New

Happy New Year!
New...what a great refreshing word. "New". Maybe I'll focus on the 'new' today to give you a quick (ha, I always think it will be a short post) update in a few areas of life for us.
First off we are still marvelling in the wonderfully encouraging and fruitful and fun visit we had with my (Stephanie) parents over Christmas. Wow, God is good to have allowed them to come at such a time. Made Christmas so easy for us all the while we have many new friends here in Belize who have such a similar story to us and were unable to spent their Christmas with loved ones. Thank you Lord!

Loved ones. That will lead to my second praise that we marvel in almost daily. Our greatest prayer before coming was that God would provide good friends for both us and the kids to be surrounded by. He hears the prayers of his people indeed and he give us the desires of our hearts! We have several families that we get together with several (ok, about 4 or more) times a week! They are amazing believers in the same powerful God. We are each on a different journey in the same place doing life together and it's awesome to see God provide in so many ways. We learn an incredible amount from each others victories and trials. I feel that my heart will be forever divided and torn now. We have family and friends at home that we love and we now have friends that are as close as our family here. What a blessing they are!

New on the work front: Today Chad registered a business. Shoots Alive is the name of our company. That is the first step to getting a work permit which will allow us to sell product and hopefully draw an income sometime soon as well as bypass the need to go to immigrations every 30 days to get a stamp and approval for an additional 30 days in the country. There is a fee to this as well so we will be happy when we can apply as dependents under Chad's work permit. All in good or God's time though.

New also is the next phase of our business. We have had a great success with our mini sprouting system. We are feeding our 16 broiler chickens fresh sprouts several times a day and juicing barley grass for our morning wake up drink. So, now we are moving onto a building a second system with some modifications. We need to source as much as possible from here in Belize. The import fees are too high to make it feasible to sell the system without sourcing it here. Chad heads out tomorrow to see what we can get made here. The next system will be automated. Right now we are hand watering due to several reasons. One we have little plumbing expertise and second there are some parts that we are unable to get here that we need. They are on order for the next system and will be smuggled...I mean brought in with Chad's parents. (Don't worry Mom, I'm kidding!)

The next "new" thing God is doing is exciting for us. We have had a heart for the village people (locals not the YMCA singers!) since we got here. Through circumstances we have decided to leave the church we were attending and start a new church with the same pastor that was at our old church. Although we don't have a building in the village yet to host church we are hoping that in time that God will open a door to have the church very accessible to villagers. So, we went from a church with 300 + people to .....94! Pretty good for the very first Sunday! It's pretty informal yet as we have only had one Sunday together but you can pray that with all the pieces that need to come together yet we would all be spirit lead and the appropriate leaders would arise to fill positions. We are excited to see what God does.

New at home: We have new neighbours. Ok maybe we are the new neighbours still but the Canadian's that own the property we rent on are back. Chad picked them up from the airport on Tuesday and it was our first time meeting them. Lovely people that have been running several mission projects and teams here for about 10 years. We are also excited at the opportunity this may bring for us to learn and help out with missions teams.

New on our hearts: It has been amazing to see how slowly and surely God has been putting puzzle pieces together for us. I'm thankful He doesn't reveal things to us any sooner than we can handle. Amen? It has been through several different ways that God has challenged our thinking and broadened our thoughts on "this time we are in". We have been reading through the Bible from the beginning with the kids. I've actually never done that yet! True. So, we came across the teaching on Sabbath (or Shemitah) years in Leviticus 25 where God says to plant and work your land for 6 years but the 7th is to be a year of rest for the land. It was meant so that God could show how he provides for us. Then we were introduced to the Jubilee year. Where after every 7 Sabbaths/Shemitahs (each Sabbath is 7 years so 7 of those equals 49 years) is a Jubilee year, that being the 50th year. The year that all debt is repaid and all land returns back to it's rightful owner. In researching we been made aware of many significant world events that have occurred on these Sabbath years. Very interesting and thought provoking studying! I'm thankful that God has first showed us his greatness and providence in our life and we are now ready to expand our understanding and discernment in this area. This was part of our fruitful visit with my parents as well as they have also been studying the same topics without us ever have talked about it!
If you have interest in this topic and want to see how the world and NASA events and predictions line up with God's already spoken words here are a few links to get you started.
http://mikebickle.org/resources/series/daniel-studies-in-the-end-times
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iE3hqqdQt88
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVCcZF2Yfn4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvn9cSHJLQk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsPyne-kjoA

Don't worry we haven't gone off the deep end! We are just opening our eyes and hearts to what God is showing us and seeing that He has ordered this world and He is in control!

My final "new" is the blessing of each new day and each day I have the opportunity to start afresh. And each day I have "new" mercies just for me. I need them. We all need them. I am thankful that in my imperfections God is doing a new thing and where I am weak he comes to make me new and stronger IF I let him.

We are blessed!
I will leave you with this song that comes straight from my heart. It speaks to me all day and I pray it does for you to. The words are powerful and so true for my life.

"Yet I am confident of this:

   I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

 Wait for the Lord:

Be strong and take heart and wait on the Lord."

Psalm 27:13-14

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQan9L3yXjc

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!