Phase One Complete

Today we had our last day of lectures! My team leaves for El Salvador in 6 days and I couldn't be more excited! We will be starting out helping with the ministries that YWAM El Salvador is currently involved with in the country's capital San Salvador. We will be leaving on the 31st on a bus from Belize city... there are no bathrooms on board and they say it is a 12 hour trip! That will be interesting ;) I am so sad to be leaving the rest of the team that is going to Turkey, we have come a long way together and I will miss them all greatly!

  It's been a while since I have made an entry so I will show you what I have been up to through some photos!

Beth-Anne and our park friends that we played games with after dinner one night. Most of their parents are vendors that sell their home-made Central American food in the public park

Hunting for wild crocodiles in the swamps on the West side of the island behind our base (did I mention that we started our hunt at 6:00 in the morning! Thats 4:00 am back home!) And no, we didn't find any. But I still got to carry around a machete and look awesome

My friend Roberto teaching me the art of spear fishing out on the reef. The lobster in this picture we named "dinner"

Just another day doing school work  

This particular day we were assigned to write down verses on index cards that had to do with "faith". Later that week we had the opportunity to hand them out to various people that God led us to on the island. The many stories that my team came back with were miraculous. What an awesome experience that allowed us to build relationships in the community! 

Bekki, Walter, Sasha and I heading out to one of our various adventures to see what kinds of people we could meet in the community and pray for. Little did we know where and to who God would lead us to!

That day we were given a tour of the slum called San Mateo on the island. Our guide was part of the faculty of a wonderful Christian school located on the edge of the slum. Here she is explaining that the residents use trash underneath all of their bridges because when it rains they must walk across the boards to get anywhere and in some areas (like pictured) the water might be 30 feet deep! Can you believe it??

"keep clean" the post says... 

After being able to pray for one of the teachers at the Christian school (Holy Cross) Bekki is granted the honor to pray for the classroom. The teacher asked for prayers for strength and wisdom. He was so humbled. 

Sasha washing cups in the miniature sized kitchen while the students of Holy Cross rotated through the cafeteria. There are several schools on the island, but almost all of them are either maxed out or too expensive for families in the slum to afford. Holy Cross was created about 6 years ago to take the overflow children and unlike other schools, provides 2 meals for the children and is cheaper than most other schools in the area.  Sadly, they have reached their maximum capacity of 500 students and still more have to be wait-listed for their education

God led us to this man's house. He had just recently moved to the island seeking job opportunities and a new hope. We were able to pray for him and sit and hear his story. Simply amazing

The following week we surprised our friend with fresh doughnuts and he surprised us by inviting us inside to meet his cousins and to see the carvings they were working on together to be sold that weekend on the beaches and in town. They were all so talented!

The home of Olga and her 3 sons. We were greeted from far off by little 3 year old Albert screaming "HI!" to us over and over again. Olga's husband worked in construction and she loved watching "What Not to Wear"when she had a night off with her kids and could go into town with her friends. She was absolutely beautiful and so strong willed

We stumbled upon this small family on the edge of the lagoon. The grandmother insisted upon showing us all of her family albums and even gave us crocheted flowers as gifts of remembrance when we left.  We gave her some of the "faith"cards we made earlier and when she read one of them she busted out in a beautiful deep hymn about one particular verse. 

Anya and I on our way to New  Horizon Elementary school. Every morning for one week we would take the water taxi about 5 miles south to the Christian school where we were positioned (with 10 others from my group) in different classrooms as teachers aids

Pictured here are two of my new friends from the Standard II classroom (about 4th grade in the states) at New Horizon. The one on the right is Jonathan... he was my favorite :) He would always dance around and get really into the hand motions when the teacher would let me sing songs to them in the morning. He would also surprise attack hug me when I least expected it

Teaching one of my diving friends Sasha (from Alberta, Canada) how to sail on one of the Hobie Cats our school rented for the day. Some of my friends reported back that they had seen dolphins when they had gone out! At one point we saw something floating in the water and I climbed out onto one of the pontoons to retrieve it... only to discover that it was a slimy, child-sized, Croc shoe. Almost as cool as a dolphin, right?

Our large beetle friend, Jeffrey. Beth wasn't too fond of him however.

Just another morning goin on a walk with Jesus on the beach :)

Getting my advanced diving certification. Here I am practicing one of the 5 specialty dives required to move to the next level. In this dive we were to take fish identification cards with us and circle as many different fish types we could find. I found about 17 different types and one of my buddies found 33!

My Family

 Every 2 weeks we were to practice public speaking. Sometimes that would look like giving a 5-7 minute oral book report or sometimes we would give a short presentation on one particular word subject (my topic was loyalty). Other times we were asked to lead morning devotions with worship songs and sharing a short testimony and whatever else is on our hearts. Pictured here, Sasha (with the help of Tessa, Sarah, and Myla) is giving an oral gospel presentation skit where she is role playing what it might look like to share the gospel in a certain setting. She pretended to be a counselor talking to a cabin of girls at a summer camp about their fears and how God can be our protector so we don't have to be afraid. I did a skit once pretending to be sharing the gospel to a woman at the drive-thru of "Burgeropalis"  through the speaker box! It was pretty funny :)

Each Tuesday night we have leadership lectures led by our amazing base leader, Chris Toney, who is spectacular at engaging us in deep discussions and encouraging us to study certain books such as "Leadership is an Art" by Max DuPree (the CEO of Herman Miller, one of the most successful companies of our time)

Thursday nights we have what is called Community Meeting where we invite everyone from the community to come and visit our base and hear a short sermon from whoever our guest speaker was that week. We had 3 different teams that took turns each week in leading the group in worship. We have so many talented people in this school!

Last week we were visited by 7 students from a school similar to YWAM schools in Punta Gorda (southern Belize) and at the end of the week we were blessed to be able to participate and encourage two of their team-mates when they decided to get baptized!

         Again, thank you for all of your support! Please continue to keep me in your prayers as my El Salvador outreach team heads out on our new adventure! Prayers that God will prepare the hearts of those who we will come in contact with over the next 2 months and for continuous team unity!

(El Salvador team pictured below: Sasha, Macall, (some random guy from Punta Gorda who decided to jump into the picture), Bethany, Joy, Victoria, Dana, Myla, (bottom row) Lucilla, me, Ulrike, and our staff leader Megan)