Friday and Saturday

Hello,
  So sorry for the late post, wifi has been hard to come by.  It also has been too slow to post pics. We have some great pics and I will try to upload again tonight.

Since we last connected, the kids have been great and our opportunities have been tremendous.   The kids worked hard throughout the day at Cayo Christian.  Their only break came during a 1 hour hiatus at Spanish Lookout for Pizza and Ice Cream.  We shuttled the kids in groups of 15 (or so) up to Spanish Lookout, so some had lunch nice and early and some had a rather late lunch.  Spanish Lookout is a very traditional Mennonite Village (complete with home made clothing featuring suspenders and bonnets) and the their pizza and ice cream are fantastic.  The Leadership kids at the school served admirably at Cayo Christian until 3:00pm.  The construction kids nearly finished the shed that they started in the morning by about 5:00pm.  Theo, Colin, and 12 kids worked at YWAM throughout the day doing 2nd floor foundation work and joisting.  For both construction projects, the school and YWAM could not believe the work our kids can do in 1 day.  It doesn't surprise me, these kids are great workers.

We found out that we had to extend our time spent cave tubing today so we challenged our students to spend extra hours serving on Friday.  By 3:00 it was clear that our students were tired and sweaty.  However, the students stepped up more than I could have ever imagined and helped out in countless ways right up to 6:00pm.  With a few breaks, our students worked from 6:15am straight through to 6:00pm.  I have always loved the work ethic and industrious spirit of a Unity student.   We were able to celebrate this during devotions where Ms. Vyn's team shared some verses, prayed, and then had students each share their highlight of the day (or where God was clearly working during the day).

After a hard day of work yesterday, our students were able to have a "play day" today.  After breakfast, we boarded the 15 passenger van (that I drive) and the bus (driven by Richard from YWAM) and trekked to "Jaguar's Paw" for a fun day of ziplining, buffet lunch, and cave tubing.  All 3 experiences were tremendous highlights and possibly 1 of the best "tourist" activities I have ever been a part of.  There were 7 zipline stations and our students flew all over the dense jungle (no flip flops were lost in flight).  After this, we had a buffet lunch, complete with highly coveted cheese burgers, french fries, and other traditional Belizian fare:) We then put our life jackets and helmets on, grabbed our tubes, and hiked 30 minutes deep into the jungle to begin our cave tubing adventure. The area where we entered the river was gorgeous. We swam for about 20 minutes before we entered the 2km long cave.  The cave was incredible.  We floated with only the light of our helmets to guide us.  Words cannot describe the experience, but I will try to post pics.  We then headed out of the jungle and arrived back at camp just in time for a steak fajita dinner at 5:30.

In place of devotions tonight, we walked into Belmopan to spend some time at the "Belize Gospel Expo". The expo runs throughout the weekend and brings all of the local Churches together.  We arrived for some half reggae and half Polka Christian Rock music.  People would "runnety runnety" or "stomp, stomp, stomp" for the Holy Spirit.  Our students were very tired from 2 action packed days so the whole experience was a little overwhelming for some, but it was a good opportunity to jump into Belizian Christian culture for an hour.  A handful of students and teachers stayed longer and got their workout by jumping and swinging to the Christian beats:)  The "Belize Gospel Expo" runs throughout the weekend and we will be attending a city wide Church service at the same site tomorrow morning.  I am prayerful that the Church service will be an impactful time for our students.

The students are currently playing games and laughing a lot.  There has been a great energy throughout the trip and all of our opportunities to this point have created experiences that exceeded our expectations.  The chaperones have been great and there is a good spirit amongst our large group.  All of the students love drinking pop out of glass bottles and a handful are trying the obscure flavours of readily available ice cream (sour sop and craboo to name a few).  Thank you for your prayers throughout the trip.  After Church tomorrow we will be visiting some Mayan ruins on the Guatemalan border and the having dinner at Hodies in San Ignacio.

Keep sending messages through to your children, I love reading them out loud:)

ps. The weather has not been overly warm so we have no students suffering from heat stroke and dehydration.  It was unfortunately cloudy all day today, but this helped protect the handful of kids who are philosophically opposed to sun screen:) 

Blessings

Mike