Arrived Safe and Sound

Hi Everyone,
We have arrived in Belize!!  The team are all pretty sleepy, but we are feeling really blessed to have arrived with all of our people and luggage :)  We had a wonderful send-off in Grand-Bay / Westfield, with many of our church family coming to say good-bye.  Thank you to Marie's small group for the awesome cookies that they baked for us :) 

 We drove a five- car convoy to Portland on Friday morning.  Thankfully we had walkie-talkies to help keep us all in formation.  A huge thank you to Father Vic and Carole for driving with us with the extra luggage. 

We enjoyed an awesome supper together at Chili's, then we met to go over airport protocol and then many of the team hit the swimming pool at our hotel :)  Everyone hit the sack early because our wake-up call came at 3:45am Saturday.

Our hotel was amazing, we awoke to find hot egg  sandwiches and coffee waiting for everyone in the lobby.  Then we hit the road for the airport.  Unfortunately, our check-in at the airport was very slow.  I'm not sure that the airline knew what to do with a group booking.  Therefore, the most exciting part of our travels involved rushing to an airplane that had already announced its final boarding call.  We were also told that the flight had been over-booked and not all of us may be able to board.  Thankfully, we squeaked in our last team member because a mother agreed to place her young toddler on her lap. We are all thanking God, that despite this obstacle, we all safely boarded the flight in Portland.

Our layover in Newark was quick and painless.  Then we had a 4.5 hour flight to Belize city.  For most of us,  this was a great chance to get caught up on some much needed sleep :)

Once we landed we were met by Carmen and his son Troy, who are both from the mission house where we are staying. Everyone packed into the vehicles and we drove 45 minutes until we arrived at a wonderful restaurant for lunch :)  We ate a traditional Belizian meal, and then set out for the next 45 minute drive to the mission house.

The mission house will be home for the next week, and it is a tropical paradise.  It will take too long to describe, so I will try to include photos in the upcoming posts :) 

We had a great spaghetti supper and a worship & team time together to debrief the day.  We are all feeling very grateful for the ways God has been providing for our team.  Some of our answered prayers include:

1. Safe travel with no lost luggage (or bad weather)
2. The huge improvement of the health of some team members who were not feeling well when we left Grand Bay/Westfield.
3. A fast connection with people here in Belize.

Please continue to pray:
1. For health, with the lack of sleep, some people are feeling a little under-the-weather
2. For safety, that our team would be accident free for the entire duration of the mission
3. For us to have discerning hearts, and that God would move powerfully in us and through  us.

Thanks for all of your prayer support! We are truly blessed by our church family.

Blessings,

Anna Caines