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! :)

Home sweet home!

We are complete!

Today was an especially long day for all of us! It is truly amazing how God works!!!

I will be able to write much more about everything once I am home, but for now these are just my notes to help me remember. So please bear with me...

Had breakfast today...not sure what I was thinking about loosing any weight, this place feeds us too well! :) eggs, bacon, beans and the yummiest corn tortillas ever!

Natalie took us into Sacred Heart Church to meet with Fr Eduardo. Can't wait to explain about where he lives, but not now... We chatted with him for a long time and then he took us to the Market to meet with someone about some wood art we'd been looking for. We were there a very short time and then walked over to the paint store.

Fr. Eduardo, Fr. Selvin and Fr. Moises live in a very old 2 story building.  They have a couple women who do the laundry and meals.  They served us some yummy watermelon type Kool-aide drink.  The simplest of lifestyles...  There is no AC and the windows are wide open to let in the breeze.  Their view out on the city is beautiful (they are up on the top of a hill).  The picture is of Pat being "attacked" by a curtain to show the breeziness.  

The power has been a big problem today. There were terrible storms a little ways from here today and it has caused terrible power outages everywhere. Anyway, couldn't order paint because they were unable to place our order due to the outages.

Fr Eduardo brought us back to Windy Hill and we went and ate some yummy nachos to tide us over until the big group came. They had some travel delays due to a bathroom leak on the plane just before take off. Once they arrived in Belize City, the bus was ready and brought them here. They took a pit stop to eat lunch at the Belize Zoo.

Tonight, once they arrived, we had a little gathering of snacks and then moved into the dining area. We had 2 pork chops (absolutely awesome) mashed potatoes and steamed veggies. Fr.Leo brought the seminarians out to Windy Hill tonight, they needed to deliver Deacon David's alb for mass tomorrow. There was some mix up where it was and David had just settled on wearing a polyester Velcro necked one that Pat and I were both worried about him over heating in... This cotton one will help tremendously. David has left his alb here for the past 5 years with Fr Leo so he doesn't have to transport it each trip.

Had a very short meeting after dinner and most either went directly to bed or swam a bit and then headed for bed. I'm on my way!

Love to all and I promise to expand on these more when I return. Just too tired now. Trying to not disturb my roommate, Jan!

Too tired...

CABIN 17

CABIN 13

Beautiful plants all over Windy Hill

Too tired to blog much but here is the bare bones of what we covered today:

Breakfast was buffet.

Got ride into seminary.

Fr Leo took us and George(a local who is helping us with roofing issues at the seminary) to Spanish Lookout (a Minonite community) to get some gutters, pay sheet metal place and go to a store with contents similar to Walmart. Interesting place. (More later about it)

Ate at seminary... Chicken fell off the bone it was perfect and Belizian rice. Toured seminary.

Walked to Santa Elena primary school. Saw Mr Medina and Ms Debby along with lots of kiddos we recognized.

Hitched a ride back to Windy Hil with an EF group who was visiting the school and were leaving to come back to Windy Hill.

Had pasta Alfredo tonight for dinner. 

Finally got to go take a dip in the pool by the light of the full moon, no less.

BED TIME! :)

Vivian and her friend

My new roomie

Good night ladies.... Good night gents...

What an awesome God we serve. There literally was not one single solitary glitch about today's trip. When we arrived in Belize a pastor friend of Deacon Davis and Pat were there. What an amazing story they have...from the way they met until her surviving cancer!every story they told gave me goosebumps and affirmed my belief in serving God above all things!

We are off to the seminary to meet Fr Leo tomorrow morning, inspect a few things and the on to paying for the roofing materials and time at the school. Can not wait!

BTW: Windy Hill Resort has us completely spoiled rotten! I love our Belizean family!!!

ps: Rhonda we are not bring 7th graders... The youngest is in high school and the oldest is almost 80! For some reason I tried to switch my picture and it keeps going back to my 7th grade icon...

Less than 24 hours

Good morning all!  Pat, Deacon David and I head out in less than 24 hours.  I feel like we are well prepared, but won't really know that until the week is over.  This is the kinda trip you have to go with the mind set of flexibility and patience (two qualities I work hard to posses, but don't necessarily come naturally for me).  Please pray for our hearts to be open and willing to do God's work, not OUR work.

I plan to blog while I am there, but with the wi-fi access being pretty sketchy, I am not sure how well it will go.

Take care!  Kim