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Get news and updates sent to your cell phone via text message.| Belize Update - June 22 |
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| Written by Tim Schmoyer | |
| Monday, 23 June 2008 | |
 Belize Update - June 22 Today was actually a pretty relaxing day. Our original plan was to go into the prisons after lunch, but some communication issues between people at the prison meant that might happen on Wednesday instead. So, we woke up and did our normal routine: a brief devotional with Kevin, an hour in Quiet Time with God, and breakfast.The Sunday church service at Hattieville Baptist Church was fun! Most of our teens helped in the various Sunday school classes. I even taught the adult class. Their format is a bit different than ours. They start with about 30 minutes of worship with everyone together. Then they break up into Sunday school classes for an hour and come back together afterwards for another 30 minutes of music and the main sermon. Oh, and I love how they do the offering. Instead of passing plates, they invite people to worship by coming forward and laying their gifts in baskets on the alter. That certainly made tithing a different experience than what we're used to in America! Instead of feeling like you're paying "church admission fees" or something, it felt like a serious act of worship by laying it on the alter in the presence of God and all the other believers, which adds a level of accountability and expectation in the church, too. (I'd love to see our church at home try doing this with tithes sometime and make the comfortable people feel a bit uncomfortable!) Watching all the Belizian people sacrificially give to the Lord reminded me of the Bible story of the widow's two mites -- even though she had very little, she still gave all she had. After lunch, we went to a very nice beach with some of the church's Belizian teenagers. We spent all afternoon swimming, playing sand volleyball, swinging from the tarzan rope, and especially getting burned! I applied sunblock three times and still got burned! Doh! Then we ran into a little schedule problem: dinner was scheduled to be at 6:00 PM at the hotel, but VBS started at 6:30 PM at the church. (It's difficult to reschedule meals because the cook and workers travel from so far away to get here every day.) We practically swallowed our dinner whole (no biggie -- it was soup! lol) and rushed out the door. When we arrived at the church, about 20 children were waiting for us outside. I grabbed the guitar and led the kids in some fun songs with hand motions with Jenna, Tyra, Laura and Rachael while some of the others quickly set up for the puppets behind us. Then Riza, Carrie and Megan did a quick funny ice-breaker skit and Amy, Jeffrey and Mim did a great puppet show. Jake did a great job of doing the main teaching to the growing group of children and then they all split up into smaller groups with our teens to do the discussion, game, craft and review. We ended with Katie and a Belizian teenager named Noel doing the clown thing with balloon animals and cookies. Throughout the night the group of children continued to grow. We started with about 30 and there were maybe 70 by the time it was over. Tomorrow we expect there will be about 200. Traditionally it grows larger and larger throughout the week as word-of-mouth spreads. We had a hard enough time keeping tonight's crowd inline -- the last VBS night on Wednesday is going to be absolutely crazy! Whew! Even though we're all dead tired, we still did our debreifing time back here at the hotel because it's proven to be a very valuable time for us to reflect together on what God's done through and in us that day. As we approach the mid point of our trip, pray that our stamina will stay high. I can tell we're starting to drag a bit and there's still so much to do! Pray also that everyone's health stays. We've had a couple minor cases of dizziness, cold spells, and stomche aches all due to too little hydration. Everyone is doing great with drinking, but it feels like we have to stop and drink every couple minutes here just to stay ahead of the heat's toll. And when you're really hot, sometimes you don't feel like eating either, so pray everyone will keep up with that, too. Thank you! Still no new pictures posted -- sorry! That won't happen until I can find an Internet connection that's faster than dial-up. It's also difficult to get online everday to post updates since the computer and Internet isn't always available. (Note to self: bring your own satelite dish next time.) |
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