Greater Life Church Mission Team--November 2014 Part 1

Our home church came for a short term mission trip between November 21 and the 29th.  Greater Life Church from Lexington, Tn is a wonderful church, full of great people, and Dennis and I had a fun time while they were here.  There are a ton of pictures to share so I will just put those on and tell you all about the visit.

Attempting to go from left to right, starting at the back we have Gary, Pastor Jamie, Amy, David, Carol is in the pink, Steve with the beard in the middle, John with the cap, Beate, Mary, Mike, Connie who is hiding Tom.  The three ladies in the middle are Mary in the red, Ann and Sharon.  In the front is me, Vicki, Katie, Micah and Amber.  Poor Dennis is the one absent because everyone knows the photographer is hardly ever in the shot.

 Home base for the team is Bridge the Gap Ministries, where Dennis and I live.  It is in the Cayo District of Belize, in a town called Blackman Eddy.

This is Katie, her mom Amy and Mary and Mike.

This is Beate in her kitchen.  She loves the grill!  We loved the pancakes!

Mary and Gary with Ann.

Hanging around before breakfast.  Beautiful jungle view in the background.

Everyone took turns on kitchen duty.

The team spent three days at Buena Vista Government School.  But the visit wasn't just about building and improving the school.  We took great efforts to create an atmosphere where relationships could be developed.  For the whole year before our team's arrival God had been working on us and what it means to be a missionary here in Belize.  It didn't take a whole year to understand that it is about discipleship and relationships.  Dennis and I have had the privilege to spend the last year getting to know the students and staff at the school.  We have gotten close to many and have fallen in love with them all.  So now that our team is here we wanted to share what we could in the three days we had them at the school.  Not really possible, but we gave it our best shot.

Fifteen people from Lexington, Tennessee spent time in the classrooms playing.  They played three different kinds of Bingo, Uno, Boggle, singing, performing Reader's Theatre, giving a puppet show, making paper plate angels and handprint Christmas trees.  While all that was going on some of them were installing white boards and making tables for the infant classrooms.  We had chapel every day and then the entire school came together for one huge chapel on Wednesday.

Katie surrounded by little girls playing Bingo.  For many of
them this was the first time they played Bingo.

Love the little guy next to the precariously stationed fan.  I don't remember his name, but every time
I go into the Infant 1 Room he gets my attention.  Check out the little girl with the pony tails.  

This is the two Infant classes together.  That is Ms. Evette on the floor and Carol doing a very good job
calling out the Bingo letters.

Loved the reactions here!

Diego, Elil, Jose and don't remember.
Having fun learning how to play Uno.

The teacher is Ms. Danelly, along with Christina,
Carol, Kayla, Gabriel and Andy.

Gary has his hands full here.

I think most of them enjoyed the game.  They caught on very quickly,
including how to cheat!

One of the projects for the school was sanding and painting student's desks.  The kids took their jobs very seriously.  There was about fifty students sanding their desks at the same time.  We had a kind of sanding fog occur.  That was alot of dust.

Christina looking so cute with Justin who is apparently taking
this sanding thing to a whole new level.

Boys are competitive no matter where they are. 

Ann found a happy place in Belize.  She really worked wonders with the kids on voice lessons.  They all sounded so good.  Yes, Ann really shines when it comes to music and singing!

Anderson is the big guy in front and Laura is in front of him.
Manuel and Yulmar are a little behind them and to the right is
Yeslin and Louisa.

Gisela was cracking me up!  That is Mr. Mefi next to her.

This is only a start.  I think the blog system doesn't like too many photos at one time.  So, for now I am done but there is a lot more coming.

Love you guys!