Back in Canada
We’re about an hour away from landing in Calgary! We are staying here for the weekend for a time of team debrief, and we will arrive back in Saskatoon on Monday. It’s hard to sum up our last day in Belize… but I will try!
Yesterday we headed back to the Children’s Home one last time for a day of work and a chance to say goodbye to our little friends. The fence around the court is complete, as well as a fence at the back of the property. We pressure washed the whole court and finished painting all the new lines, and it really looks amazing! The kids were excited to have everything looking so fresh and new again. The boys were able to play a few games of ball at the end of the day to christen the new court, which they have been looking forward to all week. It was tough slugging at work yesterday. It was another hot day (this trip goes down on record as the hottest Project Serve ever) and everyone was feeling pretty tired. The kids did an awesome job of pushing through and working in the hot sun, even though it was tough. By 2:00 Corwin and I decided to shut down the work and avoid any heat stroke so we took a little break and all headed into Belmopan for a Cholis (which is a local amazing coffee and ice cream drink… a perfect choice on a hot afternoon). We got back to the home around 3:30 in time to spend a couple of hours with the kids. There is nothing I love more than sitting in the yard in the late afternoon watching the team run around and play with the kids. It is an incredibly beautiful thing to witness, and I wish you could have all been there with us. Playing on the playground, getting pushed on the swings, or just sitting and holding hands and talking. They are beautiful moments that I will not soon forget. All too soon the dreaded 5:30 rolled around and it was time to start saying goodbye. This is never easy, and even though we have only been in Belize for a little over a week these little people feel like friends we have always had. It usually takes at least half an hour to get the team out the door, because there is always one more hug to give. Many of the kids at the home, especially the little ones, were very emotional and just didn’t want to let us go which made it even more heartbreaking. We shed some tears and tore ourselves away and had to look into the kids cute faces many times and answer the tough question “will you come back?”. These are real moments of both sadness and extreme joy, as we are heartbroken to leave this country that we have fallen in love with but also deeply grateful for the chance to live here for a little while. Our lives are richer and fuller for knowing these kids and having this experience, and even though it is hard to go we are grateful.
We will take a break from the blog and videos this weekend as we focus in on team debrief. This is an incredibly important time for us as a team as we unpack all the things we have learned and experienced, and try and fit these experiences and life lessons back into our daily life at home. Our good friend Omar is coming to Calgary to lead this weekend, He spent many years living in Belize and running short term mission teams, and he is very good at helping us process through everything we have learned.
Please Pray:
-for our weekend. That God can solidify in our hearts why we were each on this trip and what He wants us to take from it. He has been at work in a big way in our hearts, and pray that He will continue to work throughout the weekend.
-for a chance to rest
-for a great last couple of days together. We have had an AWESOME time together as a team. Everyone gets along amazingly well, and we really want to soak up our last couple of days together before we head back into normal life.
Thanks so much for following along. I will post one more time on Monday with some final thoughts and an update on how our weekend went. God bless you all!