Off to Belize

Our annual mission trip to Belize is almost here.  As the snow fell across the mountains of Western North Carolina today I packed shorts and T-shirts for a week and a half in Belize.  Now if the weather cooperates we may get to Charlotte tomorrow and our 6:00 AM flight on Wednesday will not be delayed or cancelled.

Our usual contingent of doctors and nurses are going to conduct medical clinics in villages around Belmopan, the capital of Belize. Several support staff go to help organize and get the people registered to see a doctor.  Our construction project is at the school in the village of Camelote, where the Baptist Training Center is located.  We have worked on houses in the village in the past couple years, and painting and doing maintenance at the school should benefit the children of the village.  We also have some of our hand bell choir going to work with the hand bell choir we helped form last January.  Our agriculture ministry will hopefully result in a lot of pregnant cows.  Two of our team will work with the Ministry of Agriculture on improving the cattle at a farm by breeding American bull genetics with Belezian cows.

This will be my 10th mission trip to Belize with Marion First Baptist Church.  We have grown from nine on the first trip in 2005 to 33 going this year.  We have built relationships with many people in Belize and we hold our medical clinics in some of the same places from year to year.  Over the years we have added new sites for our clinics and our construction projects have ranged from working at churches to building and refurbishing houses in the local village.

We are blessed to stay at the Baptist Training Center located just west of Belmopan.  We have stayed there every year.  Eric and Julie Maas are CBF field personnel who direct the BTC.  There are comfortable rooms and dining and kitchen facilities on well maintained grounds.  We now try to work in the village where the BTC is located to be a good neighbor to the people there.

While we are on mission in Belize we will post pictures and comments on a blog for the trip. The link is
http://fbc-belize.blogspot.com/.  Check in to see what we are doing and to see a little of the country and people we so enjoy visiting each year.