A Change in Focus

After a lot of praying, discussion and waiting the board and us have decided it is best for Cory's health for her to step down from full-time teaching for this next semester and focus on substitute teaching. Of course this was not an easy decision to for a number of reasons:

1. The school is so short of teachers already and, like the grade eight class, this class may be left with one teacher after another filling in for the remainder of the year.
2. Stepping down half-ways through a project is not Cory's style. She desires to see a project through to the end, no matter how difficult. And yet, this situation is beyond her ability. We have seen her struggle with her health and in many other ways, knowing that something needs to change.
3. There are kids who do not deserve to lose their teacher. We hope that their studies will not suffer because of their classmates actions.

Yet, we know that this is God's will for Cory at this time.

Over the last years, this particular class has been challenging to many teachers. Mix that "energy" with the changes and challenges that come with puberty, and you've got one wild class. The community has been really supportive: the board has come in and spoken to the class and parents have regularly sat in during the day to help with discipline. Although there have been some improvements there reaches a point where you are not certain if you are the one that will lead the kids through the steps they have to take in order to turn around. As we shared these struggles with the board they opened the door for us and said they would rather have Cory step down, get some rest and support Chris in his teaching than potentially have everything blow up part way through the next semester and lose both of us. As to a new teacher, the board says, "God will provide." We truly feel they love and care for us.

So as of this January Cory will be focusing on substitute teaching and looking for other opportunities to do ministry that God will give her. Chris will continue to teach Bible and Computers for the high-school students.

Please pray for the following:

1. A teacher for the grade 7 class that can lead them back to focus on their studies, and provide the right amount of discipline.
2. God's help to the students (esp. to those who do not deserve this and yet will suffer along side their classmates) that they can still pass this year and those who are struggling with their classroom behaviour will have a change of heart
3. For Cory to get well rested and not be discouraged.

Please pray for Noelle, Rebekah and others

I recently recieved news about some of my fellow teachers back in Blue Creek and request your prayers for them. Noelle (whom we went with from our care group) - grade 4 teacher, Rebekah - highschool engligh and history teacher and 3 others were out for a walk a couple days ago. It was dark and a motorbike came around the corner and without seeing slammed right into the group. Noelle has a broken arm and a slipped disk in her back, Rebekah has a broken arm and head injuries and another girl took some serious hits to her head. I heard yesterday that Rebekah was released from the hospital and Noelle is supposed to be released today. I haven't heard much about the driver or the third girl.

I can only imagine this is really shaking up the community and definetly those young lives and their families. Thank-you for your prayers.

Going home for Christmas

Tomorrow morning we leave for Cancun. After 3 hours of driving then 6 hours of bus we will be there and start looking for a hotel. I wonder how much is rebuilt now after the hurricane? On Thursday we fly out at 5pm and arrive in Seattle around mid-night. Then off to Abbotsford for Christmas and then on to Kamloops later next week.

Thanks for all your prayers duing this travel time. Pray for:

- Safety
- Opportunity to share Jesus

Pray for Exams

The students are starting up Semester Exams today and will continue that all the way till next Tuesday. Please pray that they will be able to remember what they studied and put it to good use. Thanks!

Praise God for my Bursery

I got news a little while ago that my bursery has been approved. That means I get another free course from ACTS seminary as a benefit of working for TWU. That is very gracious of them since I am only 5 hours a week right now and the course is worth about $1000. But praise God because I really want to finish next summer. Only three more courses to go. So this one will be my master's paper (kind of like a thesis but only 50 pages long). I have been thinking about writing something about online ministry. Any ideas?

Our Christmas Program

This is our Christmas program that level3 and the highschool put on. Level3 was about "The Cost of Christmas" and was a retelling of the manger scene. The High School did "Mary Did you know" which walked through the life of Jesus leading to the death and resurrection through Mary's eyes. Phil DeHart put it together.

Hallelujah Church!

There is actually more than one Church in Blue Creek where we live. There is the EMMC (Evangelical Mennonite Mission Church) where we go, the Gleindemeihn (sp?) which is the old German service on the other side of town and there is the "Hallelujah" Church. Today we decided to visit this last group.

The chairs were in a circle around the Lord's table and the service started off with people reading from the Hymn book. Sometimes in unison and sometimes individually. People were free to put lots of emphasis on the key words and to give a good old "Hallelujah" when they really agree. Then after reading/ praying the Hymn we would then sing it a few times and then go back and read the good parts again.

Then someone would pick the next hymn. There was no designated "leader" as far as I could tell and the worship time just carried itself along as people felt lead. Communion came in the middle with the passign around of the bread and the wine (juice). Once the singing was done we read from a devotional book and people shared their words of encouragement and the messages God has been giving them on it.

The hymn book, Bible translation (Recovery Version), and study plan was written by Witness Lee and published by Living Stream Ministries out of California. Has anyone heard of this group?

My observations.... it was different. It had a sense of spontinuity and freedom where people could go as they felt led but in all this there was a clear rythme and tradition had formed even in the spontinuity. Every line read ended with some form of shouting emphasis on the word that made it sound somewhat "prayer spiritual". There was a very strong emphasis on the unity in the Church and how we are not individual Christians but need to minister together which is much needed in today's day. There was also a lot of emphasis on how this unity comes through "eating Jesus" which is the Lord's table, I don't think they are Catholic in their view but retain that communion is a simple... I even think they connect "Eating Jesus" with reading the Bible regularily.

One thing Cory and I had struggles with is when they sang and talked about becoming divine. One person shared how there is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and they are all one and so three in one. And how there is Father, Son, Spirit and Body and so four are now one. And how Jesus was God-man and now we are man-God b/c partake of the divine nature. Cory and I had a long talk to help clarify this. We explained how we saw it more that where when we are saved we recieve the Holy Spirit and so we are "filled" with God and partake in Him that way. Our nature, we said, never changes to God and the two are seperate. When we are born again we are not becoming God's begotten children as they suggest by the term "Jesus is the firstfruits [thus we are the secondfruits]" but rather born again spiritually to a new life. I was thankful however that when they talk about divine they at least claim that we do not become part of the Trinity but I am not sure how they are distinguishing it. I warned them of J.W. and Mormon teaching which minimizes the unique Sonship of Christ and puts us all on part with Jesus and of using such a strong phrase as "becoming divine". I also exhorted them to read more books than just Witness Lee and Cory exhorted them not to use words like "become divine" so as not to confuse others; but I am not sure how much progress we made or if we truely understood them.

Thanks again for all your prayers.

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.
  

Christmas Wish List for the School

Cory and I will be heading home for Christmas to visit family for 2 weeks. We will be visiting Cory's parents in Abbotsford, then my parents in Kamloops and my friends back at the office at Trinity Western University for some business meetings.

There are a few things that I wish I had here for the computer lab, if you have any of these things lying around could you please pass them off to either one of our parents or my office at TWU?

• Mousepads
• Optical Mice (the ball-mice keep getting clogged with dust)
• Keyboards that are not super stiff (we have some but they really slow the keyboarding students down because they are so hard)
• Hard-drives (Anything over 2 GB)
• Network cables (those blue or grey things used for Internet - not the phone lines but the high-speed ones)
• Wireless router (for our teachers who have laptops)
• Network Switches (10okb or higher)
• Memory (especially 333 DIMM's but also 100 and 133 too)
• NIC (Networking) cards
• Wireless Network recievers
• USB scandrives for teachers to save files onto
• Legal copies of Windows 95 or 98
• Legal copies of Office 97 or 2000
  

And if you have anything that would work for a school bell (electric thing for 3 different buildings) that would be great.

(If you have anything could you please add it to the comments below and where you will drop it off - my parents in Kamloops, Cory's parents in Abbotsford, or my office at TWU)

Chris

Opportunities and Encouragements

Two things we really need prayer for

1. Opportunities: I heard something the other day (but I fogot what it was now) about how we need to pray to see the opportunties all around us. Cory and I prayed that yesterday and before we even said amen we saw some fellow teachers we could give a ride. Small things yes, but we really want to be a blessing. Could you please pray God gives us opportunities.
   
   
2. Encouragment: We just passed mid-terms and are now a quarter of the way through our time here. We have found he honeymoon stage to be over and are learning to rely on God for strength to face new challenges and to find pleasures in the joys. Please pray God will give us little encouragements throughout our day.

Thanks again for all your prayers.

Hurricane Update

Thanks for everyone who has been praying for us. Other than a lot of rain and strong winds everything is the same as normal (in fact the rain and winds are sort of normal too). Please keep us in your prayers and all those whom the hurricane might hit.

Chris

Have you ever wanted to throw a computer out of the window??

One of the neat parts of my role here is looking after the computer lab. Ever since my first computer of Christmas grade 8 one of my favorite things is to take the computers apart. So in computer class we sometimes take the computers apart. The problem is some of them are just barely hanging in there, that was the problem today.

Senerio: We have 9 computers, 6 work well and 3 are almost dead. I need to reformat the 3 to make them work better but if I start I'm not sure it will work out since I don't have the original disks for all the parts.

Blessing: One of the parents just gave me two of their old computers. One is actually a 500mhz computer (fairly decent) but when I turned it on the hard-drive was dead. No big deal I have an extra drive from a dead computer (but no OS yet). The other one is a 166MHZ and surprising I just plugged it in and it worked.

Process: So I decided to back up all the computers by making an image of each drive so if I mess up or something goes wrong (like the power going off twice a day and corrupting the system) I have something to go back to. I backup up the new 166mhz system and then formated the drive to test it. When I restored it the computer no longer accepted the drive. Nuts! So I stuck it in another computer and the drive actually loaded (until it froze b/c the hardware was so different). Then I took that computer drive and stuck it in the 166 and it loaded which means the cables and all are working. That's good. But when I put the other drive back that computer did not work now. Oh oh! Several hours later I still haven't figured it out, I'm hoping that when I come back in the morning it will work. So the drive works and the cables work but they don't work in the computer.

Solution: None known yet. But we have 7 working computers and 3 temperarily disabled ones.

Prayer Request: Pray I can get the computers working again and not lose too much hair in the process.

How did the Marriage Retreat go?

Thank-you to everyone that prayed for Cory and I at the marriage retreat. We really needed it. There has been so much rain lately that the road was all washed out. Fortunately someone borrowed our group a really big 4x4 and we plowed through about 2 feet of mud and water.

The talks went well too. I was concerned about them because we were cramming 6 weeks of marriage planning into 3 hours but God answered our prayers and people made some progress. Probably the most helpful was just having everyone sit back and just think about what is most important in life. I mean so often we spend our life working for something we think is important and then look back and go, "I wish I had only...." "been at home" or "given more to God". So we tried to skip the step of wasting time and focus on what is important now.

Download the PowerPoint presentation here

Speaking at Young Married Retreat Oct 7-9

I have been invited to speak at the young married retreat this weekend (Oct 7-9th). It will be at the Cahal Pech Resort in San Ignacio. On the fun side this will be a great retreat for Cory and I including a trip to the Mayan ruins, canoeing the river, strengthening friendship with other young married and maybe even doing some cave tubing or canoeing (something we so want to do).

I have been doing a lot of praying about what I should speak about and after talking to the leaders it seems best to do a strategic planning workshop. The core idea is that God has been taking each couple on a journey and has brought them together for a purpose. It is important to stop and reflect on the path God has brought us on so we can align (or at least surrender) ourselves to the path God has before us.

Friday night: Values - What is most important to you
Saturday morning: Mission - What do we believe God has called us to do
Sunday morning: Vision (and Plan) - How are we going to get there?

I took a class last year at ACTS seminary on Strategic Planning and for my major assignment Cory and I rewrote the strategic planning process (usually done for Churches and businesses) and applied it to marriage. In this we wrote a very detailed plan which we used to decide if Belize was a match with where we sense God is taking us.

Here are some prayer requests:

• For incredibly insight and inspiration as I prepare the talks. I need to fit a 1 month process into 3 one hour sessions.
• For clarity as I speak that the group will understand and be able to apply it
• That God will give the group incredible insights into the path he has for them and direction on what He wants them to be focusing on at this stage in their marriages.
• That Cory and I will be able to build rich and meaningful relationships that will have a lasting spiritual impact on us and them.
  

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."