the bell family: belize day 5

Today's breakfast was spam, eggs, and tortillas. Part of our Fe y Amor group, ironically stayed to work on the El Buen Pastor church while that group broke up in to smaller groups and worked on houses of church members. We painted the inside walls, but not around edges. Typical of work in Belize, we didn't have enough paintbrushes for everyone and the ones we had were tiny! We worked in shifts and enjoyed the paint work in a shady, breezy space. We headed to Fe y Amor for lunch (chicken fried rice) with the rest of our church group.

Our VBS was spent with the usual songs and bible story, but today a church member did her "clown act" for the children. Her skit is that she walks in off the street, blows her horn, interrupts a church member giving a speech (her husband), and tries to sell her "chewing gums." The best part is that one of our leaders, Josh, had no idea that she was performing for us and he was visibly flustered with her. He wanted one of us to just buy her "chewing gums" (already chewed gum in wrappers) and let her be on her way. We laughed many times over the clown that week! After that we headed to the park down the street for the VBS skit, craft, and snacks.

We ate chicken tenders, pasta salad, and HUGE rolls back at El Buen Pastor. Afterwards we changed and met back up on the second story of El Buen Pastor (where we had our evening meetings and worship). This is one of the kids' favorite nights. We divide into our church groups, sit in a big circle (one group upstairs, one downstairs) and the kids go around and say specific positive affirmations to one another. There are always lots of tears.

After the affirmations, we had a mini party for Natasha and Willow since they both had birthdays on the trip. Dave got a pinata to celebrate. The kids absolutely loved it. It took the girls many turns back and forth to actually break the pinata open. Natasha was hitting the pinata so hard, that she actually broke the wooden dowel and a large piece flew out the open window.