A Hero's Reward

In a day when there are very few real heroes, I heard a story about one. His name is John Cook, and he has gone home to his eternal reward. Ever since I have been in Decatur, I have heard about this godly man, about all the things he does for people and organizations -- how he prays with his employees and ministers constantly. But what impressed me most was a story I heard about Mr. Cook on Wednesday. Literally, he was on his death bed, knowing he would soon leave this life but not aware that he had only a matter of days. A dear friend walked into his room and saw Mr. Cook holding the hand of his nurse. Not knowing what was happening, he quietly exited the room to come back later. When he did, he found them still sitting there, holding hands, with tears in their eyes. Mr. Cook looked at his friend and then said to the nurse, "Why don't you tell him what just happened to you?" The nurse looked at this man and said, "Mr. Cook just led me to Jesus." On his death bed, John Cook was concerned about the spiritual well-being of a woman he didn't even know. What a hero!

I know that I may not have all the details of the story correct; it may not have happened exactly like I have written it. Tales like this sometimes take on a life of their own, but everything I know about John Cook leads me to believe that even if the details aren't correct, the story is true. As I reflected on this story, all I could do was pray and ask God to make me a soul-winner like John Cook. I know that he wouldn't want people to consider him a hero, but in my mind, he is.

February is Romance Month

Well, what more can I say. The month of February is filled with hearts and love and Valentines. So why shouldn't it be about the second most important relationship in our lives: our spouses. Last week we focused on becoming best friends with our spouses. Isn't it funny how we sometimes get married and then prefer to spend time with other people? I guess funny isn't the right word for it. It really is sad, at least to me. I can't imagine not spending my time with Sonya. That doesn't mean she has to watch science fiction movies with me all the time, but she does watch them a lot. Just like I watch HGTV with her. We do spend a lot of time together, but we also are comfortable doing things alone or with other people, too.

Today we focused on communication. As important as it is to be best friends, it is just as important to communicate with our best friend. When we first meet, it's like we don't have enough time to say everything that's on our minds. But after we've been married for any length of time, we don't have enough things to say to fill up all our time. So we read the newspaper or watch television or find other things to occupy our times. It is okay, in fact it's good, to get to the point where you are comfortable with the silences as long as the silent moments don't become the norm.

Some people may wonder why I am spending so much time on this topic when we have a church full of senior adults. It's because we have couples in our church, young and old, who are having problems in their marriages. It's because we have youth who need to hear what it takes to have a godly marriage before they get married. It's because no matter how good your marriage is, there is always room for improvement. I am hoping that the couples in our church will take seriously their role as mentors to couples in need. And don't forget, if you missed the messages, you can listen to them online at www.southsidebaptist.net . Go to audio sermons and scroll down to "Making Good Marriages Great."

We will conclude this series with a special event on Sunday morning, March 1 and then a special viewing of the movie "Fireproof" on Sunday night. You don't want to miss it.

Belize--Final Report

We made it home -- finally. It was a long day yesterday as we waited in the Belize airport and then we waited in the Houston airport. We were a little worried in Belize when one of our team members was pulled out of the line and searched. I know this is a common occurrence, but we were worried because there was a slight situation in which she misappropriated some muffins from the Mennonites. We feared that they had her on video and had sent her picture ahead to the airport to stop her. But all was well. You are probably waiting for the name, but I promised Nikki I wouldn't put it in the blog, so I am going to keep this one anonymous. Oops!

Mark found a friend in the duty free section of the Belize airport, but I think it was because he wanted Mark's watch. Can you believe Mark wouldn't give it to him? Even though there was one Mark could buy for only $4000 U.S. The flights were good, but we had a long layover in Houston. The only problem there was that we couldn't keep Bro. Berry out of the bar. I probably should say that was the closest place he could find to watch the Super Bowl. Gorman pretty much behaved himself, but I think it was because he was tired. He did get some fishing tips from the flight steward during the wait on the tarmac in Houston. We had to wait because of some bad weather, and apparently we had to fly very high to get over and around them.

And when we landed, it was great to see family and friends who came to pick us up. It was an amazing week, but I am so thankful for home. See you all soon.

For more information on the Belize Vo-Tech School, go to http://www.belizevotech.com/ .

Belize--Day 8

Well, we finally made it back to Belize City and the hotel -- after LOTS of shopping. We first stopped at a corner market where they had all kinds of goodies. The woodworking over here is amazing. But in some of the shops, they are aware of just how amazing it is. I tried to get Gorman to buy me a wooden elephant for my birthday in August, but he wouldn't do it. It only cost $400 Belize which is $200 U.S. Sometimes you just can't understand people. I just realized that if I had told him it was for Sonya, he would probably have bought it. Just my luck. We have seen some amazing jewelry and artwork of all kinds. All I can say is that Brian and Kerry are going to have to carry some heavy suitcases back home.

We ate lunch at Cheers in Belmopan. I had a Hawaiian burger, a fantastic change from the chicken, beans, and rice we've had twice a day. Some of the team members were getting pretty tired of the same thing over and over again, but I really enjoyed it. However, I am looking forward to getting back to some good home cooking at Ruby Tuesday, O'Charleys, Cracker Barrel, etc.

The Belizean people are very talented. Most of the boys at the school can play guitar. After the first day back, they really got into the singing during the devotion time. It was fun watching some of them sing and pretend to sing. This morning, I made a point of talking to each of the five boys that made a profession of faith to remind them how important it would be to pray, read their Bibles, and truly worship. So please remember to pray for Brandon, Travis, Reymundo, Winfield, and Matthew. Matthew started the week without a smile on his face. It was hard to get him to even respond to us. But Thursday, Friday, and this morning, he was laughing, talking, taking our cameras and making pictures. He was a different young man. Reymundo was really under conviction last night before he gave in to Christ's gentle tug on his heart. My heart was full seeing these young men come forward. Ralston, the principal of the school, and his lovely wife Iona and their beautiful little boy Stefan were there last night. I promised him that our church would continue to pray for his family and the school, so please put them on your prayer list.

It is cloudy, rainy, and 70 degrees today with a nice ocean breeze. We have enjoyed it immensely. The hotel is nice enough. Of course you have to imprint your credit card to get a remote control for the television. Ordinarily I would just get up and punch the buttons, but our television has no buttons.

Lyle drove us by the U.S. embassy in Belize. It is an amazing structure. The guard at the residential compound didn't like us taking pictures, so he urged us to move on.

Things are good as we wrap up this week. Please pray for our safety as we travel. We all look forward to seeing you soon. I want to take a few lines to say thank you to a great team of people who worked hard and well together. To Bro. Berry, thank you, Sarge, for keeping us on our toes and keeping things organized. Randy Smith -- thanks for being a great project manager. You worked us hard, but you made it enjoyable. To the rest of the team-- Betty, Ed, Nathalie, Lamar, Joyce, Brian, Amy, Kerry, Nikki, Terry, Sammy, David, Gorman, Ryan, Mark, and Greg -- you all made it a fantastic time of ministry. I couldn't have asked to be part of a better team. I've enjoyed writing this blog. I hope you have enjoyed reading it. Mrs. June, I probably won't continue a daily posting, but I will try to do better.

Belize—Day 7

What a great day. We left early for the Mayan ruins called Xunantunich. The guide says it rhymes with tuna sandwich. He was a funny man with a lot of information in his head. He told us all about the Mayan civilization, its rise and downfall, as well as about some of the religious rituals they performed. Needless to say, I don’t think many in our group will complain about tithing ever again. The ruins are spectacular. They believe they were inhabited from 600 to 1000 A.D. We climbed to the top of the ruins – a harrowing experience. As the guide said, no one from OSHA had inspected their work. There were stairs that were 100’ from the ground without guard rails. It was amazing in that once you were in the top, you could talk in your normal voice and the people below could hear you clearly and vice-versa. The Mayans engineered it that way so that the priest and the king could talk to the people and keep them intimidated. He knew exactly what people were saying about him. You can see for miles, so from his vantage point, the priest or king could predict changes in the weather. No wonder they believed he had supernatural powers. Terry and I hugged a lot of walls going up and down the stairs. Once we came down an even scarier set of stairs, we gathered at a picnic table in the shade, mostly to recover from the exertion. What we found was Sammy and some of the others who didn’t want to climb to the top witnessing to two Belizean soldiers. They told us they had to guard the border with Guatemala that was just a short distance away. Apparently the Guatemalans like to cross the border, mingle with the tourists, and then kidnap, rob, and do other bad things to them. We were glad they were there.

We ate lunch at Clarissa Falls, a beautiful little hotel/restaurant/bar on the water. It is an open air dining area with a few parrots, dogs, hummingbirds, and a toucan that stayed away. The food was delicious. There was chicken and rice and beans, which, by the way, has been our basic diet for a week. We did have pancakes and dak this morning. Dak is the first thing they have served that I didn’t think was good. It was a cross between fried bologna and fried spam.
On the way there and back, we were treated to some beautiful scenery. The houses are very colorful, much like you would see in Gulf Shores – the colors, not the size or quality. People line the roads walking or waiting on buses or riding their bikes. We passed horses staked out along the road eating grass, conservative Mennonites in their horse and buggies carrying produce to market. But as I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, the gang problem is bad and getting worse. They have all the American gangs which are ran by their American cohorts. They also have some local gangs from the Central American region that are increasingly violent. You can understand the attraction for the young men who have a choice between a life of extremely hard work just to survive or to become a part of a group of men whose only work is to take what they want from those who work hard. It is a problem that only God can solve, but He will choose to do it through His people who come and help to educate the young and let them know there is hope in Jesus Christ.

Tonight, we had our closing service with the boys. Nikki and Amy gave out awards for class performance, and Berry gave awards to the rest of the boys. It was only $1, but they were ecstatic. Berry talked to the boys about heaven and hell. I gave a brief devotion, and we had an invitation. Five of them made professions of faith. I talked with them afterwards, and they all seemed to be sincere. Mr. Ralston, the principle of the school, will play a major role in discipling these young men. He is a fine man who loves the Lord and cares for these boys. I know he will do great things at this school. Tomorrow we leave for Belize City. My heart is torn because of the needs here, but at the same time I want to be with my church family. My heart goes out to Gail Holbert in the loss of her mother and to Pat Baggett who fell last night and to Maxine Gay. I am so sorry that I could not be there for them in their need, but please let them know I am praying for them.

Belize—Day 6

Today is our 27th anniversary. I am blessed that I was able to start the morning off with a phone call to Sonya, my lovely wife, whom I miss very much. As Bro. Berry said this morning, when you get married, God truly makes us “one.” And as the years pass, it just gets better and better. I love you, sweetheart, and I can’t wait to see you Sunday night.

Thankfully, no one was hung over from the ice cream last night. It has been a great trip in that everyone has stayed healthy and in good spirits. You can tell that we are all tired, but everything is winding down today. We have completed all of the major projects that Lyle had on his list for this trip and many little projects that were on his wish list. We are even tackling one project that he never dreamed we would get to: we are preparing for the concrete, including the towers, that will support the water tank. I think it has been as hot today as yesterday, but most of the morning was spent in the shade tying steel for the towers. We wanted to go back this afternoon and stand the towers up, connect them together, and build the forms for the concrete, but we didn’t complete that task. Sorrowfully, we won’t get to see that poured. So far today, everyone has behaved themselves; however, Gorman has gotten a little too comfortable with the short jokes, all of them pointed at me. But that’s okay, because I love him and the Bible says I have to forgive him as well. We are all giving and taking a lot of good-natured ribbing, including Greg Johnson who sweats more than any man I’ve ever met, even me. The good thing is that I haven’t smelled him – so far. We have taken some interesting pictures of Randy Smith. All I will say is shorts and boots. Overall, I guess it was a good combination. Working together like this really pulls you closer to each other. The work was more like fun than work. The staff took very good care of us—the food was great. I even enjoyed the boiled okra.

We are done. We didn’t get finished, but we ran out of supplies. We worked after dinner trying to complete the forms for the towers. But we had soft nails and hard wood. Ryan was looking on and wanted to know how many Baptists it takes to drive a nail. It took quite a few to drive them into that wood. We are very proud of our accomplishments, but we know that all the glory must go to God. He kept us strong and healthy. He gave us almost perfect weather. We only saw one Tarantula, and only Ed saw that. There were a host of other spiders, mosquitoes, and ants.

We are all excited about going home, but it will be sad to leave the boys. While we will most likely see Lyle and Rose again, it is very probable that we will never see most of the boys again. They really behave a lot like our children, but without all the stuff we have given them. A simple thing like a bag of candy brightens their smile. I hope we have touched their hearts as much as they have touched ours.

One more thing. The team has told me over and over again that what happens in Belize stays in Belize. So please do me one favor: forget everything I’ve written so far!

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.