Hello from Belize
My first shock was walking into the kitchen and seeing ants and gecko poop all over the place. Can you imagine three women with three different ideas as to how the kitchen should be set up?
A little bit of tension but we finally came to a place where we were all pretty much satisfied. By the time we had the kitchen set up and things put away we were exhausted from the heat. It was quite warm in the house since no one turned on the a.c. or the fans before us getting here.
My goodness, I'm realizing just how much we are spoiled in the states.
When we finally got to bed it rained. Now it rains differently here than in the states. It usually starts with a few sprinkles in the states but here it sounds like all heaven opens and it rains really hard sometimes for only 5 minutes or so then abruptly stops. It does sound really neat on the tin roof. Then I heard something that sounded like the clucking of a chicken and a bird. Hey, this is the only way I can explain it. Came to fine out it was a gecko. You could hear it moving all over the room. One time it came a little too close to me and I thought "okay buddy thats far enough".
On Monday evening around 8 o"clock the lights went out--total darkness. Could not see anything. Someone lighted 3 small candles, how they found them is beyond me and some had flashlights. Rudy and Bill went to the Hosanna House to see what was going on. When they came back down they said the kids and women were quite frightened and told us to go into our house, lock the door and stay there without any kind of explanation. We were wondering why they were so afraid. Of course, their actions and words made us a little scared. We could tell the kids were becoming scared then too so we prayed and sang a few songs which I think calmed us all. The next morning we found out the H. H. had been robbed before when the lights went out. We also found out a man ran his truck into a pole. The lights were out until 2 in the mornning. It was so-o-o hot and humid. I thanked God when the a.c. and fans came on again.
On Tues. everyone went to the island but Rudy and I stayed here because of Rudy's c-pac machine. We told the guys we would wash their clothes and clean up the house. We worked all day and Rudy went outside for around 3 hours Tues. and Wed. to help the hired hand , Havier, to load stone and dirt into a wheelborrow and put it into a hole in front of H.H. Doing so they built a bit of a relationship. We also did a craft with the kids. Then Bob Eberly told us he would take us to a restaurant called Ivy's Rest. It was very nice and clean. I enjoyed chicken and Rudy pork chops and a wonderful watermelon drink. (awesome) Then on Wed. before the group came back, Bob took us to a Mennonite Farm. It was as if we went back in time to the 1800's. We went to a Mennonite school and heard the children sing. Boy is there ever a difference between our schools in the states and this one. If they had a question they had to raise their ruler.We were able to take a lot of awesome pictures.
Several of us adults went to paint the chapel one morning. After awhile Lisa, Amy and the kids showed up and then this lady walked in with her granddaughter. She was selling jewelry, baskets, etc. Really nice items. Amy and Lisa didn't want to have to tell her to come back so they "went shopping" while the rest of us painted. It finally came to the point where they were done but since "Mama" didn't bring change with her, it was kind of confusing to decifer between the Belizian currency and the U.S. currency. So Lisa had to buy another piece to make her bill come out even.
Today we went to church. We were supposed to have the same preacher we had last week but he couldn't come. Darlene Eberly came and asked if someone would give a lesson and if we had any crafts for the kids. We were wondering how this service was going to turn out with such short notice. The Lord took over. The chapel was full with children from H.H. and surrounding area. We actually used the van to pick up some kids from the area. At one house we picked up 13 kids. Amy said there were 30 people living in that house. After all the singing Rudy gave the lesson about building your house on the rock. He did a great job. Then we broke them up into two groups of children from 6 down and they went into the back room to color. The kids who were 7 and up stayed in the chapel and we helped them to make salvation necklaces. Amy did a great job explaining what the colors all meant on the beads. The kids were really listening. Did I tell you it's HOT here? Amy and I were standing there with sweat running out of every pore in our bodies. Whew--I think this is the hottest day so far.
These children are just so-o beautiful. It amazes me how clean they look except when the boys are running through mud puddles. I have become attached to a few of them. I realized today in church how hard it is going to be to say "goodbye" . I started to tear up just thinking about it. I could write more but Rudy wants to share a little too. Please continue to pray for us. I seem to have a drippy faucet where my nose used to be. I think I caught a cold from the fan in our bedroom. Believe it or not I was actually Cold one evening and woke up with the sniffles.

Sandy pretty well covered what we have done so far. One thing that she didn't mention was we had to prepare the field for the futbol, (oops been here only a week and I'm talking the language already) soccer field. Dave, Bill, Selvin, Roderick and I lined off the big field to make 3 smaller ones for the camp starting tomorrow evening. We did this the first thing yesterday morning. Also, last evening Dave, Bill and I hung the cross we had made on Friday. We made it out of a rough cut piece of 4"x4" lumber. We hung it using 3 strands of 18 gauge wire. It reminded us of the verse in the Bible that says, " A three stranded cord is not easily broken". I must say it did look pretty good. We closed the service today by singing the "Old Rugged Cross"

Sandy & Rudy