Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Happy New Year to all! 2007 has now become history, very recent history of course, but history nonetheless.
On Sabbath ourselves and the inhabitants of the Home set off for Cayo/San Ignacio/Santa Elena (?). In other words, the place we spent most of our time when we were in Belize before. We drove in our two buses and as we started to arrive closer more and more things became familiar to me, such as Lin's Supermarket, the Adventist hospital, etc. We arrived at the road that took us to the church; just as many bumps as before, and we forged upwards. Everything was familiar on that road; and then after much jouncing we came to the Hillview Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Mr. Borland and family was there to greet us (the ones we stayed with last time) and Dennis was as well, who was one of the guys whose house we went to for New Years previously, but other than that the faces were fairly unfamiliar to me. There was a guest speaker I guess you could say, who was originally from Oshawa, Ontario, and older gentleman with the name of Grant something or other. He had moved to Walla Walla, Washington at some point in time before he moved to Belize. He has been living there for the past two years and is, to my understanding, working at the hospital. Anyway, he preached a mildly disjointed sermon that I did not quite understand the point of, but that is alright. After church we went to eat lunch in the very building that had been our project of two years previous. Much more had been done on it and I took a multitude of pictures of it so some of the others who are not here this time could see the progress. It unfortunately has quite a ways to go still, but at least some things have been done with it.
Happy New Year to all! 2007 has now become history, very recent history of course, but history nonetheless.
On Sabbath ourselves and the inhabitants of the Home set off for Cayo/San Ignacio/Santa Elena (?). In other words, the place we spent most of our time when we were in Belize before. We drove in our two buses and as we started to arrive closer more and more things became familiar to me, such as Lin's Supermarket, the Adventist hospital, etc. We arrived at the road that took us to the church; just as many bumps as before, and we forged upwards. Everything was familiar on that road; and then after much jouncing we came to the Hillview Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Mr. Borland and family was there to greet us (the ones we stayed with last time) and Dennis was as well, who was one of the guys whose house we went to for New Years previously, but other than that the faces were fairly unfamiliar to me. There was a guest speaker I guess you could say, who was originally from Oshawa, Ontario, and older gentleman with the name of Grant something or other. He had moved to Walla Walla, Washington at some point in time before he moved to Belize. He has been living there for the past two years and is, to my understanding, working at the hospital. Anyway, he preached a mildly disjointed sermon that I did not quite understand the point of, but that is alright. After church we went to eat lunch in the very building that had been our project of two years previous. Much more had been done on it and I took a multitude of pictures of it so some of the others who are not here this time could see the progress. It unfortunately has quite a ways to go still, but at least some things have been done with it.
Following the consummation of comestibles the little kids left us and us and the older ones went to the Xunantunich Mayan ruins for the afternoon. (That is the one where you go across on a little ferry, for those who have been there before.) It seemed kind of boring compared to the first time we were there because I had seen it already, but it was nice to go again anyway. After some time had passed we made our way back and went back to our building to have supper and worship, then we went into the city for some shoe shopping for them. They all found shoes and then we had some free time to go do our other shopping. Mel, Julia, Israel, Herman and I were in a group at first, but then it soon divided up a little, and I was left with Herman and Elona (a blind girl from the Home.) It was painfully slow to walk with her because the ground is so uneven, but it made me appreciate the wonderful thing called sight even more than I do. I thought I had forgotten my money so I wasn't really looking for anything in particular, but I later discovered I hadn't forgotten it after all. Anyway, we visited a couple of stores only and spent most of the time just walking around a little bit. Around 9:45pm we had all gathered at the bus again and loaded ourselves in to go home.The next day, Sunday, we worked until we took everyone to this one place called Blue Hole where we went swimming for the rest of the afternoon. The water was on the chilly side, but it was refreshing. There were some other random people there at first with unclothed children swimming about which was slightly uncalled for, but they left after not too long. Anyway everyone seemed to enjoy themselves there, although most found it to be quite frigid.
Yesterday, Monday, we worked until 12:00pm and then went home to ready ourselves for the New Year's service that was to be held at the church at 4:00pm. Since we would be spending most of the night at the Home for New Years some wanted a chance to sleep so that was why we left at such an early hour. Unfortunately the bus was having issues so we didn't get to the church until around 5:00pm. Once there we had a song service, and then Paul was in charge of the service so he made a short introduction and then asked people to stand up and say what they were thankful for from the past year. It was nice to hear the different stories people had to share about their various experiences/blessings; since
all come from such different backgrounds. After that we went back to the Home for the New Years party. We helped to fill the pinatas, Winnie the Pooh and Elmo to be precise, with a plethora of candy, and then were supposed to play games with the kids, but it was difficult to keep them all organized so that lasted for a short while, and then they called everyone into the play room to wait for the gift opening. At the Home Leonie has taken the emphasis off of Christmas because it isn't actually when Jesus was born, and puts more emphasis on New Years, because it is clearly a new year. So she gives them gifts on New Years, which is more of a production than Christmas; I must say I like her theory. Anyway that went on until right up to the time when the clock was about to strike 12:00. We went outside to see some of the fireworks, but it was not that good because you couldn't see many from where we were and they were all in the distance too, so it was rather dissapointing and definitely not like 2 years ago when we were here! Shortly after that we departed for home; I was absolutely exhausted and still am this morning. I felt very unwell last night and this morning as well, so I opted to stay home for the morning and get a little more sleep until someone will come to get me after lunch, so that is what I shall go do now...
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