Taking a break today in God's creation

Cory and I are on a much needed holiday in central Belize. The place is called Hidden Valley Inn. Today we checked out about 5 waterfalls. Tomorrow we head back, stopping over in Belize City for some much needed shopping.

Pulling Back from Youth Pastoring

Cory and I met with the pulpit board earlier this week to discuss the progress of their decision to have us on as a youth pastoring couple. Last spring when we were here their youth pastor resigned and so we offered to help out as interim youth pastor till they could find another one. To facilitate this the school board tried to bring me on for only quarter time but due to a lack of teachers (we are still short a grade 8 teacher) I have been working about 50 hours a week and Cory quite a bit more. This has been rather tiring for us and everyone (the board, us and the youth chair) felt it best if we withdrew our name from the youth pastoring role and focused on the teaching ministry.

This has really helped reduce the stress here. Of course, we are still offering to help the youth leaders if they ever need our help.

A tough week

For those who have not heard yet we had a really tough week this week. On Monday night our car was covered in flour and egg and a snake was left to greet us outside the door. It turns out it was Halloween night and despite how it is a predominately Christian community I was surprised such pranking went on. I had to power wash the car which was already suffering with it's paint peeling off the hood (and we are borrowing this car for the year) and bits of flour were stuck all inside the windows and door jams.

Class didn't go much better that day for either of us, especially Cory. Of course the Devil would want us to give up and at times that seems like an easy road. My mom says, "The Devil doesn't bother people he isn't afraid of."

Of course the kids were just trying to have fun but with some of the troubles we have been having it really looked like, "We don't want you here!"

Some points of grace in the midst of it all:

• The pastor and his wife spent quite a bit of time with us and encouraged us
• The students involved have since confessed and taken responsibility by washing all the nooks and crannies where the flour went.

As our prayer team we could really use your help. It seems we are indeed involved in a spiritual battle. That means God wants to do something through us and someone else wants to stop it. Personally I want to see what God has in mind!

• Pray for small encouragements in our days
• Pray for break-throughs in our classes. They are getting more and more out of control and it is hard to be the "mean" person to call them back into line so they can learn.
• Pray Cory doesn't have to work so much, she is currently getting up at 6am and working till about 9:30-10:00pm and this is really hard on her.