Hopkins Retreat

A quick post as life this week and for the next week are very out of routine for us. Out of routine but not unwelcome.
Saturday was the day our family was anticipating for many weeks. We picked up Oma and Opa from the airport! What an exciting day and joyful reunion. They were met with hugs, smiles and so much excitement to show them around our new country. I'd like to share with you what they felt at first sight and first thoughts but it would be better shared right from the source. So, if you would like to follow my mom's travel blog for the next two weeks I know she is being far more diligent than I and plans to blog every day about our time spent together. Maybe it will you the itch to come visit too! So,  you can follow all of us at:
www.visitingour5littlemonkeysinbelize.blogspot.ca

Today we arrived in Hopkins. A coastal area south from where we live and we at a lovely small quaint resort. We will enjoy the sound of crashing ocean waves and cool dips in the pool here until Saturday and then return home for Christmas preparations.

Life is going so well for us, although in many ways it's still so much the same. I'm constantly reminded that life is what we make it. No matter where we are we still have the mundane tasks of living to accomplish. So, we can choose to do them reluctantly or we can choose to rejoice in them and make it a joy to do these tasks. In finding joy in the everyday jobs we can make our homes such a more pleasant place to be and teach the kids have fun doing them.  I've had the immense joy and pleasure of spending a lot more time in the kitchen with Paige. She is blossoming as a little baker and chef extraordinaire! She has helped to turn my tasks into precious moments together.

We continue to sprout our seed and it's going well enough that once our company and Christmas has passed we have plans to build our second and larger sprouting system. We will be making the next system automated so we don't have to water them 4 times a day. So, Chad now will get to put on his engineer hat to design this next unit. Interest in the sprouting continue to grow with each person we talk to about it and we are very hopefully for what God has in store as we move forward in this endeavour.

God is good, all the time and all the time God is good.
We wish you all a blessed Christmas season and pray, truly that you would celebrate the life and birth of our saviour.

Love to all.

GO TIME!

Today is an exciting day for us! No, not because it's 83 degrees here and snowy and white at home....we actually all lamented a bit about missing the excitment of waking to the first dusting of snow. No, we are building!

Last week we had 500 lbs of seed arrive with some trays. I'll back up the train to explain for those who are unfamiliar with our vision for employment here.

Sprouting for human consumption and for animal feed was a relatively new concept that we were becoming aware of  a few years ago. We started to grow and consume sprouts or micro greens in our home. The cows that were being raised on our farm before we left were also consuming barley fodder or sprouted barley. I won't go into details about the nutritional benefits of consuming spouted grains and seeds but we truely believe in it and it spurred a passion in us to bring it with us to Belize. It seemed a viable option because essentially you are growing feed hydroponically where weather and drought will never effect your crop and you can grow the equivalent of 700 acres in about a 20' x 50' space. Anyway, to not bore you with the details you could simply google "barely fodder" and "micro greens" to unleash a world of knowledge if you so desire.

 

We had in our mind upon coming, that this was where our passion lied and we saw it would bring benefits to  Belize too. So we (mostly Chad) have been doing research and seed sourcing since we've been here. See....we have been working, we just didn't have anything to show for it yet! 

We were taking it slow and not wanting to jump into a business too fast because we also were very prayerful in the "what" we were to do here.

You know when your passion lines up with God's plan it's an amazing thing! It was about two weeks ago when Chad said he really felt the Lord press upon his heart that is was "go time". Time to get to work and move quicker with this business plan. Chad was thrilled. Thrilled that what we desired to do was what God was ordaining for us too!

Here's the great blessing of walking of in His plan. We approaced the Ministry of Agriculture to seek their support and get a referral for a business license and work permit. There were several stipulations to getting a farm permit that we did not meet. One being that we needed to own land.Oh us of little faith for a day doubted a little that they would laugh at us and dismiss our idea. Further more in Belize these processes can take weeks! But, we are learning that when God says go, He paves the way. We had the Ministry of Agriculture visit our "farm" (we are not a farm at all and we don't own this land), write us a glowing recommendation for work permit, write a letter of referral to get import fees waved at the port where or shipment was coming into and had 110% support and excitement for the business the same day we contacted them !God is sooo good!

 

So, this week has us building our racks to hold 20, six foot long trays to move to phase two of our testing. We will be growing barley, tritacacle (rye and wheat), peas, and sunflower seeds.

 

We are alway thankful for things like this that give us new excitement. We are exstatically awaiting the arrivale of December 12th when Oma and Opa arrive! Our first guinea pigs to see what life is like in Belize. We are so thankful that both our parents are young and able to come visit. Our weeks are fairly routine now and we truck through 5 days of school work, house hold duties and volunteering with little time to miss home. It is on the weekends that I have found missing home creeps up a little. The good thing is we don't miss our house or our lifestyle or anything material....we just miss the company of our loved ones and friends. We couldn't ask for anything better to miss.

Hope to share some pictures of our crop soon!

Love to you all!

Hanging Up My Idol

Today I'm sharing something very personal. Why? Not to gain praise please, but to share with you the true life struggles of my flesh and my heart and I truly truly want you to see what kind of transforming work God can do with us and is doing with me.

 

This week past week I had a week of conviction. Not one that is unfamiliar to me though. Most of you who know me know my passion and NEED for fitness. It is exactly that. It is a passion of mine. I love to be active, it makes me feel alive, it makes me feel strong, it makes me feel healthy and energetic. It is however a need. I need to exercise because it's a portion of my life that I have decided to control. It's the portion of my life that I honestly don't trust God with. My fitness is done out of love and yet out of fear. Fear that if I don't I won't maintain my weight or an image that I'm comfortable with.
You know I've actually been having an ongoing tug-of-war with God for the about a year and half over this issue. He would challenge me with it and I would either make excuses why it wasn't good for me to stop my activities or I just chose to hold on to controlling it because I feared God's dream for my body was not what my dream was.
Some time ago a wise and Godly friend found me in my struggle and suggested something that has stuck with me. She said, "You know Stephanie, the things we build on our own God leaves us to maintain on our own and the things we give to Him to build he maintains them for us". Well that would take the pressure off but again, I wasn't yet believing that God would maintain my body the way I wanted.

Habakkuk 2:18

Of what value is an idol since a man has carved it? For he who makes it trusts in his own creation. He makes idols that cannot speak.

Fast forward a year and half.....
This conviction of needing to give up my physical activity that I love so much is weighing so heavy on me. That's called conviction of the Holy Spirit. Enough wondering if this is really what God is asking me to do. Enough making excuses that it's healthy so he wouldn't take away something that is healthy. As I fell to tears several times this week I recognized that if giving something up brings me to tears and is so hard to do.....it's an idol. Yes. An Idol.
Although not a statue, not a pillar or false god it is a stronghold in my life that creates a barrier between me completely yielding my whole self (body) to God. It is an idol because it's so painful to give up.
Here's the thing I can say about idols (of whatever form they may take in your life). The act or action or item is not necessarily the idol. The idol is in the way we treat it. Is it our? Are we taking ownership of it? Could we give it up if we were asked? Is it taking priority over God in your life? Only each of us as individuals can answer this. This is an intimate conversation between us and God.
So, I have shed my tears this week about giving up my idol. Handing it over to God. Trusting that he will be enough for me and that my desires for me would line up with his desires for me as I commit to a time of "rest" for my physical body. Yes, I'm hanging up my running shoes, biking shoes, Shaun T. shoes, Gillian Michael shoes, and TRX shoes.
I believe that God will return this activity to me at the time when my heart is right, when I can fully live in the love and joy of who God has made me outside of what I look like, what I feel like and what activity I have done. So, don't be sad for me. My God shall supply all my needs according to his riches in glory (Philippians 4:19).
For those of you who don't know God in a way that you see this request of God as a blessing. I challenge you to see it that way. God wants more for us than we can provide for ourselves. Me stuck in the "but it's good for me and God shouldn't ask me to give something I enjoy up" is only hindering me from experiencing something new waiting for me. When God returns things and rewards obedience he does it 10 fold! I don't do it for the reward but I know his providence will be greater than this sacrifice!

Psalm 19:9-11

The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinances of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold, sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. By them are your servants warned; in keeping them there is great reward!

On a closing note. I recall the words that Lord spoke to us the Sunday before we left. God spoke through Chester to us and his words said that  we will have to die to ourselves. That we would have to give up something that was close to us. God's words is truth. We have seen a portion of this word come to life. What God says will happen. I can no longer wrestle with this thought, it is what God is requiring of me.

So here's our warning.....

2 Kings 17:12

They worshiped idols, though the Lord had said, "You shall not do this." The Lord warned Israel and Judah through all his prophets and seers: "Turn from your evil ways. Observe my commands and decrees, in accordance with the entire law that I commanded".

Here's the result......

2 Kings 17:40

They would not listen however, but persisted in their practices. Even while these people were worshiping the Lord, they were serving their idols. To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did.

And the promise we already mentioned...

Psalm 19:11

....in keeping them there is great reward!

Greetings Friends and Family and Followers!

Well, we are obviously getting much busier as it was kindly brought to my attention that it's been a month since our last posting! Thanks you to that anonymous person.....you know who you are!

Yes, we are filling our days now and finding that we even almost have  weekly routine.

We just this past week made our second trip to immigrations and yes got granted another 30 days with little to no hassle from the officer. Praise the Lord! We cover that trip in a lot of prayer as we never really know what to expect.

Chad is doing a lot of slow ground work for a number of projects. We are seeking to apply for a small business/farming work permit. If we can get this it will save us from needing to get our passports stamped every month and the children (we've stopped calling them kids as "kids" are most often referred to here as the goat kind) and I can register as dependents under Chad's business permit. He is also diligently researching seed, shipping seed, importing seed and growing seed in Belize. We have found most of what we need for seed and have all the steps outlined to get it imported we just need to send in the final paperwork, pony up some cash, and confirm the order. We are patiently awaiting this next step to move to the next step in our business venture. Some time ago I would have said, "All in good time" but I'm truly believing it's more, "All in God time".

 

May I introduce you to our alarm clock! Not sure but it might be a Red Lored Parrot...either way it puts roosters to shame! This was taken from our second floor deck in the morning. Beautiful bird but so loud, especially when there is a flock of them fighting at 6:00 am. Opa, you would appreciate them!

 

 And if the parrots sleep in you can count on the woodpecker who is almost as loud....remember we most have hardwood here. That beak is amazingly strong.

 What have we been doing. Well, we are praying for chickens so we need a house for them to live in. Thankfully although we are renting here the owner were more than willing to let us have chickens and there was already a fenced pen that needed only minor adjustments to make a perfect chicken pen. Chad and the kids designed a fine coop with 6 layer boxes. We ran out of staples for the gun today so  it will be finished and ready for chickens on Monday. This give me a great opportunity to share with how our life has changed. In the past we would have finished the box and the next gone out to get some chickens to fill it. You know we are just witnessing so much of God's hand in our life and the lives of those around us that we are learning to pray for even the little things. For some reason we adults think we should petition for only the "big life changers".  There is a family that is becoming very dear to us and I tell you they live a life of prayer and they receive everything....everything the need and more by God's mighty hand. We joined with their 11 year old daughter to pray for a horse and the next day they get not one but 8 horses! Did I mention they have no house, no vehicle and their are 8 family members. They have what some may call "mysterious' money show up in their bank account. The list goes on but all to say that we are learning to wait on the Lord and ask for all things before we run ahead and do it on our own merit. But yes Lord, we are ready for some eggs!

 Because these little chicks are not laying well!

 We have started a small life group and meet every Wednesday for a DVD study and we are currently learning from one my new favourite speakers, Robert Morris: Dream to Destiny. Highly, highly recommend this or The Power of Your Words. Life changing lessons in my opinion.

Paige and  Keaton have been singing in a children's choir at church. There are about 20 kids and they will sing at church for Thanksgiving and apparently they enter a competitions with other local schools. The choir won last year so this may be the tell tale if they take after Chad or myself musically!

School is going well and we are still very flexible with our routine. I am not a woman of routine...some things may never change. I do however appreciate this flexibility as already we've been able to drop what we are doing when a need is brought to our attention. This has also been a focus of our family's growth. We are learning and pray every day that we yield to whatever God has for us for this day. We have a plan but we are praying about always having a servants heart and putting aside what our schedule might say to do the "will of the Father" and serve those in need. It's probably one of the most rewarding things that we are able to teach and participate in as a family.

Today we took on some property maintenance tasks. It's a beautiful property we live on but it does require like any property some TLC. So, rakes and shovels, buckets and .....water bottles in hand we filled a day with landscaping. We are learning to how to work around the heat because working with the heat is just not possible. So, it's best to work outside from early morning to 10ish and then hind from the sun until about 3ish.

The past weeks have been very spiritually challenging for us as we attended a 3 day prophetic word conference put on by our church. It was our first experience with anything that deep as far as the Holy Spirit goes. Powerful, challenging, amazing, exhausting, hope filled and in the end we stand even more in awe of what a mighty God we serve. Wish I could tell you more but we'll have to save those story's for face time.

Moving from what is consuming our time to what is consumer our thoughts we are SOOOOOO excited that my parents are coming on December 13 for two weeks! There literally is not a day that goes by that we don't talk about it! We can't wait to see them and even more so I can't wait to have a new perspective for those at home of what our life if like here. You only have our perspective and I think it will interesting to see what a fresh set of eyes sees it like. Did I mention we are so excited!

 

Time for some Belize horticulture. This tree brings new meaning and likely origin of the phrase "the big cahuna"! This is a Cahun palm. Those pods of cahun nuts must weight about 150-200lbs! The tree is huge and so are branches of nuts. I believe you can eat them but similar to chestnuts I think they are a lot work to extract the nut. We have used local cahun oil from this tree for cooking though. This tree is at the centre of our driveway so I'm for one of those branches to fall off so I can really weigh it.

 

 We celebrated our first Belize birthday on Oct 1st.  Happy 33rd Daddy. What better way to celebrate than a dinner of lobster tails, curried cauliflower and roasted parsley potatoes. Mmmmm. Oh, yeah and chad got some wine from the village grocery store.

 Birthday breakfast set up by the children on the second floor deck.

 We have a great opportunity for volunteer and outreach work that are super excited about. In addition to this mission facility we live on the owners that are currently in Canada also had run an after school pgm in our village at another small community building right in the village. Since they have been gone the center has been closed which sad because it has about 8 computers and in the past was opened up after school to enable those children (most of the children in our village) who don't have access to get to a library or have computers at home to come use the resources there. Along with the pastor and another family from church that lives in the neighbouring village we've had on our hearts to reach out to the village people. So this is a great opportunity for us. We will hopefully each take one afternoon a week to open the center and be available to help village kids (not the goats) with their home work and research. If you are praying for us this is an area you can pray for us in. We are praying that we can get it open this week or next and that we would be able to be used to help meet the needs of the village school children. We are excited to build relationships with them. Pray that we are sensitive to God's moving and what ever way he wants us to serve there.

Signing off until next time. Hopefully I'll post sooner than a month from now!

We are all doing well and living very vibrantly here in Belize!

Love you all.

Stephanie

Discover your Laminin

Ok, so you're going to have to stick with me to the end of this one to answer the question I know you all have...."What the heck is laminin".

So, I realized when viewing my last posting that the pictures I though loaded of our house apparently didn't load. So here's a quick look it up top.

 

Let's see, what have we been up to the last week and a half. Well, moving out to Unitedville has been wonderful. It is much more central to all the places we need to go in a week. The market, grocery marts and church. We are very quickly becoming familiar with the shopping hubs of the country. FTC (Farmer's Trading Centre) is our Walmart/Target equivalent. It is the same inexpensive quality with a little less quality at times than even Walmart. The single bed sheets we bought don't even fit a single mattress. But hey, we have sheets!

We've had a few people ask what our mailing address is now that we are at a place we hope to stay. To give you a true flavour of this country here's our address....

The Dietrich's

Unitedville, Cayo, Belize, Central America

 

Or a more specific location: In Unitedville turn left at the Vietnam bar/Belkin Beer sign, travel about a 1/4 mile on the gravel road and turn left at the stone piers....that's us!

I LOVE IT! That's all you need in this country apparently.  We need to visit the Post Office next week to see how the mail system really works hear.  Haven't got a clue how to send or receive mail. 

 

We are feeling really settled in our new home and very safe in the area we are in. We've got most of our bins unpacked, bikes put together (although not quite tuned enough to ride yet), and Chad and I are now feeling ready to move on to some business planning. It's exciting to have a vision that incorporates your passion and your husband and family. We are hoping to enlarge our flock....get some chickens soon and get some tropical fruits planted.

Here's another "flavour of Belize".  We took a trip to a local resort and did a butterfly farm tour with the kids. While touring the beautiful resort we found all these stunning flowers laying freshly fallen. What else would a florist do but use her 3 kids to collect as many of them as possible so we could smell their sweet fragrance and let our eyes take in their beauty. Apparently these flowers are the same flowers used to make leis. Low and behold as we drove in our gravel road we noticed Frangipani tree right on the roadside to our house. We were having dinner guest that night and we thought a  Frangipani flower would make a lovely garnish to our fresh coconut lime dessert. So out we went for a walk thinking that we could ask to pick up some of the dropped flowers from under the tree. As with most places here the house is a mere 20 x 20 wood box on piers and native family was leisurely keeping themselves busy about their house. I approach and ask say that we were admiring the tree (that was rooted on their property but overhanging the roadway) and wondering if we could take some fallen flowers. The worn older woman responded with Spanish words that are not in my 15 word vocabulary of "kitchen items" so I had no idea what she was saying. As anyone would I speak a little more slowly and use some actions to ask my question again. To which I get a nodding as the woman ways to her son to come over to the tree. He....is carrying a machete! Looking back we maybe should have had a moment of fear but her words seems willing and after even though we only wanted a mere flower or two from the ground he proceeds to cut us off two whole branches of these beautiful flowers. Wow, we were thrilled! Through broken language and hand gestures the woman communicated that we can just stick that branch in the ground and start your own tree. So, we've planted two Frangipani trees and had a lovely vase of flowers for the day.  Lovely people with not much to give but made our day special. We don't always need a lot to be able to bless someone else.

 

 

I don't think Chad is missing the routine of work! He got his power tools this week because in Belize a machete is your friend and your lawn mower. For us it's also our sharpest kitchen utencil and was our successful tool to cracking the coconut. We made coconut milk, coconut butter ( something had to replace maple syrup) and fresh coconut flakes.

Chad was not only the hero of the coconut war but he also defeated these guys below! I bowed out of this one before it even started! Thanks to his crafty screening stapling and cardboard shield we now have a wonderful storage shed  that is only inhabited by us.

This is US! This is our new norm. We work together, play together, cry together and do live together. This picture holds a beautiful memory for me of our Saturday market  day. We came home with our fresh groceries for the majority of the week and this is what happened. No asking, no refusals, no whining. It's almost a rhythm already. We each tackled a task of either washing, cutting, putting away and we sang and talked 2 hours away in the kitchen together. Priceless!

 Class of 2014!

Need I say more, they were eager as anything to start the school year.

 

Had to have first day of school picture in front of some tropical greens.

 

I'm closing I promise. And I will tell you about laminin.  You know for the time before we left and the first few weeks it was our constant prayer that the Lord would unfold and reveal to us the purpose he had for us here. It was sometime last week I came to the subtle conclusion that I don't need to pray that. For some reason, I think we all feel like we have to be going or moving to accomplish something. I wasn't anxious about the "what" we are supposed to be doing here but for some reason I had made it into such a mystery. I see now that we ARE doing what we are supposed to be doing. Right now our season is REST. And I am thankful and basking in it. Our days are now filled with many of the normal home duties and teaching however, we have more time to study God's words than we've ever had both together as a family and as individual. That's what we are supposed to be doing! I'm done wondering what God is going to do and resting in what he is doing today. He's allowing us time to "be still and know that I am God". It's wonderful and I see that when we slow life down we can see so much more of God's hand around us.

I've always struggled with the understanding of how we are supposed to love God more than our earthly family.....I get it now. Take away the comforts that this world give you. Your wonderful parents, your siblings, your home, familiar surroundings and you have only one things familiar and comforting left to draw close to. Do you know Him. I do and I desire His presence more than ever. For now, that's what we are here to do. We are in a season of rest and diving into His word. He's the glue that is holding us together.

Glue....that's were laminin comes in. I'm attaching a Louie Giglio link that we watched called "How Great Is Our God". Make 40 min. in your week to watch it, it's great and he taught me about laminin. Here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAzCP8SEKwc

and here is laminin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

Look at the molecular structure of this thing. Now look at it's definition. The laminins are an important and biologically active part of the basal lamina, influencing cell differentiation, migration, and adhesion, as well as phenotype and survival. It's job is to bind together.

Some might call it ironic or chance that this protein of the thousands of protein molecule we are made of is the one that binds proteins cells together. It's job is the joining molecule...it keeps us together, it holds us in one piece, it's the foundational protein that makes us stay together!

I don't say it nearly as well as Louie but what a mighty Creator we have!

Love you all.

Stephanie

We've Moved!

We are almost three weeks here in Belize. Last week was a very busy week for us which was a welcome change to our previous one! We had a busy week cleaning and moving into our NEW JUNGLE HOME! God has been soooo good! This is how He works in wonderful ways. To make a long story short we found a home to rent that is bigger than we had anticipated, on a property better than we though we would land, and in the budget we needed to be. It was a long string of contacts that lead us to find this place that started a year ago when friends from our church in Canada mention that a friend had parents living in Belize. Since we really don't know anyone here we contacted this lady (Belen) the week we arrived and paid a short visit at her 500 acre citrus farm. A lovely lady and just so happened to mentioned someone that was looking for a house sitter a few weeks back as they were needing to go back to Canada. We proceeded to contact this home owner only to find she had a house sitter already but her daughter's house on the same property was available for rent. Our not so busy schedule allowed us to go visit the house the next day....and what do we find? Hmmmm, the pastor of the church to which we have been happily attending is the housesitter. The property is 15acres of thin jungle with a 4 bedroom home, a play set, a shaded yard, and it's the home of a mission team facility. Wow! From the outside it was too good to be true....and so we walked in the house. Welllllllllllll, the glamour for a few moments was gone! The home had not been lived in for some time and we needed our eyes to see past the dust and dirt. The space and set up was great and we knew a little elbow grease would put this place in working condition.  6 days of cleaning later and here we are. Moved in today! We had mattresses delivered and we get a couch tomorrow. What a great feeling of "home" we have now. We are so excited to be here. A safe, convenient, kid friendly location. We are now on the east side of San Ignacio. Closer to the coast, airport, church, and Spanish Lookout (the mennonite community where we do most of our hard goods shopping).

We have some organizing in our home to do yet this week. Should keep us busy unpacking bins and getting set up. We are starting to meet people and in a country this small it seems we are already "bumping" into some familiar faces. This Sunday Chad invited a couple from church over to our new place next Sunday after church. "Great", I said....."Guess that means we need to buy plates before Sunday, eh"! The church has a pretty even mix of Gringo's, Belizeans and Mennonites.

Saturday we did the local market and got a few more comforts of home like home made yogurt, cheese, and butter and picked out some new tropical flavours to try. We've now had breadfruit a starch similar to potatoes but softer and a bit sweeter and a dragon fruit. I'm getting my crafty fix by experimenting with new produce!

In closing, here's what we are learning and resting in. REST. This is a completely different pace and schedule that what we ever could have had in Canada. It's amazing! Both Chad and I are so thankful for time to reorder our days. We pray and do a devotion with the kids every morning, we work together with them....we pretty much do everything together! I know it may not remain like this as we will need to work on our business plan but for right now we are thankful for this time God is giving us to put Him and our family as the focus. It's so peaceful and laid back and refreshing and FUN! I am finding the quietness and slow pace of life giving me a great awareness of what fulfills me. I find I desire more and more prayer time and it's just easier to live each moment in the Holy Spirit.

A truth that rings close to home that I read this week. "Challenges keep us well seasoned, but to be profitable our struggle must have purpose. Once our life gets a little difficult we get consumed with trying to make it comfortable again. But by doing so we miss a great spiritual opportunity to grow". (Gary Thomas: Sacred Marriage)

I see the truth in this and I'm marvelling in growing and trusting more as we walk this unfamiliar path!

 

Things are going great here in Belize.  We certainly hope all is well back in Canada as well.  We keep trying to share some of our warm weather so we hope it reaches Canada soon! 

 

 

A Weeks Worth

It's been a week. Our weekiversary is today! We actually have a good little routine going by now... not one that will likely stay for too long but for now it works really well for us.

Here's what we've learned in a week living in a third world country. (Side note...before we came here Chad would often refer to Belize as third world and I would slightly contradict him saying, "it's a high class third world though....are you sure it's actually classed as third world"? How quickly I had forgotten from our September trip here....yes, it is definitely third world!)

1.Ok, I've learned a stove is a nice perk but not necessary....we don't have a stove where we are so we use our three burner stove top or eat  a fair bit raw. Thankful for my rather experimental culinary skills we have had some pretty stellar meals the last few nights!
2. We only actually want to go out side between the hours of 6 am and 8am...after that, she's a scortcher! 95 deg not factoring in about 80% humidity.
3. Due to bullet # 2 I learned that I can sweat profusely while doing something as easy as cutting fruit.
4. We have learned the value of showering with cold water twice a day!
5. We have been able to use fresh allspice leave from the tree outside our house to make tea and season sea bass.
6. We had the most glorious tasting mango yesterday EVER!
7. Don't covet  your vehicle .....it's going to get ruined by the roads here anyway!
8. We have learned that living in 521 sq ft of house is possible and quite fun. Ok, one closet or shelf would be really helpful though.
9. Living off grid requires some conscious effort, but we are doing great! We eat by candle light most nights and we are super water conservers because raining season is proving to be not so rainy.
10. It was said to us on day one that North American's living in Belize have to be a bit "different".....AGREED!
11. Going to town every day to the market and doing school work is now our form of entertainment.
12. Having a new routine and lots of time together is feeling amazing we have time to do family devotionals several times a day...this I won't get tired of!
13. chia is super cheap here....it's grown locally in Spanish lookout
14.Flour is super expensive here...it's imported. Like 6-8 dollars US/kg!
15. Thanks dad for the HFH swiss army knife, it's our best knife in the kitchen.


Apple bananas in our backyard!

The papaya tree outside our house....that's a lot of papayas when they're ready!

An almond tree in our yard

Oue cozy kitchen, living, dining, entry of our house! No room for visitors yet!

*** Note  - correction to my last posting: the scripture reference is John 12:20 not Romans. Sorry.

Relentless

So we are here! I have so much to share about what is happening....nothing ground breaking but at this point we just need daily confirmation that we are on the right track. So here we go! I'm going to recall as best as I can our adventure in the first 5 days!

Wednesday August 6th
The Father said, "these are the things I WILL DO FOR YOU"! Now let me share them with you....
1. I will prove a customs official wrong when she says,"relax, there is no way you are going to make that flight but don't worry we have lots going to Houston".
2. I will have a luggage personel come and ask to assist the last person in line (Chad) to see check our carseat so he somehow bypassed the 4 people in front of him.
3. I will help those 3 little kids to run as fast as there feet will take them to the gate!
4. I will get you to the gate 20 min after take off time but in due time to reverse the order from the gate attendant to remove the family of 5's luggage and have them (ok, 4 out 5 luggage bags made it to Belize) put back on the plane and the "family of 5" as we were referred to WILL make their flight!

What providence. We seriously got on the plane and filled the only 5 seats remaining and took off withing 10 min. I now know what glaring stares from waiting passengers feel like!

Next providence.....they let us enter the country! We've heard mixed comments about entering with a one way ticket but we had a favourable customs guard and duty attendant who also was going to ask us to pay 400 Belize dollars (200US) for good like laptop and tablets etc that we were bringing in to the country but somehow after chatting with him for a few minutes he chuckled and send us on our way without paying.

Thursday August 7th
Our first day here. 95 degrees without humidity! Thankfully we had lots of driving to do which is great because the car is the only place we have air conditioning! We bought a Ford Explorer from people we met a year ago and it seems to be a good vehicle so far so thank you Lord for providence of a car! We did some driving around to the local market to get some food and the insurance companies. Just before we left our shipper had asked us who our broker in Belize was. Broker?? We had no broker at the port and no connections. However, true God fashion when we picked up our car from this friend here he said no worries, I'll call Russel, he's handles all my stuff at the port. So, Russels did our broker stuff and we only had to pay  400BZ (200US) for that 1000 lbs of goods we brought in! Wow, that should have cost us WAY more. God is sooooo good.

Friday August 8th
Today was the day our shipment was supposed to be delivered at  4:00pm. We did a few more errands in the morning and stopped at the Macal Rio (river) for a refreshing dip and some fun for the kids who have been doing amazing! True to Belize life Paige's luggage that was left in Toronto had arrived 2 hours later then they told us in the town 2 miles from where we live so Chad and Keaton headed out to meet them and retrieve it. Meanwhile us girls waited at home and had just prayed the shipment that was supposed to arrive at 4:00 would still come even though 2 hours late so that while Chad was in town he could lead them here. And so it was, God heard our prayers and 15 min later we heard the hum of our truck and a big while delivery man behind him. We were able to invite the driver in for dinner before he headed on his 2 hour drive back home. He helped us to correct our 10 Spanish words we learned  for this week and then headed on his way. Really, a lovely interaction!

Saturday August 9th
One more day of errands to collect some pantry goods from Spanish Lookout. The Mennonite town about hour away but hey have a much better supply of raw goods. Ah, the store was about 20 x 14 but I felt at home with flours, vitamins, grains, essential oils.....some of you will understand that comfort! Anyway, we had a very moving conversation with the clerk there. God new we needed some confirmation that even though we still don't know what we are doing here we are not alone. Her story so similar to ours about how they moved here following God's direction but not yet knowing what their exact purpose was. It gave us goose bumps as she told her story so parallel to ours. We see that God is gathering people from across the world to come to Belize for a purpose. This gave us hope and a reminder that we will need to persevere.

Sunday August 10
A day of confirmation. We headed to the church we attended in Sept since it was familiar and we really like it. They played Rend Collective...what more could we ask! Beyond that for those of you who heard the prophetic word spoken over us in our church the Sunday before we left you will understand the providence of God when I tell you that the pastors message was that EXACT scripture. Roman's 12:20-25......unless a seed is dead and buried it can bear no fruit! God is revealing to us every single day that he is here with us!

Today's word was "RELENTLESS"  for me. I feel like God is relentless in showing us that we supposed to be here. It's so overwhelming that I told him today I need an emotional break ....I get it, no need to prove it to me any longer. We are where we need to be!

Love to you all until I can write again.
P.S. I'm not editing because I'm paying for internet time here, so please excuse my type o's!

Some Geat Prayer Time

As we head to bed for our last sleep before our early morning plane ride we do so on a high.  High from the great prayer times we have had over the last couple of days. 

On Sunday our church (Wilmot Centre Missionary Church) had a time of prayer for us during the service.  It was so uplifting and encouraging but also gave us some words to help keep us on our toes.  We are so thankful to our church body for all of their support.  We have attended there for 14 years and we have grown so much over the years.  We want to say a HUGE thanks to EVERYONE and encourage you all to follow the plan that God has for you.  Pastors, Elders and friends; you will always be our church family.  The Sunday school gave us a group photo as well as a picture with a lighthouse on it with a scripture verse.  It is pretty cool because our favourite new song is My Lighthouse by Rend Collective.  Check it out if you haven't heard it, it's a pretty catchy tune.  Then Chester V spoke a word over us.  We were warned that the first 6 months will be hard, that satan will try to discourage us on our journey and that there will be things in our lives that we love that we need to put aside for now, but that amazing things will happen by following God's lead.  There was a promise that when things get difficult God will be there.  The word also said that we are laying a path for many from our church to come to Belize to reach the nation for Christ.  We left church on Sunday pumped for this journey knowing that God is in control.  Still sad to say "see ya later" but full of joy that comes from following the Lord's leading.

Thanks Wilmot Centre Missionary Church.  We love you all!!!

The theme of prayer continued with a great family prayer time tonight.  It was great to have many family members together, even my brothers family via Skype. We all shared, we encouraged and we brought our joy and our sadness to the Lord.  There were tears and there was laughter.  We are so thankful for the amazing family we have supporting us.  We also shared 2 words that have been spoken over us, one from Pastor Rob and the one from Sunday spoken by Chester.  We wanted our family to understand how they can pray for us by hearing these words.  When things are difficult in the beginning we don't want to be encouraged to come home, but we want to be encourage to live in faith and trust that God will provide.  What a great time it was. 

To our surprise our family also had some parting gifts for the kids.  So, back to packing and fitting these new amazing gifts into our bags.  I just finished that task and everything fit perfect!!!

See you later family and friends, this is where the blog finally starts to get interesting and exciting and we hope you follow along.  Please also share with us what is going on with you and your family back at home.  Keep us in the loop, let us know how things are going and certainly let us know if we can pray for you in any way.

See ya later

Chad
and the
 4 other little monkeys ready to swing to Belize

Nuestra casa en Belice (Our Home in Belize)

We are madly jamming in all the last minute details, plans, packing, laundry and good bye visits in our remaining 2 days. It's feeling really good....at moments and torturously emotional at moments when give our last embrace to those we love. Everyone asks, "How are you really doing" and so I'll answer it from my (Stephanie) perspective. It is so very hard to give the last hug and to those we love and who have put watermarks on our life. I will am sad to say goodbye and I will cry a lot in the next two days. However, that does not impede the fact that I have such great excitement for what we are going to experience! Fear can creep in so easily if I dwell on the possibilities of loneliness, extensive heat and big spiders but as soon as I go the God's work I have immediate peace. "There is no fear in love"....and my God love me!
I do think we ought to live like we are leaving the country every day because I find myself desiring such meaningful conversations with everyone we say goodbye to. I find I'm listening better and really wanting to find words of encouragement for those we talk with. Why don't I live like this all time? Why, do I not ALWAYS engage myself in purposeful conversations and not be afraid to share what is on my heart for that person I'm talking with?  A challenge for myself I guess to continue to be vulnerable and bold to share my heart. Often that means speaking in boldness about what God is doing. God has and is doing amazing things daily....truly, daily in our lives and I want to share what  a marvelous, miracle working, loving, faithful God we serve.

So, now to show you were we are heading and what our little....oh, so little casa (home) will look like.  We have been offered to stay in a Lee's ( a "virtual" women to us until Wednesday!) guest house. Her property is for sale and she was looking for a rental place for us but she also while looking for a place for us offered her guest house. So, we though it was a great opportunity to land our feet there and gain some knowledge from a someone who has lived in Belize for 8 years. Lee sounds like a wonderful women and has been very helpful in getting us on route to a great start. So, I've attached a link to the property and some photos. I believe only the bottom three photos are of the guest house. You can also scroll over to the "property history" tab and hear more about Lee's story. Also, a map to give you some idea geographically where we will be in the country.

God has been good to provide even those things that we didn't specifically pray about. We have a vehicle line up to buy from a family that we met there in Sept. He is selling us his Ford (sorry dad) Explorer to us at a great price and right on budget what we had allotted to spend on a vehicle. We have a car rented just for two days to get us to our casa and to get ownership changed. Thanks you Lord for saving us a weeks worth of rental!

If you pray, you can pray that we have a sweet departure from our family. Pray for strength and faith to know the hope to which God has called us to!

http://jeremylavender.com/love-light-ranch/property-gallery

We will be a few miles west of St. Ignacio 

                                                ^   Just above the red arrow is a clearing with a little house.....that's where we will be. It's about 2 miles on a gravel road outside of Bullet Tree.

Bye Bye Boat Boxes!

Wednesday we completed our packing of shipped goods. It's funny, when people ask what we are taking we say, "oh, not much other than clothes and some bare necessities" I think I need a better answer for that question...cause somehow we filled all these bins!

So here are some of the things we packed.....

Wait a minute... she's going by plane.

If you are wondering what we really packed that we thought we couldn't do without here's an idea of what was important to us to take. We took 2 guitars. One of which get's played by me (Stephanie) and one which will hopefully be played by Chad or Paige. 4 bikes, a rather large tool box, a Blendtec, a juicer, a crock pot, some sheet sets, a full box of games cause this family LOVES to game! Lego, Meccano, polly pockets, rainbow loom, each one item chosen by the kids. Chad chose to take his loved wine glasses and I had my kitchen stuff. Lot's of other odds and ends I guess and some warmer clothes for "winter' in Belize.

A job well done!

Keaton and Chad drove the load to Mississauga and it's wrapped and loaded on two skids. The shipment will leave Aug 1 and is supposed to arrive in Belize on Aug 12. Now we will try to find a way to get this load from the port to our house in Belize.

We have agreed to a rental home just outside of Bullet Tree. My next posting I will show you a peek at the house we will start off in.

 

A big HUGE thank you to all those who came out on Sunday to say goodbye and even more than that encourage us in our move! We are amazed at family who drove from Sarnia, London and Niagara Falls to see us. Truly, truly we are blessed with such a great supportive network here. Our mom's worked hard to have a great day where we could see those we love before we go.

It's feeling good so far. We are trying to marvel in our "last's". Chad and I had two great rides before we packed our bikes. We had a great 50km ride in cottage country and our last ride with our biking buddy here on Sunday. It's still feeling a bit like we are getting ready for vacation. We will head to the cottage on Sunday for a week of family time with one of my sisters and some extended family. As we prayerfully prepare to leave we are praying for comfort for our family as we say goodbye to each other and courage for us to say goodbye and be confident in the will of the Father!

 

 

Good Bye Open House

Just a quick note to let you know that our Mom's are hosting a good bye open house on

SUNDAY JULY 20th

If you want to stop by to see us before we go come on over to the farm anytime between 2-7pm.

We'd love to see you all before we go.

July Nomads

So we are now in our last month here in Canada and we are living rather nomad like. We have the privilege of spending time at Chad's parents and Uncle's cottage near Lindsay. I tell you as I sat in the boat on a beautiful sunny afternoon streaming through the waters of Sturgeon Lake I reflected that we are certainly not moving looking for paradise because we have paradise right here at he cottage.
We will be splitting our remaining time travelling between the cottage and "home". (We use that term loosely now!)
We seem to have three points of focus now.

1. Finding a rental home in Belize. We are spending time in cyber world looking at many possible places to rent. We have limited budget of $500.00/mnth and are hoping to get a 2/3 bedroom house with a small amount of land. We are praying for water, either a pool or a place on the river and some fruit trees were we could enjoy some fresh goodness picked daily. We totally believe that as we continue to pray for this providence of water and fruit tree that God will show us the right place and the provide these things. We believe in His word when he says,

¹³ And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴ You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

John 14:14

 

2. Packing....this took a bit of a "U" turn from our recent plan to take 10 suitcases, 3 bikes, 2 guitars and 3 kids. My super diligent husband called the airline to confirm what we were planning to take as luggage and what the extra bags would cost...only to find out that our first leg from Toronto to Houston we are on a 75 seater commuter plane. This means no 2nd luggage, no sporting goods, and not even a regular sized carry on! Slight hiccup! This means  we are now shipping stuff! We had already found a shipping company that would ship very quickly and very cheap so we've contacted them and we will be shipping most of our stuff. We will drop it in Toronto a week before we leave and it will arrive in Belize the week after we arrive. So, two weeks in transit....that's pretty good! Bearing in mind ......it's not actually there yet, this is merely an ideal right now!

 

3. Finally on the agenda....to start he good byes. Now it's getting harder. As I see friends, family, acquaintances my mind rushes to thoughts of, "when will I see them next", "what will change in the their live until I see them again", and "have I said everything I really wanted to say to this person face to face before I leave" and so many more thoughts too. This is when reality is hitting. When I say goodbye or give a  goodbye hug I know it's going to be for much longer than it has been in the past.

 

So, if I'm honest (this is Stephanie speaking), "YES", I'm definitely getting more teary. Saying goodbye the fabulous teacher we had at St. Jacob's school was the first of many to come. As I'm writing, I'm coming up with strategies for myself. Maybe I need to think less about the saying goodbye and more about thank you for what you giving to me or our family in the time we have had.

 

I look forward to sharing with you soon about the rental home we find. I know God is asking us to trust him in this area. And so we will wait for whatever he has for us. Hopefully this posting gave you some insight into how you can pray for us and what we are feeling right now. On a great note....the kids seem super excited! Probably the most positive we've seen them. Pray for them, especially Paige as we feel it might be the most difficult for her. She's amazing though and has had opportunity to share with us that she is feeling excited about going to Belize now. She's an amazing 8 year old!

 

Stay tuned.....

Stephanie

                                       Here are some of the fun times we are having in our last

                                                                          few weeks

 

 

Crazy Keaton loving the water at the cottage

Grady's favourite.... making soup, truffles and pies in the sand

I'm sure she had a book in her hand that just didn't make the shot

A carefully engineered castle and castle city

The things we adults find fun....TRX challenges

Games, games, and more games