Week 8

Winter hit Belize! Here's proof, our coconut oil solidified!

We've had a whole week of 'cold' weather, most of which was 60's at night and 70's during the day. It was sooooo nice to have a break from the heat, especially with all the work we've been trying to get done. It was cold enough at night for blankets and it made for super cold showers, I even skipped a couple days because I just couldn't bring myself to get in that cold water. 

Last week was all about cleaning. That's pretty much what we did the whole week. Joel spent 8 hours cleaning downstairs of the lodge. Check out what he found under a bed down there:

And we had been wondering where that smell was coming from...... Anyways it looks usable down there now, we were all too creeped out to be down there before.  

 

We took the day off for Thanksgiving and drove to our new friends Bill and Stacy's house. They and another couple own land on the lagoon north of here. They have a beautiful place!

We really enjoyed our dinner of grilled and stewed armadillo, turkey, apple pineapple salad, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli salad, cookies, lemon bars and pumkin bars. Yeah we were stuffed. It was a really fun day of fellowship with them and the other couple (who are from CO), a couple from Vancouver, and a man who lives nearby from England. It was very interesting conversation!

Then it was back to work. Joel got a tool shop set up in the container, it looks great:

Sage and I worked on cleaning the lodge and directors house most of the week, along with all the regular things like laundry and cooking.  

So why all the cleaning? Well Belize Mission and Retreat is for sale. As you can tell there haven't been any teams lately and there are only 3 scheduled for this next year. There used to be teams almost every week throughout the whole year!  Once the economy slowed down the teams tapered off and now there's hardly any. We had the opportunity to skype with the owners a couple nights ago and they shared with us what it was like when they first came 13 years ago and all the ministries they started and were involved in. It is seriously amazing. I know they are so sad that this chapter is coming to an end. We did know this coming here and decided to come anyway because we felt God was telling us this was the place for us. So there are a group of people coming to look at the mission tomorrow. We've known for several weeks so we've been working really hard to make it look as good as it can.  This is another ministry looking at it and I think we would all like to see a ministry purchase it and keep it going.  So please be in prayer for the whole situation and that the right people find it.  It is so beautiful and amazing here I don't know who wouldn't want to buy it!  So where does that leave us? Exactly where God wants us, completely relying on Him and not always knowing what's coming next. We are concentrating on where He has us right now and that's it. 

We'd also like to share that we were involved with starting a house church in the village. This is super exciting for us because as many of you know we went to house church back home and absolutely loved it. We found out there were some people in the village who wanted to start a bible study so Joel talked to them about doing house church like we had and they loved the idea. We've been meeting on Tuesdays for over a month now and we are loving it so much. We've been enjoying getting together with other believers and just sharing what God's doing in our lives, studying and praying together.....it's really really great!  So also keep this in prayer if you would :)  

So that's why the blog was late this week, between using all our download allowance skyping with the owners, being home late from house church last night, and all the work we've been doing there hasn't been time! Thank you so much for keeping us in prayer, hope you all have a great week :)