Miller United Methodist Church

Yesterday afternoon 28 amazing participants from Miller, South Dakota arrived. Paul and Johnny are from Texas and they are tagging along on this adventure to Independence.

Yesterday consisted of a long bus ride filled with windy roads, foggy mountains, and forming relationships. After a long day of travel dinner was superb and bed time was even better. This morning started fairly early because Jim woke everyone up after his, longer than expected, run. At 8 o'clock we headed to breakfast, and directly after breakfast we started to celebrate Father's Day with the local church. The celebration consisted of praise, dancing, a message, and a wonderful lunch. It's been wonderful to see the Miller group get to know and love on the local people. The celebration was just getting started as we left, but we were on our way to get ready for a different ministry project. Independence has a park in its downtown area. The park is where we will be doing a Sports Camp/VBS tomorrow and Tuesday afternoon. The way things are spread around in Belize is by word of mouth, so four different groups headed out in four different directions in order to start inviting the children. Several conversations and a few mangos later we we had invited plenty and we were off to dinner. Tonight we had some of the best I have ever experienced. Jack even exclaimed that they had his father's bread beat! With full belly's and a heart full of the Spirit we headed back to the park for some basketball and to play with the little children of the village. Our journey has barely even started yet we have accomplished so much! Please continue to pray for us as we head into tomorrow and get to work on some incredible ministry opportunities.

Today was the day. I mean the past two days have been important, but today was the day when we got to work. First off, if any of you parents were worried that your children wouldn't be fed well, don't worry we've had some incredible meals. So with the help of a hardy delicious breakfast we were able to build the frames of 7, that's right 7, bunk beds which we will later distribute to families in the village. At the same time a team was putting together bags of food that they later distributed out amongst the community. Out of the 50 food bags that were made 20 have already been given out! It was an amazing opportunity to be able to bless 20 families. The other team stayed back at the church and painted so the church could look nice and pretty. The food distribution team all came back to the church and without hesitation headed out to the field to start the Sports Ministry/VBS. Wow did we have a lot of kids out there playing with us today, and wow do they have a lot of energy. They most definitely wore us out more than we wore them out, but that's okay because we had another great meal and are now back at the church ready to get some sleep. The Lord is most definitely working through us and in this community.

I just want to start this journal entry out by saying I promise that we are working hard. Okay, this morning we had a recreational free day. There's a wonderful place in Belize called Placencia. It's only about ride away from where we are staying in Independence. There we had a great time swimming and enjoying yet another fantastic meal. It was a nice bit of time to relax and catch our breath after all the ministry we've been doing. Don't worry we quickly got back to work as we delivered 10 bags of food, set up three bunk beds in three houses, and continued the Sports Ministry/VBS. Tonight a lady told us that a little girl, who lives across the street from her, came over and asked her for some dinner, but she didn't have enough food for the little girl. Her granddaughter convinced her to stretch the dinner out so she could feed her, and then not even 30 minutes later we showed up with a food bag. God is so good. God is moving here in Belize and it's a blessing to be able to update yall.