Belize Mission 2416

Hello everyone! Today was day three of VBS. After breakfast we went shopping for snacks and souvenirs at a large grocery store, then had lunch at Pastor’s home. The food has been very tasty and nourishing. We will all most likely be a few pounds heavier by the time we go home!  After lunch, Pastor Roldán cut branches from his palm tree for our children’s reenactment of Jesus’ walk into Jerusalem. Today was our fun and casual shirt day. Pastor Mark’s shirt was very fashionably adorned with flamingos . Today we had several older children come to VBS. They played catch with the football outside as we were receiving other kids. There are already some pretty good throwing arms😊 Some members of our team were doing last minute quality checks on the equipment.  Dean made sure the crayons were not too melty (heat index over 100 degrees and no breeze) Just kidding, Dean! Actually he was working with a child. We did have that issue the glue sticks. Thank goodness we had tape! The best p...

Today we had a wonderful breakfast at Pastor’s home. We are so blessed to have a family that willingly and joyfully feeds us body and soul.  It was another hot day. We walked around the neighborhoods and met with a couple of people who were not only willing to bring their children, but offered to help spread the word of our VBS program! Thanks to those folks we increased the number of children who attended today to 28! To God be the glory!!!!💕 Now that we have a better handle on the general ages of the children, we were better able to adapt our program so that we could provide the best experience possible for them to learn about Jesus.   The skits have been so creative. Check out Pastor Mark rocking the Pharoah look 👀 ☺️ The kids loved the lesson.  The music was spot on! The host Pastor Roldán was so great talking with the kids, telling them what the colors of the strings on their muñecas (dolls) meant. (Mini Spanish lesson lol!) We also passed out the information ...

This morning we spent some time walking around the neighborhood talking with families and inviting them to bring their children to VBS. We were very welcome by the residents and had some wonderful conversation and prayer time with them. Our first day of VBS was admittedly a little chaotic as many of us had never done one, but it was very successful nonetheless. We had eight children come and they had a great time learning about Jesus through lessons, songs, activities and crafts. It was a good start, planting the seeds to help grow a brand new church in an area where the need is great. We are busy ministering to others and it is fulfilling, but we need to ensure that we continue to be fed spiritually, so we have a teammate do a devotion in the AM and PM before our meals. At dinner today, Dave did a devotional on the four spiritual laws. Some teammates were interested so here’s the source link that he used:  https://campusministry.org/docs/tools/FourSpiritualLaws.pdf .  I plan ...

 Sunday was our first full day in Belize. Our accommodations, while different from those in the US, are clean and more than sufficient for our needs.  We started our day with a wonderful breakfast made by pastor’s family, then we hit the road for a couple of hours handing out flyers to folks in the neighborhood, inviting the children (and parents) to VBS. The weather was very hot and humid. We started strong, but after a couple of hours we were more than ready to find a cool spot to restore ourselves. The temperature was in the low 90’s but with almost 100% humidity, the index was closer to 100.               I had a nice surprise for lunch. Our host bought a huge cake to celebrate my birthday! I was so touched that I cried ☺️ This was a first for me, having a birthday in a country I’d never been to, with people that I either  casually knew or not all, and it was the best ever!   Later we had our first visit to the church for S...