. All 33 of us fit on a boat in Dangriga which took us out 12 miles to Tobacco Caye. The snorkeling boats had all left for the day when we arrived but we still got in some good snorkeling just off the caye where the reef began. For about 8 people in our team, it was their first time seeing the ocean and it was a beautiful spot at which to see it!

We ended our day today at Miss Carmen and Joseph's wedding. The rest of our team from Punta Gorda joined us...in the end we actually only spent about 3 horus with them in Belize! Miss Carmen was the one who donated her yard for our Hope Creek VBS all week. One major adjustment for many of our students all week was the fact that we never really started anything on time. We did a lot of waiting! For example, we got going late from snorkeling and took awhile to get ready for the wedding. The wedding was scheduled to start at 4:00. When we weren't leaving our hotel until 4:35, we assumed we'd miss most of the wedding...well, they waited for us! The wedding actually got started at about 4:45.

We're on our way to meet in our family groups and then to bed for the night. Tomorrow we are going to sleep in, eat brunch, visit a tropical cave, and then do some tourist-type souvenir shopping. Sunday will be a day spent in airports and we're scheduled to land in Mpls at 10:30pm. We'll spend some time tying things up on Monday morning and will get back to Yankton around 7pm.

Thanks again for praying. See you all in a few days!

Tuesday and Wednesday

Praise God again for His faithfulness! Our team continues to be safe and God continues to use us for His purposes here in Belize. Today will be a sad day for many as it is our last day of VBS. Relationships have fomed quickly and leaving and knowing we may never see most of these kids again will be tough. But God is faithful. Our hope is not in ourselves but in Him and we trust that He who has began a good work in the lives of some children here will be faithful to complete it.

Over the last couple days, many of our students have had their first opportunity to play an active role in a young person being saved by Jesus. The gospel was given to the kids especially clearly yesterday and many of the older kids were able to share with our students their understanding of Christ's death in our place and the need for us to respond with faith and repentance. It's hard to put #s on it due to the kids who ask to pray to accept Christ every day and the difficulty understanding all the kids but we can just be grateful that God seems to be bringing many students to Himself.

Our team's health: Praise God for His protection of our team up to this point. With the exception of annoying bug bites and a couple short-lived stomach issues, we are very healthy. Sara and Courtney are both dealing with some stomach issues this morning so you can be in prayer for them.

We could have 200 kids at VBS in Pomona this afternoon so pray for things to go smoothly. We had a good testing on Tuesday as we had to deal with a good number of behavior issues. It gave us an opportunity to spend some time on Tuesday evening learning about how to love and guide kids in that situation. By God's grace, Wednesday went much better.

The pictures in this post are from both VBS and from a tree near the Macaroni View where we are staying. Stony Ferguson, son of the owners climbed a tree so that a few of us could experience drinking the milk from a fresh coconut. The hospitality of our hosts (Pastor Wayne and Carla, Pastor Chester and Noelia, and Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson and their whole family) has been such a blessing.

After the last day of VBS today, our long days of work get replaced with opportunities to see God's glory in different ways. We are really looking forward to meeting up with our team from Punta Gorda (we have not seen them yet) to go snorkeling tomorrow. Many on our team are also excited about going to a Belizean wedding tomorrow night in Pomona as Miss Carmen (whose yard we are meeting in for our Hope Creek VBS) has invited us all to her wedding.

Thanks for praying for us. Our team continues to experience great unity and God continues to show us His glory and His faithfulness.

Sunday and Monday

This really will be a quick one today as we need to get to breakfast and then off to VBS at Hope Creek.

Praise God that everyone continues to be healthy and we continue to bear with one another in love. Team unity has been great and the flexibility and servant attitudes of the whole team are evidence that God is at work in us.

On Sunday, we got to experience the Lord's Day in Belize. The morning service was mainly for kids and youth (we didn't understand that until we were about 1/2 way through the service...we were wondering where all the adults were). We led the kids in some songs and helped lead their Sunday school classes. After spending our afternoon planning the last days of VBS, we went to the worship service in the evening. That is when whole families showed up and we filled up the church. We worshipped with them for 2 1/2 hours. Singing was very unpolished but students commented on how our hearts were just drawn to the throne through it. For the message (about 1 hour) over 1/2 of our group took the kids and presented the message of the hope of new life in Christ. We had a couple more kids put their faith in Jesus!

Yesterday (Monday) we did our normal schedule of Hope Creek VBS in the morning and Pomona in the afternoon. The numbers increased at both sites to about 65-70 in Hope Creek and 125 kids in Pomona. When we add our team of 33, there was no space left in the church! Pastor WAyne said he hasn't even taken the bus to one part of the village which could yield us up to 100 more kids. He asked if he should and we said "bring it on!" Relationships continue to be formed and God continues to draw kids to himself. I'm grateful for the way many of our students are very bold in simply sharing the Gospel with kids when they have opportunity.

Chester's sister's funeral is today and Shelly, Dan, and Keiana will be going to represent our group. Continue to pray for that family as Noelia is still grieving the loss of her mother just 3 weeks ago.

The food and hospitality is still a huge blessing for us and some kids are stretching their limits a bit. We ate fish complete with bones and tails last night but our kids were troopers!

Pray for hearts to be drawn to Jesus. The theme for VBS today is thankfulness.

We are thankful for you and your support of us. God works in response to the prayers of His people and through your prayers, His purposes are being accomplished in and through us.

Friday and Saturday

Thank you all so much once again for praying for us and reading our blog. I have a tendency to tell long stories and so I have decided that I will just try bullet points today. There are many great stories to tell but if I tell them all on the blog, you won't get to hear them in person later. So for today, you'll get some bullet points and some pictures...

Friday we went door to door in both Pomona and Hope Creek to invite younger people to VBS and older people to church. We asked students not to take cameras but many of the images of the houses and people we visited are burned in our minds.

Friday evening we went to a Bible study at Pomona Christian Community Church with Pastor Wayne. We worshipped through song...acapella and by request, had time for people to share what God was teaching them, and then had the privilege of hearing the Word preached by Pastor Wayne. He spoke from Deut 8 and challenged us to think of two things when "bad" things happen. 1) Don't ask "Where is God?" but ask "Where is God in this?" 2) Remember that God brings trials and wilderness wanderings to humble us and to test us b/c he is more concerned with the condition of our hearts than with our comfort.

Saturday morning we did our VBS at Hope Creek in Miss Carmen's yard. To give you a taste of their hospitality...Miss Carmen will be hosting VBS in her yard through Thursday of next week and then she will get married on Friday...we're invited to her wedding! Imagine a bride hosting VBS at her house the week of her wedding in the U.S! We probably had about 50-60 kids at Hope Creek and our students did a great job so I'm guessing more will come next week.

Saturday afternoon brought us to Pomona for our 2nd VBS of the day. In Pomona the opening, closing, teaching time, and crafts are all indoors. We had a larger group (probably around 100) in Pomona. Praise God for shade and fans!

Praise God for drawing people to Himself as 2 girls stayed after to pray with people from our group to ask Jesus to be Savior and King of their lives. One is pictured here praying with Karen and Shelly.

After celebrating our hosts' 22nd wedding anniversary with a bbq chicken supper, we spent Saturday evening with the youth group at Pomona. They led us in song, we led them in song. They told us about life in Belize and we asked them to tell us what they thought life was like in America. When I asked if they got the impression from watching tv that Americans are self-centered, I got a resounding yes from the crowd. That is true and unfortunate and something for which we must repent. My hope is that this trip is taking a step in that direction as we come to terms with the idea that it's really not all about us.

Today: Our plan is to participate in the morning and evening worship services in Pomona and spend our afternoon finishing up some VBS planning. Our final 4 days of VBS will be Monday through Thursday.

Pray for: Chester's family as his sister did pass away shortly after I wrote the last blog. The funeral will be sometime this week and they are praising God that she was a believer and also that Chester's other 2 sisters from Los Angeles were able to make it here to be with her and even speak with her before she passed away. Pray also for continued team unity (which continues to be incredible), for perseverance, and for God's glory to be revealed and for our eyes to be open to it.

I'll blog again when I get the chance...I just looked at what I wrote and thought "so much for 'bullet points instead of stories' Jeremy...sorry! :) )

Our First Full Day

Thank you all once again for praying for us. God has answered prayers as He has opened our eyes to His greatness and protected us in every way.

Here's what Thursday looked like:
After getting up, spending some individual time in the Word and prayer and eating a delicious breakfast of fryjacks and beans, we spent our morning organizing our supplies and then planning days 1 and 2 of VBS. We took a break to eat lunch...more great food. We took a short siesta and then spent time planning day 3 of VBS.

Then it was time for a break so we hopped on the bus and Pastor Wayne brought us to a place in a river where we could swim and just be refreshed. It's pretty neat to be on the bus that used to brave SD winters to get kids to school and is now being driven through rocky roads past mango and orange trees to get us to a swimming spot.

After returning from the river and cleaning up, we ate an incredible meal of fish (even those who didn't like fish liked this stuff!) and rice and beans and coleslaw with cheesecake for dessert. We had a little freetime to hang out and get to know each other better after supper. God is bringing great unity to our team of 33 thus far and it's so great to be partnering together with Dalesburg and Big Springs. Shelly is doing an incredible job handling all the details and we are all very grateful.
We ended the night by sharing "wow" stories and I reminded students that God gives us those "wow" moments so that our attention and affection is drawn to Him...so that we'll know that He is God and our response will be to worship Him. We want that to be the focus of our trip. We sang a little, prayed a little, and then spent time in our family groups before heading to bed.

Today, the plan is to go door to door in both Pomona and Hope Creek to invite kids to VBS. This evening we will be joining in on a Bible study at the church in Pomona.

The hospitality of our hosts (Chester and Noelia, Pastor Wayne and Carla, and Mr. and Mrs Ferguson who own the hotel) has been almost overwhelming. God continually gives us so much more than we deserve.

As you pray for us today, pray for good conversations as we go door to door, for continued team unity and safety, and for our eyes to be fixed on Jesus.

Pray also for Chester and his family. His sister's health has not been good and she was just put in the hospital in Dangriga (12 miles from here). Things are not looking good and his family is coming in from all over to spend time with her.

Once again, as I have opportunity I will update the blog...until then. Thanks for praying and our hope is that you too are focusing on and worshipping Jesus back at home.

Jeremy

We're Here!!

Thank you all so much for praying for us.
I'm typing this message from our hotel in Pomona.
We encountered no problems in any of our air travel. Customs went smoothly.
At the airport we boarded the bus that just recently made the trip from Webster, SD to here. It still has it's South Dakota plates, too! The trip from Belize City to Pomona was about 3 hours long and it gave us some great views of life in Belize. The roads were windy and bumpy but that didn't slow our driver (Chester) down! Most of the houses are on stilts and most of them had people outside watching us drive by. The last 2/3 of the trip wound us through some of the mountainous rainforest and our cameras couldn't flash out the windows fast enough as there were beautiful views around most corners. It all just made me think of how great our God is...here were all of these trees and all of this beauty that no human hand had probably ever touched...it's as if God just put it there to show off...to give us a small taste of His power and beauty.
We arrived at our hotel at about 7pm tonight (we're one hour behind you guys because they don't do daylight savings time here).
After waiting to get the room configuration figured out for about an hour, we were ushered up to a rooftop dining area. We ate chicken and rice and cucumbers and fried plantains by candlelight. Noelia (Chester's wife) is our cook for the week and if every meal is like that, we'll smile a lot!

As time allows, we'll continue to update the blog. I have not yet located my cord to transfer pictures so hopefully that will turn up and we can include pictures in future posts.

Everyone is safe and everyone is healthy. We are experiencing great team unity. And we have seen and been in awe of God's handiwork already.

Thank you for praying and continue to do so. The next 2 days are mainly preparation days for the days to come.

Headed to Minneapolis

It's for Real!

I don't know about you but for me, it's starting to feel more real now. The details are planned, the bags are packed (well, mine are anyway!), we've been commissioned by our church, and Tuesday is just around the corner.

My hope, as I stated at our barbeque last night, is that we will realize that it's not all about us and it's not even all about a mission trip. In the end, it's about God and His glory. His desire is for the people from Calvary and Big Springs and the people in Pomona and Hope Creek to worship Him. He is worthy of all our affection and all our attention...all of our worship. May He use these next 2 weeks to tranform us to that end. As we go, may we be amazed by Him when we see our surroundings, may we depend on Him when we realize we have nothing on our own, and may we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and trust that all other things will be given to us as well for the glory and fame of His name.