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Below is a link to 2 Samuel 6:13-23

http://net.bible.org/#!bible/2+Samuel+6:13

Jessie’s free translation:

So David was wearing a preists robe- practically a dress, and dancing with all his might. Picture a mennonite (like me) getting really into a really catchy song and dancing when they think no one is watching. Thats David. He is the only one dancing. He could just shout and blow a trumpet like the rest of the nation he is king over, but he was only thinking about his God. When God’s ark and the whole parade of people came into the city, Michal (Davids first wife, the daughter of Isreal’s first king) looked out and saw David dancing and despised him. She was turned off, she thought him worthless. After taking care of the ark and the people, David goes home to bless it. In his joyful mood, he is greeted by a wife that is embarassed and angered by Davids shameless dancing. Michal rebukes him for it, but David has not actually done anything wrong. He then rebukes her, and tells her it was for God (plus he throws in a burn about how her dad sucked as a king and so God chose David over her dad), and pronounces that he is willing to look more ridiculous than he already was. Then Michal has no kids (I think that was God’s way of confirming that what David did was right…).

Being open to looking absolutely ridiculous is something that I struggle with. I care way too much about what others think, and that stops me from doing a lot of things. Open Door Believers Chapel in Belize showed me just how much of a hang up I have. The congregation is fine with singing at the top of their lungs, and fine with dancing around, arms outstretched to their Father; the One that loves them unconditionally, and the One that they love with all their might. I’m not saying that they looked ridiculous, or that their singing was awful, because it wasn’t. It was beautiful, and made me want to cry out to God. In my experience, everyone who loves God in Belize doesn’t care what others think about how they praise and worship God. So while I was standing in the middle of the congregation, I sang my heart out.

I’m not saying that we should purposely dance like a goof to prove how much we love and need God, that would still be caring about people who are watching. I am saying that we should love God with all our might, like no one is watching. This is something I will be thinking about for a while, and hopefully putting into practice. Besides, if I truly make an effort to love God, the Holy Spirit will take care of the rest.

 -Jessie

 Three weeks can be a fair amount of time. 

Enough time to get used to something. Three weeks in Belize and I was pretty much used to what we were doing. In the time we were in Belize I had time to get used to my surroundings and things that our team did on a regular basis, but then there was always unexpected things being thrown into the mix as well which sometimes kept me on the edge or out of my comfort zone. Many of these unexpected events gave me great opportunities to put my faith in action and definitely helped me to grow in Christ.  After about a week and a half I got to a point where I was so mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted that I had ask God to carry me through the day (silly me and not asking God to do this for me everyday), and God did, showing His great faithfulness. I had time to build some relationships with fellow youth from Churches in Belize, as well as become familiar with kids from some of the schools we volunteered at regularly. I was witness to many miraculous acts of God working with and through people who completely relied on Him. It was enough time that I almost didn’t want to leave.

It has now been more than a week since we’ve returned and I’ve had time to think about what I’ve learned, and I think most of it applies to my future. I feel God has been calling me to some kind of career in ministry, here in Canada, or perhaps somewhere abroad, and while I was in Belize I felt God’s gentle nudges becoming stronger (or maybe I’m just paying more attention now?). But the most important thing I’ve learned is trust in God, and that as long as I am serving God in every aspect of my life I am doing God’s will.

Jack

 “A passion for obedience makes God’s servants open to changes with which they may at first be uncomfortable”

This quotation was on the wall in a mission house that we stayed in and I think it sums up what I was learning throughout the trip. I can’t say that I have or will ever master the “passion for obedience” but I know I’m getting there. As the weeks in Belize passed I was becoming increasingly open to uncomfortable changes such as sharing my testimony in front of big groups of people. In case you didn’t know, I am by no means a public speaker and I had to rely on God more than ever when I was outside my comfort zone like that. One can learn quite a lot when they have almost no choice but to trust God and I hope I actually end up in those situations more often. Whenever I chose to give the situation to God I had to practice letting Him be in charge of the outcome too instead of evaluating my own efforts. I think that lesson was the biggest one for me. 

I want to share two highlights from the trip. One was working in the different schools and hanging out with the kids there. We held chapel services, assisted in the classrooms and played with them at recess. We were all overwhelmed with the love they showed us and I hope we communicated that same love back. My other highlight was when a few of us went to a more remote village called Valley of Peace to help build more classrooms. The work was hard but enjoyable and meaningful. We were blessed to stay in a beautiful mission house in the rainforest during our time there. All in all, it was a really fantastic trip that will be remembered for a very long time. I’ve always felt a call to full time missions and this trip has only made me more excited about it! … more scared… but more excited! 

[I decided not to take my fancy camera along so as to keep it safe and in a place where it would not be distracting me. My old camera did a decent job the few times I took it out.]. 

Morgan Braun

The past 3 weeks I have spent in Belize, as most of you know, and it was a great expierence.  There was so much we did whether it was working with Alex and Leah or relaxing at home.  A lot had been learned during these 20 days. 

One of the biggest things I learned was that no matter what happens in life, no matter how bad it gets, that God is always there.  He puts you into those situations so you can grow and he does it out of love, not out of spite.  No matter how hard you might find life, there will always be a light at the end of the tunnel.  But you can’t do this alone.  During those hard times God wants you to lean on Him so we can grow and have a deeper relationship with Him.  So we can work at trusting Him more and not doubting Him in His plan. Granted for me this is a difficult thing to do, especially trust but I do believe it’s for my best intrest that  I should. It will be hard for me but it’s now something I want to do which means I have to put in an effort and start doing it instead of just putting it off to the side.

I also learned that when getting pushed past my bodily point, I also need to rely on God’s strength to carry me through and not my own.  My last post I had written was after Blue Creek where we did an intense hike, my body was sore and strained and I wasn’t able to move properly.  At that point I didn’t think I’d be able to do much phsyical because I was in so much pain.  The pain did slowly die away but in the first few days it didn’t, I was shown that I need to rely on God’s strength to help me in those situations and to not give up. 

I have one more thing I learned that I want to share.  I learned that it’s not that scary to talk about my faith with other people.  You can have the differences of opinions but they aren’t going to hate you for your belifes.  It maybe uncomfortable but they won’t kill you.  Learning this I’ve challenged myself to start bringing it up with more of my friends and having that converstation to see where they are with their faith, if they have one, and to be able to start telling people and witnessing to people about Christ and what He has done for us. 

So to end off this blog, I want to challenge you.  Bring up faith and christianity with people more.  Make it a goal to do it once a week outside of church or even once a day, whatever you feel you can do but I challenge you and even myself to try this.  Put the fear aside if you may have some and do it for the Lord.  It may be one of the greatest conversations you’ll have. 

taylor

 This past weekend we had spent in Blue Creek which is a mennonite colony in upper Belize.  It felt like a town in Manitoba, like Niverville or Winkler.  It was somewhat cut off from the rest of Belize but it was so much fun.  We left Belize City with a bunch of different youths from all over the city, around 20 people in total, give or take.  The drive was long but loud and fun.  When we reached there we all were dished out and handed off to our hosts who were hosting us.  We all got split up into two or three people to each host.  We got to know our host family and spent time with them during the weekend and hanging out with them.  We had gone to Blue Creek as a recuritement for the youths there to come help out with summer camps in the city and we took out youths from Belize City who had meet some of the BC (Blue Creek) kids and was curious on their way of live since it was different than the city, so they were given a treat to go out there for the weekend.   The girl Morgan and I were staying with was named Regina.  She was very bubbly and a lot of fun to get to know.  She took us all over BC and we interacted with a lot of the youths there because she was friends with them all. 

We got to do a bunch of stuff in our free time.  I can’t explain what everyone else did cause I actually don’t know, but I can explain some of what Morgan, Jessie and I did since we were together a lot of the time.  We talked a lot and since we had Saturday morning off, we went touring around BC and seeing the layout of the town.  It’s became a private area and they feel very secluded from the rest of Belize.  They even had private roads funded all by the towns people and the roads had no rules, which the crazy thing is, accidents are very rare there.  We went to an auction, had food and got to know new people. Even went horse back riding for a bit. Later Saturday afternoon we went on a hike. Which you would think a flatten path in a bit of a tree covered area or a foot path leading through a pretty area.  Sadly we did neither but the pretty area.  A hike here, meant climbing through barbed wire fences just to get to the start, then climb down crazy steep slippery rocks into a dry riven and then follow it.  It was crazy.  If there actually was water in it, there would have been tons of intense rapids and lots of waterfalls.  We climbed down these rocks.  We then followed the edge of Alligator Lake, where there was no path and you were just guessing.  Once you got to the lack of trail, you had to climb up a crazy steep 36.3 degree sloop.  It was sooo tiring and steep.  Jack climbed it without holding onto anything but by the time I went up I was exhausted and dehydrated. There was a rope someone let down and I ended up using it to get all the way up it was way to steep for me.  I finally finished that really long climb and I was about to collapse.  I was so exhausted from it.  It would have been such a fun time if I could have actually looked at my surrounds instead of watching the ground trying to prevent myself from injuring more than just myself and attempting but failing to prevent falling into needle covered trees. We relaxed at the park after that and played some games.

Photo Credit; Jack

These are pictures of the jungle we hiked through. 

In the evening we went to a program about Belize Camping Experience and working as a counsellor there. We had a worship hour, and even every different church that was at this program introduced themselves and did a special number.  Jack told a camp testimony and we watched a video of camp.  The night ended after some of the youth had told of their experiences from camp. Some of the camp testimonies people shared were so touching that it had made me want to come to Belize to do camps here and share my love with the kids here who are under privileged. The night was very good and gave a good description of camp and how it would be a good thing to work at camp. We spent the rest of the evening talking and discussing camp with the youths.  

Photo Credit; Jack

This morning we went to church and the church here is an EMMC church so it felt so much like the church I regularly go to when I’m home except they had german incorporated into their service.  It was cool having the service in two different languages and going back in forth.  It was really cool to see that so far away from home, people worship the same God and sometimes even the same way as we do back in Manitoba.  Even experiencing the churches all over Belize has been great to see the things we have in common and the things that people do differently.  Everyone worships, everyone prays, everyone has a sermon but they all do it differently.  No place has been completely the same and some of the churches have had the same layout but an entirely different way of doing it. 

So that has been our past weekend.  It’s been crazy but it’s been a good time learning and experiencing Christ in new ways. 

Taylor