Never Fear, We are still here:)

Life has been busy around the Brockinton Household.

For the past two weeks, Josh and Tori have had online testing with the school they are enrolled in.

We are in our final weeks of homeschool.  Hoping we all get done as I have it scheduled.  Starting Monday, there are three weeks left.  We are all ready for a break...and since we will start back in August, it will be a nice summer for us to relax a little...from school, that is.

The dry season is here, but we got rain all night last night.  It is nice and cools things off a little.  It is just now warming a little at 10 am.  Lee and I actually headed out to walk this morning at 6 am and got poured on so had to come back.  It was still fun and we still got about 20 minutes in, so that was good.

Please pray for us as we are in that Growing stage at LifeNet.  Last Sunday, we had 20 children in children's church...and that is a lot considering it is only ages 3-10.  Please pray for God to provide people who are passionate to minister to the children God is bringing us.  People that are mature in the Lord and whom can effectively minister.  God has me in a place of ministering in the adult service in this season of my life...and I am enjoying that.

God is doing great things in our worship.  We now have drums added to our band of guitar and keyboard.  Sunday was just awesome.  It is amazing what a difference it made as we entered in.  We are thankful at what God is doing.

We are busy with ministry all the time...sometimes set up meetings, sometimes spontaneous.  Pray for strength for Lee and I as we pour out...and still have our own little family to minister to.

We are planning our itenary for when we come home to the states this summer.  Four weeks is going to fly.  As we try to organize it, it is already quite overwhelming.  We have so much to fit in a short amount of time.  Yet, four weeks is a long time for us to be away from our infant church here in Belmopan.

God constantly seems to set up divine appointments with people.  It has been so neat to see the people come, grow, and change because of the Lord.  One of the ladies I disciple shared a dream with me.  It was really cool...because it was definitely a spiritual dream...and she said I was there in the background, encouraging her, that she had what it took to handle the situation.  I just love that.  We are raising people who can go to God themselves, rather than needing us to do it for them.  That is what discipleship is all about.  We hold their hand for awhile, until they learn to walk on their own.

Well, need to get back to life...have an amazing day:)

Crime in Belize

Last night, we had our council meeting for LifeNet.  The first thirty minutes was spent...thanking God for His protection of our men.

One of our men left work last night, right before his business was robbed by three men with guns.  We are thankful that the three employees that were still there were not hurt, but were obviously shaken.

This hits very close to home, as men at our church work here.  Lee and I go here to pay our bills.  It is a business area that we spend a lot of time.

This happened at 5:15 yesterday.  In the daylight.  They were unashamed and blazen.

I am not writing this to scare my moms...but just to ask you to continue to cover our family in prayer.  I do not want to walk in fear.  But must walk in caution.  Must accept that crime is growing like crazy and touches people in my life.

But I also know who I belong to.  And I believe that "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.  For you (God) are with me."

Last night, I thanked God for protecting the employees I do not know and for protecting those I do know.  His shield is around us.

Our Little Library

God has given us such great friends and family.

A while back, I had blogged about my disappointment of the library here having basicly no books.  We came with a few, but I had just naturally planned on being a frequent library visitor, like I always was in the states.

The other thing is that there are not a lot of books to buy here, and if they are good, they are very expensive.

So, my friends and family began to send books for Erika's birthday, Christmas, whenever people would visit.  Tori and I ended up getting some books too.

THANK YOU for the bottom of my heart.  Thank you.

I have enjoyed reading again, and the ladies in my church have enjoyed borrowing the Christian books that have been sent.

Erika is right at the brink of beginning to read.  She loves to be read to, which I am so thankful for.  She constantly is bringing me a stack of books...please read, Mommy.

Well, yesterday, we received a very large box in the mail of SO MANY BOOKS.  I should have counted them...

bookmark from the children and card from Bella...so sweet...

sorry for the crazy hair...this is just real life...

We are so blessed and so thankful for our friends, the Perdues, who, all the way up in Connecticut, collected books through their children at church.  Last night, it was overwhelming as I tried to make a little order out of the chaos of books we now have.  So, this morning, I tried to teach Erika some of the categories, so she can put them back in order when we finish.  We have a Dr. Seuss section, an early reader section, Mercer Meyer section (which she loves those), a Golden Book Section, big storybook section (you know the nice hardcover, beautiful pictures ones).

I am so thankful for this new resource.  Some of these books will be borrowed for village storytime, some for Bible stories in our children's church, and some simply to enjoy in this home.

Well, looks like its time to sit down and read to my little princess:)

On a totally unrelated note:  yesterday, we picked up our Passport with a Permanent Residency Stamp in them.  God is good and we are so thankful to be done with this process  FOREVER:)  They will just transfer the stamp as we get new Passports...

Through the Jungle and to the River we will go...

Okay, anyone who knows me, knows that I am NOT an adventurous person.  Come on, moving to a third world country is the top of my adventure!!

Well, we have been in the house, around Belmopan way too much lately...and I wanted to do something today.  We were very indecisive, trying to get people to join us and finally decided to go to Banana Bank, but according to the boys in this family, that is so boring.  Not boring to me, but you know?  Anyway, we picked up Jesse and then Josh asked if he could take us to the river.  Well, we were not prepared, had to go home, get the cooler and ice, snacks, stop and get drinks...the list goes on.  So forty five minutes after our original departure time, we were headed to the river and had a couple other groups of people coming to join us.

After a pretty drive into the JUNGLE, Jesse showed us where to park.  We loaded up all our stuff and headed down a much longer path and walk than I expected.  I actually had to remove my flip flops because they were making me slip.  

But, when we arrived at "the spot", it was beautiful and refreshing...and worth it all.  Soon, more people from LifeNet came and we had a great day.  Erika could not wear her float, as they said the current would sweep her away, so we had to keep her close at all times.  But it was so nice.  And so nice just enjoying the time with everyone.

So, we have no neighborhood pool, we cannot go catch a movie at the theatre, but we do get to ocassionally really enjoy God's creation...

so happy we are not at boring banana bank....what adventure can i get into here,?   Lets see...

my jungle girl

jungle man with a machete, clearing an area for us...dont worry its just jesse

and now the pugleys have arrived

sara and baby eden...sara is so much more an adventurous mama than me...

such a sweet girl...i love her

taking a little break

and now the perez family and a few extra teens are here...shelly is like me...not big on adventure, but we had ended up really enjoying the peaceful, cool water:)

you guessed correctly...tori had the camera and had to take a pic of marias ferocious dog...he barked at us the whole time

the trail home...

Heading back to the van...

Oh, and by the way, everything is STILL closed today since Thursday…so ready for everything to open back up tomorrow.  I have a special package at the post office waiting on us…that will be a Blog Post tomorrow:)

Identifying Emotions

This morning I was feeling a little not myself...really, lately.   During the service, I asked God to show me what was going on.  Well, after lunch with friends at a chinese restaurant, I came home and uploaded some pics from this morning...

As I was sitting here, just thinking about it, I think I realized what is going on.  Easter season has been racked full of emotions for me for the past several years now...

Last year, we had just been here in Belize for two months, and were definitely still getting settled.  Our first Easter, for many years, to not be with our family...

The year before that was the week after we told Life Church that we were moving to Belize.  It was an emotional day for me...knowing I was beginning all our "lasts".  Our house sold three days after Easter that year:(  And that was a very hard time for me...quickly selling most of our 18 yr build up of stuff and moving out of our dream home.  We had just adopted Erika that Feb, gone to a Missions Training for two weeks in March, then came home and began making the prep to move to Belize.  Unfortunately this picture is a little blurry, but honestly, this season in my life was a lot blurry:)  So perfect.

The year before that was a very joyful year, as it was our first Easter with Erika.  I remember I had so much fun dressing her up in a beautiful princess dress a friend had given me.  It was a dream Easter with my whole family together.

And I will only torture you one more Easter back...we were waiting on getting Erika to our home.  I had so hoped it would happen Easter weekend, but then could see that God didn't allow it until the next weekend, because I would have been so busy and it would have been hard for it to have been her first weekend with us.

But all this to say, Easter season has been an emotional, good and bad, time for me, for several years now.  I have to figure out new traditions, fun times, in the place that I am.  We are to be content where God has called us.  That is sometimes not as easy as it seems.  I miss my family.  I miss Life Church.  But, God calls us to move on, and to flourish where He plants us.

So, after church today, we went to lunch with another missionary couple and another man from our church.  And you know what?  We had a great time.  Because God has put great people in our lives here.  And I am so thankful.  And here are some pics of our service today...

LifeNet's newest baby...big sister holding her

LUNCH:)

And just a couple more pictures for anyone not on Facebook with me... A friend came and took pics with her girls with Tori's rabbits and took a couple of Erika too...they are so cute... Enjoy.

She's an amazing photographer, but she also had some real cuties to work with...

Free water Outreach and more bunnies, really???

Wednesday, I came home from the grocery store to find everyone outside...Guess what?  Even though the bunnies are separated...somehow we got five new bunnies!!!  Yes, just as we are about to sell the first batch, we have another new batch of baby bunnies.  That afternoon, we got rid of Daddy Rabbit...to a lady up the street who sells rabbits at market.  Today, we sold three of the first litter as we passed out free waters, while inviting people to LifeNet.  We passed out 550 waters in just an hour.  People were thankful and surprised...to get something for free.  It was awesome.  And we had just the right number of people to help.

Last night, we showed the Passion of the Christ at the George Price Center.  They had a good turnout. (Erika and I stayed home, as the movie is not good for her.)

It has been a busy week and I actually sit here so exhausted.  It has been very hot this week.  I had forgotten what it is like to live in a house that is 98 degrees.  It is pretty miserable and draining.  But then night comes, and you are so happy for it to get down to 86 degrees.  So, we are in the season of lots of showers, which means more laundry...but I don't mind...this is survival.  Oh, and remember our washer broke?  We were blessed that it is now fixed and working great.  So thankful for that.  Cannot imagine not having one.

Tomorrow, we have a community Sunrise service at 5:30, then will rush home and get ready for our service at 10:30.  Wonder how many visitors we will have from the Water Outreach today???