Holiday Time!

I know – too long between posts. But I was away for a whole week! Mexico is just across the border but it is a whole different world from Belize, at least the part that I saw. Of course, Cozumel, where I was staying is designed for North American tourists and up to their expectations. I just loafed and enjoyed myself for a week - eating, swimming, shopping, visiting tourist attractions, playing ping pong, etc. My only complaint is that it took a total of four days travel for five days holiday, but getting there is half the fun, isn’t it? It is quite amazing to return from a week with 15 minutes total rain to rain every night and hard rain at that. For me the trip was really all I could have asked.

Now it is back to work and play in Punta Gorda. Two Sundays ago, while I was away, people of our congregation led in Morning Prayer. Yesterday the sermon was an attempt to begin developing a Parish Mission Statement which we are supposed to have for Synod next month. Tomorrow, Tuesday, is Evangelism Day and people from the churches of the area will be visiting the homes of one of the neighbouring villages, encouraging people in their walk with Christ or inviting them to begin it. Many of the families (with the children back at school) will not have English speakers, so I should be teamed with someone who speaks Spanish or one of the Maya languages. (Si, I did get to take a one-hour Spanish class while in Mexico, but that won’t get me very far!)

Even though it is still over three months away, my departure from Belize is beginning to be a part of much of my thinking, particularly in regard to encouraging people take on leadership. At the moment I don’t know what the Diocese’s plans are for 2007 so I’m thinking I had better assume there are none, and allow myself to be pleasantly surprised if I’m wrong. Perhaps things will be clearer after Synod….

Just 3 months to Christmas!

(Pictures: View from my fifth floor suite at Melia Cozumel; Visiting the ruins of Tulum)

A Good Day

Today was a good day. The sort you want to write home about, I guess. It rained hard during the night, more even than usual, but eventually turned into a beautiful sunny day.

After the 9am morning service we went to a nearby “beach” for a parish picnic. I spent most of the time playing with the kids in the Sea and then eating. I’m just slightly pink now – never thought about the sun. I have used sun block only about twice since arriving here.

At 12:30 I had to drive people home so that at 1pm I could pick up members of the softball team for our first real games against two out-of-town "teams". When I got to our meeting place (be there at one for sure!) there was only one boy. Amazingly, by 1:20 we had nine and almost all of them our better players! We arrived at the designated football field about 20 minutes late to find no one there! The home team from Eldridgeville had evidently expected us on Saturday and the team from San Pedro Colombia broke down on the way, we think. Anyway, the field was so wet we couldn’t possibly have played. On the way home we decided, as the only team to arrive, we must have won our first tournament on a forfeit.

It may be our last tournament, too, because we aren’t quite sure how we will continue to operate during the school year. Most, perhaps all, of these kids have never seen a real baseball game so I think we’ll try hard to make it happen. Something else they haven’t seen is the team t-shirts we had made for them. That’s a secret until we actually get to play.

Tomorrow will be another big day as all the schools open, including St. Joseph’s Anglican Preschool. Two brand new Anglican schools will also be opening tomorrow, Holy Cross School on Ambergris Caye and the Diocesan Preschool in Belize City.