Ray of Sunshine Travel

¡Bienvenidos! This is the fourth installment of Belize posts and covers our third full week here.

Monday was such a good day! Sunday was a holiday, so the kids got off school on Monday, and Mama L didn’t have to work. Because of this, Mama L ended up taking MK and me to visit her Mennonite friend a little ways outside of town. The drive there was just beautiful!

When we first arrived in Belize, I was pretty surprised to hear that there was a rather large population of Mennonites. Since I’ve been here, I’ve learned that there’s several more religious groups here, including Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. It seems several of them have migrated from the United States or Canada, perhaps because of the higher percentage of English speakers here than other Central American countries. A lot of these groups do tend to keep to themselves; we’ll occasionally run across a Mennonite coming into town, but it’s not an everyday occurrence for us.

It was a pleasure to meet and talk with D, Mama L’s friend, and hear a bit of her testimony. Unfortunately it was a pretty quick visit, but I did get to see her dragonfruit patch, which was really cool!

I’m really hoping we get the opportunity to go back and spend a little more time getting to know D – I’ve also been told she makes a really great pizza, and I can’t tell you how good that sounds!!

Afterwards, we returned home and started making food. My birthday had been the day before, but with the wedding we hadn’t had any time to celebrate. After a while, I got kind of tired and decided to go lay down for a couple minutes. Mama L told me that she would come and wake me some three hours later! I think I only slept about twenty minutes, but it was nice to have more time to rest, and I put some headphones in so I wouldn’t spoil any of the preparations going on outside my room.

I was “awakened” a few hours later to a firecracker going off and my team singing Happy Birthday! We had not one, not two, but three cakes, and a delicious dinner afterwards. They had also decorated the dining room with so many balloons!

The team even brought presents! First was a travel Chutes and Ladders game for A, since his birthday was on Friday. He absolutely loved it, and several days later we are still playing it regularly! As for me, I got a bag of goodies, because I love trying sweets from other countries, and a cover for my Bible! MK had noticed I was carrying around my Bible in a Ziploc to help protect it from the elements, so the team decided to get me a more aesthetic protector. It was so thoughtful!!

Tuesday was back to normal. I started off the day bright and early helping Mama L make flour tortillas, which are sold at the local shop as an extra source of income. They are so good!! Definitely one of the small things I’ll miss most about living here. We made a HUGE stack this morning – right about 90!

We make tortillas most mornings, depending on demand, though sometimes we make them in the evenings instead. It’s usually about 7:30 by the time we’ve finished, at which point the boys are usually up and getting ready for school. I usually help get them out the door, then we finish getting ready ourselves. This was our first normal week of helping in the school, so we volunteered on Tuesday and Thursday.

Wednesday MK and I were able to take a bit of a slower day, as we weren’t helping at school and Mama and Papa were out running errands. We helped fix lunch for the boys and did some chores around the house, but otherwise enjoyed the day to ourselves.

Thursday I finally finished my number chart at school! After cutting out 100 circles, gluing them down, cutting out borders, and covering the whole thing in plastic – all the while fighting the wind that kept trying to blow everything away – I was pretty thrilled to be done!

Friday MK and I started the day by helping Mama L “clean” chocho plants. Chocho is a type of squash commonly used in soups here. Our farm has a couple of fields full of them, and they’re just about ready to be harvested! Mama L says that they typically clean, or remove the old dead growth, three times a year! It’s a very impressive setup.

Afterwards, we got the opportunity to meet Miss S, an American ex-pat living in Belize for the last couple of decades. She graciously invited the team over for lunch and prepared a pretty big spread: vegan lasagna, walnut rice balls, and fresh salad. I think my favorite, though, was the dessert – chocolate pudding made from avocadoes!

We also got to meet her many dogs, and we even took them on a walk with us as we explored her property.

Friday night I had a pretty humbling learning moment. Because we don’t have church on Friday nights, we’ve been having worship nights with more contemporary music at the church. This was the first Friday we decided to open it up to youth in the community as an outreach event I was pretty excited to share a different way of worship: more contemporary music, dimmed lights, and I had even had the idea of lighting candles! I got the candles all prepped and ready, but I forgot the most important part – permission. We ultimately decided not to use them since the church hadn’t approved them, but we still turned off the lights during worship and just turned on our phone flashlights. Near the end of the night, the lights suddenly came back on. A church member we are close to had informed us that it’s not looked upon very favorably to worship in the dark here. The kicker for me, though, was what he added: “At least you didn’t light candles!” Ouch. I was pretty frustrated walking home; it honestly felt like a bit of a slap in the face to have our culture of worship rejected like that. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that I was focusing a little too much on sharing culture rather than sharing Jesus. And yes, our goal was to present a slightly different culture of worship to help attract a different group of people than those that usually attend. But as team leader L reminded me, like Paul says in 1 Corinthians, we shouldn’t do anything that will cause another Christian to stumble – even if it’s with the best of intentions!

Saturday was an unexpectedly eventful day. At lunch the day before, MK and I had volunteered to stay and sit Miss S’s very pregnant dog while Miss S was out of town. We arrived early that morning to find Miss S still at home and one puppy already delivered! Over the next several hours, we got to act as puppy “midwives” four more times, and thankfully, they were all healthy! It was a pretty awesome experience getting to see new life being brought into the world, and I’m really glad we got to be there for Miss S, who was pretty nervous about the whole ordeal.

We went home a little after the last puppy was born at 4:00 and found Mama L doing some landscaping projects! We helped a little bit with transplanting some bushes to the backyard so the boys would have more space to run around.

I had been itching to do some baking and finally got some time on Saturday to make it happen. Tasting the plantains we cut down the week before made me miss banana cake, so I found a recipe that didn’t use butter and took a stab. It tasted good but was really, really sweet, especially with the icing. Definitely fun to get to bake though – my first time in several months! We had some company over too to help us eat it.

Mama and I talked for a bit after our company left, and somehow we got on the topic of body weight. Before I knew it, she had whipped out a scale, and we were weighing ourselves by hanging from the ceiling! I love her so much – never know what might happen when I’m spending time with her!

Sunday we didn’t go to church because all the leaders were out of town at a conference. We helped out around the house some, then walked over to the community center for a girl’s group with Miss S. Our main goal was to just support Miss S and try to make some connections with the girls, and it was a good time! We did a speed dating style icebreaker, then E from our team led a tutorial on how to make friendship bracelets.

That wraps up another week in Belize! It’s crazy to think we only have one more week left in this town before we move to our next spot. We would really appreciate your prayers for a smooth transition – we love it here, and it will be hard to leave, but we’re also excited for the next chapter. God bless – I’ll leave you with a sunset photo from the top of our hill!