Christmas Eve

Monday, December 24, 2007

Christmas Eve...and it feels like it's the middle of summer, very wrong.

I haven't written anything since I've been at our new abode, so I will do a quick rundown of the events:

Tuesday, the rest of the group came. First only Paul, Sheila, Korey, Hollie, and Ryan were there (because they came early) so when we went to go get the rest of the group, I met up with the aforementioned, and we found out that the flight had been delayed for an hour and a half, and then when they got there ALL of their luggage was lost. That was sorted out shortly, and they got their luggage a day or two later. Anyway, once we got them, we took off for our the place we would be staying in while here. It is a huge house, very fancy compared to anything we've stayed in, but it was excessively filthy. So that was our duty for the next day, to clean as much as was possible. We also had been told to paint it, so we went to buy paint and various other things from the local hardware store (which was kind of like Kent or Home Depot, combined with Home Hardware or something like that.) We made some friends there and bought our supplies and came back to go to work. We ended up going back to that store about 5 more times throughout the day to get all the other stuff we needed/forgot. Anyway, the house was gradually made to be cleaner, but only the last couple of days has it been really nice and clean, and hopefully it will continue to improve.

Marcus arrived safely that night, and shared some of his adventures he'd had in Africa and on the journey here.

The next day we went to the orphanage to start work there. Some of our tasks included painting, and fixing various electrical problems, etc. The kids were all very excited about the whole painting thing, and many of them “helped” until finally they were making such a horrible mess of themselves and the walls that Marcus and I were told to take them all and go to the park. We did just that. Marcus hung out with 3 little girls who were picking plums off of the local plum tree which grows these very odd green plums, most of which are not ripe, but hey they all eat them anyway. I hung out with about 6 little ones. Two of which were still in the baby stage, and the others who were a little older, 5-8 or so. They were all very demanding, and I ended up being completely exhausted after a very short time, and then they all started crying because of injuries, lack of attention, and various fights amongst themselves, so I gave up and took them back. Aiyiyi. The day finally ended and we returned to our house, all quite weary.
I was told that Marcus and I were preaching the sermon on Sabbath on Thursday, but Marcus said he felt like he would need a little more time to prepare, so it was left to me. I thankfully had a couple of ideas already and only needed to do some expanding work since they were quite short, so I requested Friday to use to spend here at the house just preparing. They agreed and so all Friday I spent working on this sermon. At first I had two ideas, Elijah, and giving glory to God, and couldn't decide on which one would be best, but then I was reading my new study Bible (which I am thrilled I have!!) I read one of the commentary things, and lo and behold, it made a bridge between the two subjects, so I could do both! It ended up kind of deviating from that though, and turned into knowing God, which was for the best. I studied allllll day, only taking a couple of breaks to do laundry and eat lunch, but other than that I spent pretty much all day working on it. I worked on it until I went to bed, and finished it off before going to church. Another one of my famous last minute sermon things, but luckily this one actually came to fruition and I didn't hand it off to someone else. I wasn't particularly nervous about it, but once I stood up it all went downhill. I forgot an important question to ask first, and it was suddenly ridiculously warm in the room, and I was saturated in sweat, and felt like I was exceptionally red. Anyway, other than those issues it went alright for having not ever preached an actual sermon before, but it was way too short, only about 15 minutes long at the most, even though I tried to go slow, but unfortunately it was still too short, and when I asked my last question, “and now I ask you, do you know God?”, and then announcing the closing song, I saw shocked looks cross their faces because it was over so soon. It was an interesting experience to say the least, and following the sermon I decided that I would prefer to go the rest of my life without preaching again, but I suppose I just need to practice more and learn slash prepare more so that
I will not be so nervous and all.

So after church we came back to eat lunch and then after spending some time just resting around here, we went to go to the home to take the kids to this park place. It was a very nice place – we saw some howler monkeys in the trees, and walked for about an hour and a half through various trails in the jungle foliage. Very pretty place, and the kids enjoyed it alot. Then we came back after dropping them off, and set to work going through the gifts that had been sent for the kids for Christmas. It was a big job, and we worked as late as possible, but we had to get up at 4:00 the next morning so that we could get ready to go to San Pedro, a Caye kind of near Caye Caulker where we went last time. After a short night of sleep we got up and took off in the bus for the water taxi terminal where we had tickets booked to get to San Pedro. We also had a time slot booked for going snorkelling, so as soon as we arrived and put our stuff in the hotel, we went to get our gear for snorkelling. Our guide's name was Joey, and looked like he was no more than 15 or 16; he was an interesting character, spoke as little as possible and looked like he hated his life, but he was a good guide nonetheless. It was very nice – tons of fish, and was very enjoyable for all. We saw a sea turtle (!!) and a couple of sharks, rays, and a multitude of other fish. So we swam around for quite some time looking at the reef, then we went back to the boat to go to the next stop. This place was not a reef, but there were tons of fishes (not a word, I know) and it was really cool to swim with them all...

(I stopped at that last paragraph a couple of days ago, so I will try to remember the rest of it.)
After the snorkelling we had the rest of the day to do as we wished, shop, swim, whatever. So we first went to an internet cafe, then we went shopping for the rest of the day after that. Marcus met the love of his life while everyone was getting their hair done, whose name was Eden, and we frolicked all about the island of San Pedro, making friends here and there with various Rastafarians, and spent some good times together.

The next morning we left, but our boat was very delayed and we never ended up leaving until around 10 am or something, and we didn't get back to our house until about 5:00pm because we did some more shopping in Belize City whilst there.

And that pretty much sums up the events of that experience...