the bell family: belize day 2

After a horrible night's sleep (very warm, dogs barking, and roosters crowing), we met back up at El Buen Pastor for breakfast (tortillas, eggs, & bacon). Then we broke into our two church groups to begin working. Our group went to Fe y Amor to clean up the yard, paint the inside and outside of a storage building, tile the floor, and cement the fence into the ground.

Lunch was made and brought to us from the wives and women of our church (chicken, potatoes, rice & beans, and fried plantains). We ate at Fe y Amor, walked around the village inviting children to Vacation Bible School (VBS). We had a small break back at the school. I took a shower to rinse off all the dirt but it's essentially a hose poking out of a wall at shower height, but it felt good in the heat. We went back to the church to teach VBS. We got there thirty minutes early and there were already children ready and waiting with their best clothes on and their hair done nicely. Our students put on the VBS and had five main parts every day: songs, bible story, craft, snacks, and games.

Dinner was back at El Buen Pastor (ironically the women made cheeseburgers and fries for us). We had about 30 minutes to relax, hang out at the school, or go to a convenience store for snacks. We ended the evening with singing, worshiping, a small talk/sermon, and debriefing in our church groups about the day.

El Buen Pastor

(This church is right next to the school and is much bigger, therefore it holds all of us. We ate breakfast and usually dinner here.)

hanging out waiting for breakfast to arrive

clearing the yard of the church

Fe y Amor

work selfie

There is always a lot of waiting around. Sometimes because we don't have the needed supplies, sometimes because there are a few supplies and too many workers, and other times because the job hasn't been figured out. [Every year our youth director checks in many times as to the jobs that the students will do and every year when we arrive it changes. The Belizeans are not planners, like us Americans. They will sometimes drop a planned project and other times they'll add a completely different project. Case in point: we were told we would be helping to build a concrete bathroom for the church and were surprised to find that they had begun tiling the church floor and wanted us to continue with that and had no plans of a new bathroom.]