JOY Team

Greetings from Belize! Bayside Baptist arrived safely and on time Friday. Everyone is excited to begin ministry. At the airport we met the Tennessee team we will be ministering with this week. The team also met our leader, Tati, and two co-leaders Ian and Janell. Next we traveled to Hattieville, the village we will be ministering at. The rest of our group met up with us there and we went together to a nursing home and spent time talking, singing, and praying with the folks there. Pastor Mark, the pastor of the Hattieville church, treated us to a wonderful chicken and rice dinner, and after a group meeting most everyone went to bed early. Today after breakfast everyone worked together to paint the outside of the church. With 48 people total on the team the work went very quick. We had to stop short because of rain, but will finish soon. It already looks great! This afternoon we traveled west to Belmopan and had a wonderful time visiting with the children of the orphanage. We played soccer (that is, "football"), frisbee, painted a girl's nails, braided hair, and blew soap bubbles. The children loved it, and the team was sad to go. This afternoon the team is leading a VBS program at the church. We expect as many as 150 kids! We've split up into 4 different stations for the children, and everyone is excited to begin. We will be posting pictures soon. Please keep us in your prayers, and check back soon!

Wow, today has been an incredible day! But lets not get a head of ourselves. Yesterday after VBS with almost 100 kids, we got ready to have Youth night. There were about 80 of us total in the church! We played games, had a message and worshiped God. And to end the night we had a time of fellowship with peanut butter and banana. It was so funny to see the faces of the kids as they were wondering why in the world we were eating these two things together! But it was a great way to fellowship and laugh. This morning we woke up to another delicious meal. We prepared for church and the doors started to flood with people. As we were preparing we had our skit group, worship group and many sharing their testimonies. Clark did a great job sharing the message and we were so blessed to feel the presence of God all among us. After church we had the opportunity again to go back to the orphanage. And as the children waited for the arrival of the team, the children were almost chanting as they heard the bus approaching. They were so excited that they were back again and had a great afternoon of games, sports and songs. As we arrived back home at church, we had just a few minutes to get ready for VBS where the children were coming in the church even before we arrived. Even more kids arrived today as we had our stations of Hawaiian songs, crafts, Bible stories, and recreation. The kids had an absolute blast! As VBS ended our little children went home we were getting ready for night service.

Today was a great day of relaxing...to a certain extent. We woke up and got ready to head out to St. Herman's Cave. We took the bus through the mountains and arrived to be able to walk though the jungle. Jeovonie, our fearless guide, took us around and told us all about so much of the wildlife. We hiked for about 30 minutes until we reached the cave where we turned on our flashlights and continued on. We went far into the cave, carefully watched our step and finally when we reached 300 ft. we turned off the lights for about 2 minutes as Jeovonie shared with us an ancient story about a Mayan lady that watches over the cave. We headed out and took very careful steps not to fall in the stream. Once we reached the end we decided to take the highlands back and bask in the marvelous views that were for us. We then took the bus about five minutes to the Blue Hole where we ate lunch and swam for about an hour! Heading back home we slept the entire way. We had some free time to go the store, play a little basketball and got ready for VBS. It is so great to see the kids come out now and have those relationships with them. They are so precious and love the relationships we have with them now! Tonight is Bible Study and cant wait to see what God reveals to us during this time!