Visiting Old Belize

Today, we woke up, packed the van full of kids (6), stopped and bought groceries for lunch, and headed to Belize City.

Before:  Everyone is fresh and ready to go...

After:  A bunch of exhausted, sleeping children:)

Nice overcast day, no rain of course, but not so hot...

Museum tour was so fascinting...to learn the roots of the people we are ministering to...very enlightening.

just sitting and relaxing

So nice for me to have 4 mommies to watch Erika for a while

hanging with the Auterys...so nice to have awesome friends to spend the day with

Lee posing like Baywatch???

Don't worry, memaws, we were right there and told Erika to be real still.

The amazing, very long slide...the kiddoes loved it

resting with the "teenagers" after a lot of swimming

Rope Swing was where Josh hung out all afternoon

first five minutes of car ride home

these mountains form a "sleeping Giant"

So many thoughts flooded my heart on my way home today.  One is that I am so thankful for friends.  One thing that was really hard in us leaving Katy was to leave my friends..  In fact, before going to Missions Training last March, I had cried out to the Lord that I would never have friends like He had given my in Katy.  And how could I leave them and start over???  While at Mission Training, one of the other ladies came up to me and said, "I feel that the Lord has given me a word for you.  That He knows your heart and is preparing some very special friends for you and your family in Belize."  Wow.  Then, the Sunday after we announced our going to Belize, someone in the congregation came and said, "Did you know the Autery's are moving to Belize too?"  We didn't, but God has developed the most beautiful friendship for me, my husband, and children, with this family.  They live near Belize City, so we spontaneously planned to meet today.  And I am so glad we did.

I am thankful for our van.  That we were able to take some other girls from our church and spend the day with them.  Some of discipleship is just living as a family. Having good clean

fun. Still fun. For them to experience the Peace we have as a family.   I am also thankful for Itunes and being able to fill our van with good Christian music the way there and back.  And worship.  We do not have KSBJ here.  And I miss it.  But was so thankful for my itouch.

Sometimes I feel a little guilty showing the fun days we have.  But these days for us are like what we would have done in Katy:  going to the movies, taking the kids to Chuck E Cheese, etc.  Things we don' t have here.  So our family days are at the Blue Hole, or the beach.  It is important as we are busy ministering to the city of Belmopan that we also take time to focus on the first ministry God gave us:  our children.  And it is refreshing for us to be with another family that is in the same boat as us, same morals, also homeschooling. 

Going to the Museum was awesome, fascinating.  And eye opening.  Seeing the roots of

this nation. Important as we minister here to the descendants of the founders.  It is important for us to understand the history as we minister to those that are the future of this nation.

One last thought is that this Journey in missions isn't just about our impact on the people of this nation, but God's impact on us. Our spiritual journey. Our spiritual battles. Our victories and growing faith in God because of the journey. And sometimes it is a daily venture just finding and discovering the bigger picture that we sometimes don't see until we look back.