a Sunday afternoon...

It is Sunday afternoon. We just returned from having lunch with friends. Sundays can be nice and relaxing or very busy. There is the young marrieds' get together one Sunday out a month. It starts at 3pm and goes until 7pm. Then there is youth Sunday once a month. It starts at 2:30pm, goes till 5:30pm at which time everyone goes home for dinner and then comes back again at 7:30pm for an evening program. This Sunday is Friends and Fellowship...for anyone not in youth or young marrieds. They have, however, invited the young marrieds to join them this Sunday for games at the park, starting at 3:00pm.

Since Chris and I are young marrieds (you are considered such until you've been married for 10 years), and since we are helping with the youth group, we tend to go to both events. Today, we have decided to take it easy, rest, relax and get ready for the week ahead.

Being a grade 7 teacher, teaching my students proper grammar, I am suddenly noticing all the areas where I am using improper grammar in this blog and am hoping that no one else will notice :)

We have just finished our info prayer letter. Feel free to down load it (just below this update).

Another week of school starts tomorrow. More tests, quizzes, and homework. May the Lord give us strength that matches the energy of these kids.

-Cory

September Prayer Letter

The following prayer letter will be coming out in the mail in the next few weeks. For those of you who did not get it or want it early, here it is...

Download the full prayer letter with all the pictures here

I find that every year of my life seems to have a theme. This year one verse really stands out, “Leave your country, your people… and go to the land I will show you.” (Gen 12:1) Some say life is a journey; and like in this verse, it is a walk of faith, stepping out, not sure where we are going but knowing there is someone greater who walks with us.

It is interesting how God leads; take this year for example – at the beginning of the year Cory was working at a Christian Bookstore and Chris was making web pages for Trinity Western University. But a hand began to move us. At first we just heard about Belize and how there was a small school in the jungle just south of Mexico looking at being short 8 of it’s 12 teachers this fall. Something grew within us till we finally had to check it out. Little by little God kept confirming that this was where we were to be. So in faith we stepped out into the unknown in confidence that God would walk with us.

There is a joy in being involved in something supernatural – to have a sense that God has called you and there is a purpose for the steps you are on. It is kind of like how when I (Chris) was training my students to lead chapel for the younger grades I told them that God is already at work in those younger students lives and they have been invited to be part of the work of God. So Cory and I often pray, “Thank-you God for inviting us to do ministry with you today, show us where you want us to serve.” The interesting part is God was walking with these young people before we arrived and God will be the one walking with these young people long after we have left.

So why are we writing this letter? We would like to invite you to continue to walk with us. The amazing thing is that the God who is walking with us in Belize is the same God who walks with you in your city. The moment you enter into prayer with us the miles between us disappear and we walk together. In this way we can join hands and do this ministry together.

To support this we have created a web site called www.coryandchris.com where we are writing regularly of our stories and experiences here, of God’s answers to prayer and of urgent prayer requests. In addition we have included in this letter a prayer card that you can put on your fridge.

Thank-you for joining us in this ministry. – Chris and Cory Priebe

Continued....

Grade 8 teacher urgently needed - do you know of anyone!

The good news is we have 11 teachers working at the school now. The bad news is we are still missing a grade eight teacher. Leroy filled in for the first few weeks and one of the school board members has been filling in this week but it is really important to get a teacher in there who can guide the students through the year.

Would you be willing to help out or do you know of anyone that could come and help out? The qualifications are a person needs to be a growing Christian and able to teach from a home-school curriculum. If the person has a degree than that is wonderful but all they have is a servant heart and desire to teach then they could probably be used.

I am been emailing different Bible schools and Universities I am connected to and also tried to get a hold of a few Christian schools and ask if they had any applicants they did not have positions for this year.

If you know of anyone who might be a good match send them to http://www.authenticwalk.com/belize

If you can't think of anyone could you please join us in prayer for this one?

Thanks

Reflection on Love

An interesting thing happened the other day. It was during study period when my students were supposed to be studying. They came to me and asked if they could go to the store to get some icecream. Of course, it is study period so I asked how they were doing on their homework. I knew they had work to do in my Bible class because a Bible memory test was coming up quick so I told them if they memorized the passage for the quiz and said it to me 100% then they could go.

The next half hour was chaos. The students kept coming to me every 2 minutes and asking to quote their verse or complain about why they can't just go to the store. I admit (after sleeping on it) that my attitude was not very good. I got a bit annoyed and would not let them go until they got their verse down perfect without even pausing. I figured they should be studying. Sadly I watched the students become more and more frustrated and feeling like they want to just give up. Both sides were a little bit stubborn I think....

Anyhow I was praying about the whole thing that night and I started to realize I was not acting out of a Spirit of love but of frustration. The next day I had to humble myself and apologize to the class. They took it well and surprisingly they are studying more. Now I am praying for God's love to really pour through me and when I get frustrated I try to take a moment to just pray and find peace in God.

Of course, God loves to make His points clear so that same night I happened to bump into the pastor and we were talking about leadership. He said of himself, "People won't remember all that I said but they will remember who I was and if I loved them."

Speaking at Youth this Wednesday Night

Well we are over our colds now. Thanks for all your prayers.
Highlight for today was taking the high school down to the river for
PE canoeing class. Funniest part of today is I opened the windows to
cool down the house and the rain blew so hard and fast my bed sheets
got wet. Now Cory doesn't want to change them because it is my side
that is wet...

Tomorrow night (Wednesday) I am speaking to the young adults about
"Potential" It is part 3 of a 4 part series the youth leaders are
doing on "What does it mean to be a leader" in preperation for the
youth elections the first Sunday of October. I will be talking about
how God took clay which is nothing on it's own and breathed into it
just as he took David whom people thought was not much, and the
disiples whom people thought were not much, and you and me, well....
you know.... and breathed His spirit into them and they did amazing
things. Like them we need to offer ourselves as lump of clay into
God's hands and let Him form us and then breathe His power into us.

Thanks again for your prayers. Pray specifically that some of the
youth will feel called to leadership and rise to the challenge.
Blessings on you.

- Chris

Sick this week

Cory and I are sick this week. Looks like a strong head-cold, soar throat and perhaps flu is going through the community. Several of my students are sick too. Seems strange in that it is so hot here and yet you can still be sick, oh well. Please pray for Cory especially as she is really tired and we only have a substitute available on Tuesdays.

Chris

Leadership Training

At my seminary (ACTS seminary on Trinity Western Universities Campus) we are taught over and over again about leadership. I noticed a shift has actually happened in my life. I used to always focus my energy on teaching about holiness and leading seminars on how to live for God. Now I feel just as strong about leadership and training godly leaders (an integration of the two topics).

The youth group is having an election for 2 new youth leaders from the youth group. In preperation for this we are doing a four part study on what it means to be a leader to help the youth think through whom they want to elect and for those elected to think through what it means.

The four key topics are:

- Heart - Leader as a servant (John 13)
- Hands - Wise stewardship of the gifts we have been given (1 Cor 12; Rom 12; Eph 4)
- Life - Being a leader worth following (1 Cor 11:1, "Follow Me" statements)
- Feet - Stepping out and trying. (David, who although young and overlooked stepped out in faith, likewise we need to step past our fear with faith in God)

In addition to this I am working with the students in Bible class and teaching them how to do chapel for the younger grades. Our first chapel is next Wednesday Sept 7th.

Geckos in the Computer!

Since I have moved to Belize I have had about 6 requests to, "Please come over and fix my computer". I don't mind doing that but my passion is really to pass on what I have learnt to others. So I hosted a "Computer Repair Clinic" after school for my students where anyone could bring their sick computer and the students learn to fix it.

I invited my new friend, "Abe Dyck" who for many years has been fixing the computers in town but is now far too busy. So I let him take the show this week and he did great! He talked about hardware (I am more into software so I really learnt a lot). The biggest problems here have to do with the heat, humidity and dust. Most often all a computer needs is a good cleaning. We fixed two machines just by cleaning them out (including taking the video card and memory out and brushing off the cobwebs, dust and sometimes eggs from geckos or others). We learnt that a long beeeeep sound followed by a pause then another long beep means the memory is not working so take it out and clean it.

3 Other computers had fan problems. In two cases the fan was just burnt out. In the heat of Belize that means the CPU is overheating and when it does that it just stops until it cools down which means the computer just hangs and waits for the CPU to come back on. So we need to find new ones of those.

One fan we looked at was not spinning at all. It was on a computer nicknamed "Methusala" because it is so old (not to mention rusted because of all the humidity). After closer examination there was a gecko (small lizard in it). I wrote my friends who are in charge of technology at the leading Christian universities in North America about this one and the best suggestion was to put up a poster outside the computer advertising positions available as a stunt-double for the "Geico Gecko". Or just to put a screen over it.

Once again I left the pictures at school so I'll have to post the photo later.