Home Sweet Home (USA style)

Probably wondering what in the world happened to me...  (or at least I hope a couple people did!)

Crazy travel day yesterday...  Great time getting out of Belize (not one single itty bitty little problem)
Houston was great until we boarded the plane and then we sat for almost 2 hours waiting on a computer glitch that ran all through United's system nationwide.
Flight from Houston into Chicago (where everyone else was either staying the night or driving home) got in 2.5 hours late.
Pat, David and I were to catch the last flight to Madison as that was our departure city.  That flight was cancelled due to weather/computer glitch....  so........ we spent about an hour trying to find a hotel or a rental car to get some sleep or head home; neither were successful.
Fortunately, Lucy kept in touch with me to see how things went and she mentioned that a couple people who were driving home had not left yet (it was 1am by this time).  So we jumped the van to the hotel where they had parked the cars for the week and split up and rode home.  Both cars got home around 4am.
My checked luggage was locked up, so I had to do without my cpap machine (made for a very miserable morning's snooze when I was soooooo tired).  I am getting ready for bed now.

More tomorrow....  sorry I am slow on the update!  :)

Thank you for the prayers!

Fabulous Friday

Zip lining was a 'success' because there were no deaths! ;)

This is where you end after 7 different platforms.  It was a good time, but don't think I will ever want to do it again...

Shopped around San Ignacio

Fabulous dinner and concert....

Quick prayer service and...

Windy Hill threw us a party tonight complete with a marimba playing group... It was really nice. Will have to debrief tomorrow!

Good night! Please pray for safe travels tomorrow!

Very thirsty Thursday

Too tired to reminisce in words tonight. Did run out of water twice today, first time ever...

Field day/video taping sound crew done A group of students were challenged by their teacher to develop a commercial to remind people to vote.  A group of girls won the challenge and were busy trying to record their video to send it off to the local TV station when I walked by.  Andrew was trying to record and be the music  person, too, so he asked if I could help.  We ended up in a classroom upstairs.  The video was really cute and hopefully the reminder will help people to get out and vote.  Their voting age is 18, just like in the US.

Seminary fajita yummies for lunch

Children's ministry awesomeness! (Found Chris!)

Good-bye ceremony

Picnic tables done

Seminary done This includes an enormous list of successes.  They were able to repair or replace all screens to every window.  They build a new screen door for the kitchen.  They cleaned many of the rooms and store rooms that had not been cleaned for a very long time.  They also cleaned the chapel. They've created a list of things they would like to accomplish the next time we go, but for the 1st round everyone was very impressed with how much was accomplished.

Mass/concert done (Women of St. Dennis -represented by Ellen- donated a mass kit to Sacred Heart Parish)

Chatting with friends is priceless!

Love to all!

Wacky and wild Wednesday!

Good night (this is the Belizian way of saying hello)!

Quick run of the day...

Breakfast

Mass with everyone at the school (over 1000 people) (Fr. Leo said mass)

Lunch at Windy Hill (black soup)

Reading comprehension teacher workshop with Michelle Amend at the helm! (She rocks!!!!)

Seminary is almost done... Lots painted, all 140+ screens replaced or repaired, and many rooms were deep cleaned.

School door lettering is done, basketball court is almost complete and computer lab is finishing up... :)

Good night all! Love you all lots and remember each and every encounter is divine providence... Take advantage of every second! :)

Prepping for mass... Courtney and Alyssa helped baby sit for the band members kids.

Michelle's seminar for the teachers

I was so impressed by Michelle's presentation.  She is such a wealth of knowledge.  I was in front of a class the next day and kept catching myself saying, "this is not how Michelle would do teach it."  

The teachers were so enthusiastic for the information Michelle shared.  The school received 40 copies of a manual and over 300 copies of kid's National Geographic magazines.  These were all donated from the respective publishers.  THANK YOU MICHELLE!

Totally tubular Tuesday

MEGA MEGA tired tonight. Shout out to my mom.... No burn on your baby who was outside for close to 8 hours today!!! Sunscreen reapplied frequently does work! Aren't you amazed! It was a very hot day and I'm happy to report we lived through it! Here's some pics of field day. We had 2 sessions of field day, am and pm. Morning was with little ones and pm was with middle elementary.

Daniel with his group of little ones.

Jacob and Steve Amend playing frisbee.

Went to the seminary for lunch again... Bus got stuck, but with a couple big pushes it was freed.

This is all one leaf on this cool tree at the seminary.

Moving the sheet metal for the roof via just pulling it up by hand. The 4 men are pretty good acrobats. None of our guys are allowed up their except for the crazy Deacon David! But that's a whole other story.

So for the roof story...  If you look at the pic above you can see where the balcony and the 1st floor roof come together.  Well, it was raining and the men from Belize who were working on repairing the roof found a huge problem.  There was an area that needed extra help due to an infestation of bats (Ken bagged a couple and brought them to show-n-tell during our evening session, yuck).  So, David (in his sandals) stepped out on the little ledge of the balcony and kinda jumped onto the roof.  Someone has it on video and I will see if I can get a hold of that stunt sometime to add here.  I think he was even scared by the thought that he did that...

We had a great evening session tonight. Loving the praise and worship we have and then the activity/prayer service.

Today was Jen's birthday. I think they (Nancy, etc...) must have sung 'happy birthday' at least 20 times throughout the day. Windy Hill brought out a piñata this evening after our session for Jen to break open! Really thoughtful!

Later! Oh the pool has water in it again so hopefully we'll get to swim tomorrow. That's a whole other entry for a whole other day!  Due to the power outages from Saturday, the motor in the pool's system burned out.  They decided to drain it half way to repair this issue.  As they got it down to about half way they went ahead and drained it all the way so they could give it a good scrubbing.  Two of the office men from Windy Hill took off their shirts and started scrubbing.  The owner happened to walk by and saw what they were doing and saw what great examples of "many hands make light work" and jumped in and helped too.  It was really cool to hear this story told by the owner.  Also, it was mentioned in some conversation that the seminary needed some trees cut down.  The two office men (Elmer and Geoffery) offered to go and chop them down, just out of the goodness of their heart.  

I hear the weather in WI has been bad. Know that we are praying for you all and wishing each of you safety! Love to all!

Monday.... Monday.....

Rain and HUGE accomplishments are the words of the day!

Got up and got ready and went to sit out in the hammock. While there a toad fell on my right side.

I let him fall through the hammock and he stuck around for a while. I hope to see him come back to visit but hopefully not on my 'lap' :)

Fr Lorenzo stopped by to pick up the projector that was purchased for him. His mom came with him. 

We had another awesome, awesome breakfast. We headed to Santa Elena Primary School. The students sang us some songs and then it began to pour. 

The suitcases in the pic above are all the supplies we brought with us.  We had 19 extra suitcases filled with donations of school supplies, etc...  The kids will receive these supplies in the fall when they start school again.

We switched things up and had infants 1 & 2 (kindergarten/first grade) and Standard 1 children's ministry activity. They loved the book and sand crosses we made. I will have pics to  come to show what we did. We had to do a switch up due to the rain.  We were supposed to have field day in the morning and children's ministry in the afternoon all with Infants 1 and 2 and Standard 1.  We ended up having these students in the morning working on Children's ministry.  

We went back to the seminary for lunch. My goodness gracious did that crew accomplish so much. They replaced all the screens on every window. (close to 150 screens) They scraped the top of the railing off, too. They have a great start, despite the rain. 

Daniel painting the ledge.

Hey Daniel and Lucy!

Working on something...  :)

We loaded up and changed the plan again due to more rain. We had Standards 2-4 (grades 3-5) participate in children's ministry. We had the same kind of activities planned for them. They really enjoyed it, I think.

We left and went back the seminary to pick the crew. We worked there for a while. 

Then we came back to Windy Hill to have dinner. We had steak fajitas (homemade tortillas), salad and hummus. We had flan for dessert.

Just getting ready for our session! :) more later! Love to all!

Pics of the day....

 From the front (450+ chairs)

Sacred Heart College 'auditorium' where we celebrated mass.

 Deacon David helping with mass

 

We had so much happen there. Mass lasted about 2 hours. David did a great job with his homily (sermon for my Protestant peeps!). It was close to a half hour. (American style is usually 7-9 mins tops.)

After mass, we had a 45 min break where we could go out and see the little fair. (Think very miniature festival.) some of us thought it was ok to adventure into eating the food that was for sale, hopefully no one regrets it in the morning.... The food didn't seem to bother anyone, at least the next day.  We have several people who are still having a little bit of trouble with their intestinal tract, but I don't think it is associated with eating this evening.

Then 2 parish youth groups gave short skits about making sure you take the right path in your life. Youth struggle with the same 'issues' no matter the location...  Both skits had to do with drinking and drugs and how both or either can ruin your life.  The first one was a skits about a girls throughout her life at different points.  Eventually she hung out with the wrong crowd and died from her choices.  The second skit was very innovative.  There was a man who was struggling with his life.  There were 5 or 6 "computers" who showed him how they could improve his life (drugs, gambling, etc...).  This was a great skit and sure tested my Spanish skills as the whole things was done in Spanish.  I am not sure why it was in Spanish.  The skits were great.

An old gentleman gave about a 15 min talk about the importance of men being good leaders and positive Godly men for their families. 

Daniel, our seminarian, lead our group through our vine and the branches presentation we had planned. He did a great job.

When that was over so was the evening. We grabbed the bus in a downpour and came back to awesome nachos!!! :) 

Our children's ministry finished up our prep for tomorrow and now we are all drifting off to sleep!

Love to all! Promise to add more later! :)