Belize—Day 5

Another beautiful day in Belize. It started out foggy, but that didn’t last long. The sun is out with a vengeance, but the breeze keeps it from being too bad – although the guys with the shovels probably wouldn’t agree with that. We have accomplished a lot of different things this week so far: everything from changing faucets to renovating and painting the cook’s room to laying pipe. Today we will make our tie-ins to the buildings from the water lines. It was such a good feeling to see that water come through the lines and find no leaks. While we are doing the tie-ins today, some of the guys will also lay the steel for the concrete to be poured tomorrow. Everyone is getting along well, but I may have gotten the boys into trouble. I just mentioned in my devotion this morning the fact that some of them had chosen to chase a “squash,” which is an animal like our raccoon, before morning devotion. It turns out it wasn’t a squash. It was a type of monkey, but it looked to me like a large rat. The boys went running down the hill, grabbed sticks and tried to herd it towards one of the boys who had taken his shirt off to catch it. They were not very successful, but they kept trying, even climbing the tree to try to knock it off the branch. Needless to say, the animal got away and the boys got a talking to.

I did have to deal with a couple of issues yesterday. First I caught Nikki and Amy in the guys dorm, but Brian said it was alright because he was chaperoning them. And then there is Gorman. I think that is all I will say. Because of him I almost had to change my devotion to the ten commandments of which we had decided that he was only keeping seven of them. And one doesn’t count because it isn’t the Sabbath yet. Now everyone is calling me their redneck preacher. I’ll let you guess why. If you ever travel to Belize, take my word for it. SPF 30 is not adequate sun block. David Ward has sung us a few of his songs that he has written. He has one that I hope he will sing at Southside very soon. Another issue that has just come to my attention is that our project manager, Randy Smith, decided to go to town with Lyle just before lunch, and they just so happened to get caught there and had to eat out at a fish place. But I’ll bet their food wasn’t as good as ours.

We got the whole system together and everything tied in. Since I had to wash dishes after supper, Randy let me go take a shower. A few minutes after I finished, I turned on the faucet and nothing came out. Apparently we had forgotten to cap one of the lines we were abandoning so they had to turn it off and fix it. But now everything is working well. When Lamar and I finished washing dishes, we started back to the houses when suddenly an awful roar and something came charging out of the ditch by the office. Lamar and I almost died, but it was just Ashburn, one of the boys having a little fun with us. I’ve never seen a boy laugh so hard.

Apparently Gorman almost killed David today when David tried to pull Gorman out of a three foot deep hole. I would pretend that he had fallen in, but he had actually climbed in to get it ready for the rebar we put in it. I’m sad to say that we may not get to actually pour concrete tomorrow, but we have gotten more done than any of us thought we would.
We took the boys into town for ice cream tonight. It was a good trip. Some of the team had a better time than the rest of us. I didn’t realize the reason they wanted to go is that the ice cream shop serves “rum raisin ice cream.” There were a few who are very happy right now. God is good. We are developing good relationships with the boys. I would like to take a couple home with me.