Halfway!!

Hey everyone!
I know it's been a while since I last blogged, and some things have happened that I should be updating people about, such as my new placement, the VBS program we hosted at YWAM, and all the maintenance work we got to do on the base every afternoon!

Last week I spent Tuesday through Friday at the King's Children's Home in Belmopan. You can check out the website here: http://www.kingschildrenshome.org/
I'll have to say it's been quite the experience so far. I'm still not entirely sure what to make of it. The kids had the week off for Easter, so they were all there all day every day. The place was also pretty crowded with a missions team from Bermuda painting all the children's rooms, so the children weren't allowed to be in their rooms. My first day I went with Liesl because Aislin, my original partner for this placement, wasn't feeling well. We found ourselves trying to find something to do when we got there because nobody introduced themselves to us. Someone finally mentioned to us that we could help out Dora, the laundry lady. So we spent well over an hour hanging up clothes on the clotheslines in the backyard.
Generally, the things I did there were hang up laundry, take the kids to the park, help with the painting (on Friday) and basically just babysit the kids. There were points where I felt rather useless, and those were the times when I just wanted to be home. The upcoming week is when the kids are back in school again, so hopefully Aislin and I will be able to have a bit of a schedule for each day. Last week wasn't a regular schedule week, and that was the week we just happened to begin our placement. Next week is the final week of my second placement already! Monday the 16th is the halfway point for the trip...it's amazing how fast it's going by!
The week before last was the week that our team hosted a VBS program for the children of Roaring Creek. Our first day produced only a few children, but we still had a blast doing crafts, Bible stories and sports. I was part of the crafts team so we thought up some awesome crafts for the kids for each day. At the end of the first day we asked each child to invite a friend for the next day, and voila! The next day we had almost double the amount of kids! The mornings flew by with the kids, and it was neat to get to know some of them. After VBS and lunch, we'd all work at the base doing general maintenance. I spent one afternoon scrubbing the outside of a house with some girls, and we managed to get eachother rather soaked with the hose in the process. Another day I was in the kitchen helping to bake almost 100 cupcakes for the next day's VBS. I cleaned fridges, swept out cabanas, and all that good stuff! Our nights are usually spent relaxing, emailing, playing Dutch Blitz, and enjoying eachothers' company during group devotions every night at 8:30. I love living at the base! Whenever we mention "home" we usually mean here at YWAM. Whenever we talk about "home" home, we need to emphasize the fact that it's in Canada. I'll say it again, we're at the halfway point tomorrow so we are getting very used to it here : )
Well, it's almost time to go to church so I'm going to end this post with just a few pictures of what I've been up to since I last posted!
Missing you all!
Oh, and I changed it so that you can now leave me comments without having an account, so you're all welcome to leave a comment if you'd like!

Corozal!

Well, here I am back at the YWAM base after four days in Corozal, a town a few miles south of the Mexican border. We were there to help out at a high school. The principal there is Albert Zantingh, who seemed to know a lot of our parents! On Wednesday we started the three hour drive up to Corozal, and when we spent the remainder of the afternoon on the “beach” (no sand...just a wall you had to jump over to get in the water) and swimming in the beautiful Caribbean Sea. The water is very foggy and the sand underneath is less than pleasant to walk on because your feet will sink a few inches into the goosh everytime you take a step. The temperature was wonderful though and so refreshing after the long bus ride.



Our first (and second as well) night was spent in the high school...the boys on the first floor in the home ec room and the girl upstairs on the locker room floor upstairs. The school consists of two buildings, each two floors high. It's complete concrete, and very open concept. The locker room was the width of the school so there was a big cage door on either side of the room leading to the balconies. We just managed to squish all the girls into it. The funny thing is that the room the seven guys were sleeping in was big enough to fit in all the girls easily, but they made us go upstairs for security issues, which is probably a good idea. We didn't take our laptops with us because in that town expensive things tend to grow legs and disappear.


On Thursday morning we woke up at 5:40 and completely packed up and ate breakfast because, of course, there was school that morning. We packed up the bus and then headed down the school driveway to the security guard's house which we were going to paint. The colours we had: off white and baby pink. Those aren't weird colours though, trust me. We passed by some sunshine yellow houses on the way up. The whole day was spent painting the exterior, and then with the extra paint we painted some of the inside as well. Other members of the team were cleaning up a ditch, and others were taking a back room off of a storage shed.


On Friday we finished off the house and since we had extra paint, we decided to go a little farther and paint the shed too. Also, on Wednesday while we were at the beach we were met a couple from the States who felt called by God to sell their two businesses, their house...basically everything, and move to Belize to start a seminary for people who want to dig deeper into the Bible. They've been here for two months and are extremely homesick, and we decided to bless them and paint their house as well. So four girls from our team spent the two work days there and did a whole bunch of painting for them. Our initial jobs in Corozal were to clean up a ditch, paint a house, and tear down the back of a shed. We managed to paint the shed as well as paint another house. We did much more than was expected, and that was a really cool thing.
Friday night was spent at the Zantinghs' house eating mac and cheese and watching Ice Princess (we all watched it too!) and celebrating a whole month of being in Belize! When it was time to go to bed, we all took foam off the back of the bus (we'd been trucking it around for the past few days with us), climbed the ladder up to the top of the roof, and slept under the stars! As you may or may not know, most houses in Belize have flat roofs, so we took advantage of the opportunity! The weather was beautiful and the moon was full. I honestly haven't had such a good sleep on top of a house. I did wake up very early though, thanks to the sunrise, but wow...it was gorgeous! You don't get to do something like that everyday in Canada!

Saturday was a day for ourselves. We drove through some pretty horrible back roads, crossed a river on a ferry (the bus too!) drove for a little while longer until we reached...voila! Mayan ruins! They weren't really what I expected them to look like. They looked more like huge hills when we were walking up to them, but then we saw the steps climbing up to the top and then they looked pretty awesome. I climbed to the top of one and it was beautiful...but the steps are so steep and spaced apart. It's strange that the Mayans built them like that because they were apparently very short people. Anyways, so we walked the trail and found some more unnatural hills but they were so broken down that you couldn't see any stairs on them. It's amazing how steep they are though!



We left for YWAM after that, and took a huge detour into Belize City for a pit stop at the one restaurant chain in the entire country...SUBWAY! It was amazing...all I got was a six-inch BLT but it was delicious. After that we drove all the way back and arrived at around nine. We unpacked, had a devotional, and were off to bed. It was a really cool sidetrip, and we're not too sick of eachother yet! That's a good thing, because we still have one more week together!