WE’RE BACK ONLINE!!!!! FINALLY!
We’ve been offline for the most part for 3 weeks now, and of
course it was during our busiest 3 weeks we’ve had here lol. But we’re going to
try and catch you up!
The team arrived on February 15th. The week
before we spent making final preparations, cleaning, mowing, raking, filling
water tanks, making sure everything worked, getting groceries and gas, stuff
like that. Joel and Shannon drove to
Belize City, picked up a shuttle bus, picked up the team at the airport, and
drove them to a boat that would bring them to the mission base. After they dropped them off they dropped off
the shuttle and drove back arriving an hour or so after the team. Meanwhile the
team arrived by boat, unloaded, got their room and team assignments and started
settling in.
The cooks, Doris and Dorita, had dinner ready at 6 and
everyone came in to eat and Joel got back from the city. After dinner Joel went
over the orientation and what they would be doing Sunday. Sunday morning after breakfast half of them
went by boat down the beach and through the river to Gales Point for church,
and half were transported at waterside across the lagoon. They had church and
afterward had sponsored a picnic for everyone in the church. They came back in
the afternoon and had time to prepare for their first work day in the village.
And they had a lot planned! There was a construction crew that worked on Pastor
Kenny’s house, a medical team that set up in the church and also did house
calls to elderly people, an eye-glass clinic, a dental team, and a VBS team (22
people!) With the land rover and a
makeshift trailer it proved to be quite a task transporting 22 people to the
waterside of the lagoon where the team was picked up in small boats and sent
across. It took 4+ trips in the morning and again in the evening thanks to Mike
and his boat (the other missionary in the village). We had 2 boats and he was
an operator whenever or wherever we needed him it made things a lot easier to
get people to different parts of the village at various different times of the
day.
They all went to the village Monday thru Thursday, all day.
The eye glass team gave away a LOT of glasses, even making house calls. And
Joel was even able to be a recipient of a pair himself J :
The dental team brought this amazing ‘dental clinic in a box’
- a hard suitcase a military device used by the dentists in the field, and were
able to do even more than they had done in previous years, not only extractions
but restoration work on teeth also. They served sooo many people, all for free!
It was so awesome that they could make such a difference in people’s lives by
getting rid of their pain.
The
medical team served at the church having people come in and by making house
calls. They treated a lot of different things, they dealt a lot with diabetes
patients, and they brought a lot of medical supplies with them and were able to
organize and give away a lot of what was here at the base:
The construction team sponsored materials for and worked on
pastor Kenny’s house along with Robert and Threnton. They formed up all the
framing for the concrete roof, bent all the rerod and tied it together, placed
it, and poured the concrete framing along with several vertical pillars for
porches and support posts. Not many
tools for this project all manual labor. All the rod and rings were bent one at
a time with their hands and all wired together with pliers - very time consuming.
The concrete was mixed on a cement slab with several men with shovels mixing
and adding sand gravel and water slowly as they turned it with shovels. Then it
was scooped into 5 gallon pails and carried to a ladder hauled up and dumped in
the forms one pail at a time. It is as much work as it sounds. They did manage
to finish their goal thanks to Robert and Threnton who spent a late night to
finish it up.
The VBS team was only allowed the last part of the school
day for their lessons where the did crafts skits and helped teach classes, so
they spent the mornings painting times tables on the school and underneath they
did chalkboard paint. It turned out really neat:
Also the guys on VBS helped with construction of pastor Kenny’s
house when they had time.
Friday morning they all left bright and early on a boat to
the water taxi terminal and then out to Caye Caulker for their one day
excursion, along with Joel and Kenny.
The next day Joel shuttled them back to the airport and they were on
their way. It was so much fun spending time with such nice people and getting
to know each of them. Sage had a blast too, she made some good friends who
loved to play with her, it was so sweet!
The team
We learned a lot. This was our first team and fortunately
for us many of them had been here before, some of them several times so that
helped a lot. And we had great support and help from Kenny, Mike, Shannon,
Threnton, Doris, and Dorita who had all done this before. Without these people
it would have been impossible. For Joel between getting up at 5 in the morning
to get as much of the usual maintenance done such as starting the generator,
pumping up water tanks, and fixing things that broke, and getting the truck ready
to transport the team then getting them all where they needed to be each
morning and transporting them to different places during the day and get them
all together for lunch, then back to where the needed to go coordinating where
each of them would be picked up with the boat and getting everyone without
leaving anyone behind to the other side of the lagoon to meet them with the
truck again; that didn’t work out every day. One rainy day both boats had temporary mechanical
issues half way across the lagoon where they were trapped for a bit in a
complete down pour - bet they won’t forget thatJ
After everyone was back at the base Joel
still worked till ten or 11 at night cleaning up preparing for the next day and
a couple of times sharing his testimony with people on the team (bonus!)
So it was a busy week! By the time Joel got back Saturday
afternoon we were ready for a break!
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