The reason I have been sick

Hey everyone,

Well this trip in Libertad Village has truly been amazing so far. I have met such great people and looove the village, and have made some great friends (Belizean and American) already!  I've been up and about everyday working hard and having fun.

Unfortunately though, I have a little bit of bad news. Though I have been feeling awesome and healthy, I woke up again this morning COVERED in what i thought were more "bug bites." It was literally knee to toe completely covering my legs. I was mortified again and couldn't understand why since I had slept with 98% deet on me and with a mosquito net.

Anyways I went throughout the day after putting on Benadryl cream, but then when I was sitting inside away from all bugs with Pastor Angel talking, and I noticed my arm itched. So I looked and the "bites" were spreading onto my arm. We could watch as the bumps over time appeared one by one, so then I knew it had to be something else. :/

So Pastor Angel and I decided I should definitely get checked out by the doctor, and went back here to Orange Walk to see him. Apparently, there is some sort of fungal infection that is going around northern Belize and it turns out that I caught it. He said it was really good that I came to the doctor because at this point it would have gotten a lot worse fast if I hadn't come. Well I don't know how long I have had this for but I think it explains a lot about me being sick last week!! Anyways, he prescribed me three different medications to take and said I will be fine with the medicine.

Please continue to pray for my health! I want this nasty thing to go away... I kind of look like a monster right now. But the good news is that my spirits have been really high this week and I feel happy, not like this is defeating me or anything. I know my health is VERY important and that I need to take care of myself first. And to be clear I am definitely not being careless about it just want to make sure everyone knows that. :) I am staying in Orange Walk for the night to rest and get better again.

Thank you everyone for your prayers and support. I love you all!

<3 Shannon

White sandy beaches and turquoise waves

Great news! I am feeling 100% better after getting the rest and relaxation time I think I really needed. I am having a SO much fun here in Cancun, Mexico. we spent most of the day on the beauuutiful beach yesterday! The internet is really slow here so it only let me upload one pic.. 

The water was sooo bright turquoise. My favorite. :) i'll try to upload more pics if I can later.

Also, there was a man on the beach with a monkey and he let me hold it and it jumped on my back! And I had some good authentic Mexican food for lunch. Enchiladas Verdes con frijoles y GUACAMOLE! With carrot-orange juice as my drink. It was yummmyyy.

Well we are off to pick up our third group for trip #3 in a bit here. Can't wait, this trip is ten days at the Libertad school in Corozal. It should be a great one. Continued prayers for minimal bug bites, and good health please. Thanks so very much everyone!

Love to you all,

Shannon

Finding strength in the hardest of times

I made it through week #3! Praise God.

I wish I could spend this time writing about how smoothly and amazing this second trip went but, unfortunately, I have to be honest. This week was in some ways probably one of the hardest weeks of my life.

Our group, Christ Evangelical Presbyterian Church from Houston, Texas, arrived Sunday afternoon. A really hard working group who came with lots of motivation! They were great people.

We picked them up from the airport and headed straight for San Luis, the village we lived/worked at for the week. This is the same village that I have worked in the last two times I came to Belize in past years so it was very special for me to return again where everyone, especially the kids, remembered my name! San Luis is not even on the Belizean map yet and you cannot find it on google, it is extremely rural and sort of in the middle of nowhere, in the jungle of Belize. They do not have much of anything there. Here is what most of the homes in the village look like...

The first night we arrived, MCA church, the church we worked at for the week, held their opening/welcome service for us and it went well. They were sooo excited that we were there! Throughout the week our group did three projects. Putting in a cement floor of a home (we mixed the cement ourselves with shovels...), building the foundation for an additional room to the church, and then painting the church and the community center. It was a LOT of hard, physically demanding work. The group did a phenomenal job working so hard I was seriously impressed.

We also held VBS four days out of the week. It was so fun and the kids loved it! There was a lot of singing and dancing and just overall being silly. I got to be reunited with my lil' buddy Camillo who is the boy I am kissing in the picture on the background of this blog!! He completely remembered me and was so excited to see me again, we hung out every day. :) Look it's like deja-vu!

(Left is two years ago, right is this year!) I love my lil bud!

Anyways, overall the week went very well for the group that came down and they had a successful and rewarding trip. It seems like every one of them went home changed after being in a community SO different from their comfort of home, yet filled with the most joyful people you will ever meet.

Now on to the hard part. As you already know, Monday I got really sick and had to go back to Orange Walk for the night. Well I felt better Tuesday and returned to the village again. Tuesday afternoon, Pastor Angel, Elizabeth and I took a day trip up to Chetumal, Mexico to get our passports re stamped and to explore the town a little bit. That was really cool! We even went to the Chetumal Mall and I ate a nice steak dinner haha... random! But we returned back to Belize that night and I went to sleep still feeling decent.

Wednesday morning, I woke up feeling kinda woozy and realized that my legs were significantly itchier than the day before. When we turned on the light, me and the girls and my room were shocked to see both of my legs covered in bug bites from my thighs to my feet. We counted while putting hydrocortisone on each bite and I had 50 new bites from just that one night. :( This is what the better side of my legs looked like... trust me you don't want to see the other side!

After putting on medicine I worked lightly until lunch, not to overwork myself. But as soon as I started eating lunch I got really nauseous and was having abdominal pains, so I went back and laid down in the pastors house for the rest of the afternoon. I was soooo sick to my stomach it was miserable. This lasted for the next two days and at one point I just laid down and cried, wishing I could go back home.

But the reason I'm telling you this not so that you can all sit there and feel sorry for me. I'm telling you the hardest parts about my week because I think this experience has opened my eyes up to a lot of things I am learning about myself. Most people know that I have suffered from chronic health problems for many years. This week I realized that it is so easy for me to be strong and courageous when I am in the comfort of my own home, surrounded by people who love me, knowing that I will get through the day no matter what. But when I am in a foreign country, in a village that isn't even on the map yet, and nobody here really knows a thing about me, that's when I began to crumble. When I was laying on my little sleeping pad in the strong Belizean heat that day, sick as can be, feeling alone and crying because I just wanted to go back home...I knew I only had two options. 1) I could continue to feel like a "victim" of my own circumstance, or 2) I could pick myself up, dust myself off, and find the amazing strength that God has instilled in me all along. So I chose #2.

When I say that, it doesn't mean that I magically got better or anything. What it meant was that I realized there can be a gray area in life, not everything has to be black and white all of the time. I used to think I could either be sick and sad, or healthy and happy. But I am learning now that I can be sick and happy at the same time. I don't actually have to let my bad circumstance dictate my entire well being. Instead, my happiness depends on the way I react to that circumstance. So instead of laying there feeling sorry for myself, I instead thanked God for all that I do have and found comfort in knowing He has a plan for my life to make something beautiful come out of these hard times. I have always loved this verse, Jeremiah 29:11 - 'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'


I think I am going to rest in that comfort for the remainder of this summer. Whether or not I feel good now, there are amazing things planned for my life if I continue to trust and serve. 


Thanks so much for reading. I really appreciate all your prayers and support emails/messages/comments, etc last week when I was sick. :) Tonight, we are all taking the overnight travel bus to Cancun, Mexico (don't worry it is safe!) and will be spending all day there tomorrow, sleeping in a hotel there tomorrow night then picking our next group up at the Cancun airport Monday afternoon and driving back to Belize for trip #3! This will be a ten day trip at the Libertad School in northern Belize, so I probably won't have internet for a long time. But I love you all and can't wait to update you next time, whatever that may bring! 


Have a great night,
<3 Shannon

Prayers Please

Hey everyone,


Unfortunately, the last couple days have been a bit rough. I have been feeling weird lately and had to leave the village today to go back to Orange Walk for the night because I got really sick. :( It wasn't my stomach; I had a fever and was feeling delirious and I couldn't sit up or stand up. This has been happening in small episodes this last week and we aren't sure if it is the heat, dehydration, or possibly an infection from one of my 90+ bug bites...ugh! Thankfully, there is a nurse on this weeks team and she helped me out a lot today. So now I am back at the air conditioned hotel to rest for the night and sleep in tomorrow and then depending on how I feel I might be seeing a doctor to check for infection.


Anyways, I just want to ask that you all please keep me in your prayers. I really want to give my all while I am down here and I hate being out sick. And for some reason, the first two days of this trip have been so much harder than the last one. I feel like my attitude hasn't been right and I'm not sure why... :/ but it's really bothering me. I have been feeling slightly negative about everything, I honestly think it's just because of the fevers but still. I mean these groups sacrifice a lot to come down here for the week and to serve and the least I can do is be an encouragement to them. I don't feel like I am doing that right now. I knew there might be a moment during this trip where I just feel exhausted and where the end seems so far away and I think this is that moment. I've been here for 16 days... but still have 55 left to go. It's just daunting right now.


Well I know I will definitely be okay and I know I will cheer up with some rest and relaxation. I just want to snap out of this silly little funk! I found this quote one time that reminds me of what I need to do right now:

"At the end of the day, you either focus on what's tearing you apart, or what's holding you together."

Please pray for me to focus on all the amazing things in my life that hold me together. Thank you. :)

Love,

Shannon

A week full of nothing but love

Hello everybody! I am so happy to let you know that mission trip #1 was a complete SUCCESS! I truly don’t know how to put into words how awesome this last week was… but I’ll do my best.

We picked up the North Shore Fellowship group from Chattanooga Tennessee on Sunday morning in Belize!

They were all in bright spirits; there were 14 of them. Six student boys – Luke, Rob, Gary, Stewart, Reed, and Jonathan, five student girls – Emily, Emma, Lindsey, Sarah-Beth, and Gracie. And three leaders – Patty, Ben, and Meg. What a WONDERFUL group of people!! Their ages ranged from 14-30 years. Such a lively, energetic, and hilarious group, with cute southern accents to top it all off. We were laughing probably 99% of the entire trip...I love my new friends from Tennessee.

Alta Mira Nazarene was the church we worked at in the Corozal district. We slept in a different church that was about five minutes away, but ate all of our meals and spent all of our days in the Alta Mira community. IT WAS SO GREAT. Pastor Ermilio, the pastor of the church, his wife Consuelo, and her daughters cooked all our meals for us. The food was delicious and meal times were spent at Ermilio’s house hanging out with the group and his family. The first night there we went to the opening service at Alta Mira and it was held in Spanish but I could understand most of it! We also had Angel translating for the group which was nice. They were soooo excited that we were there. Each of them came to the front and introduced themselves to us and told us why they felt so happy to have us there. Then we did the same. Some of the kids went up and performed a song with a dance to it and we all sang and danced together… so much joy in one room.

Throughout the week we had three days of work projects and VBS for the kids. We removed and replaced a new roof for the Sunday school building because it was old, worn down tin with holes everywhere so that on days when it rained they used to have to cancel Sunay school (it rains a lot in Belize and when it rains it POURS.) The new roof turned out great! We also did quite a bit of painting around the church. The kids love love loved VBS, we had an average of 55 kids come to each day! We had crafts, games, story time, sports, etc. and there was so much happiness and excitement from them…they just loved us. And we love them!

On one of the days we did a school visit and got to split up in groups of two and speak to a classroom of students for an hour. That was really cool! Emily and I got placed in the 8^th grade class so the students were 11-13 yrs. (grades are done a bit differently in Belize). We talked about our lives, life in the U.S., what we think about Belize and why we love it here, how important education is, etc.  They asked us tons of questions about all kinds of things, and then we taught them how to play heads up 7-up and played four games of it haha. We all had a great time. J

On Wednesday we went to the Lamanai Mayan ruins about three hours south for a little day excursion. They were beautiful, as always (it was my 3^rd time going there) and I saw a tarantula that came completely out of its little hole! There were lots of monkeys in the trees too and one of the monkeys peed on us hahaha. We barely made it out of the way in time :/

Tarantula! ^^^

One highlight of my week was a little girl that I absolutely fell in LOVE with. She is the granddaughter of pastor Ermilio, her name is Alleen and she’s five years old. From the second we met we had a connection and stayed together throughout the week whenever we were around each other. Such a beauuuutiful little girl with long dark eyelashes and just gorgeous. And she’s the first in her kindergarten class right now, so smart! Her mom told me she talked about me all week when I wasn’t around, and they invited me to their house so on Thursday night I went over there and hung out with her and her family for two hours. :) She gave me one of her favorite bracelets and a photograph of her, and then drew me an adorable picture of us together and wrote her name on it. I told her I’d keep them all forever! She also taught me our new handshake together, where we say “me, and you, together, forever” with the sweetest little hand movements. Ahhhhh I love that girl so much!! I already miss her tons. I've been invited to her 6^th birthday party on Augutst 10^th, so I am going to try as hard as I can to go. I must see her again before I leave this summer on the 12th!! Here's me and my sweet Alleen...

To finish off, Pastor Ermilio was beyond grateful by the time we left last night. The farewell service went so beautifully and there were a lot of tears and hugs. The people of the Alta Mira church even presented each one of us with many little handmade gifts, it was unbelievable.  It is amazing how in such a small amount of time, so many lives can be changed. The church already has new members because of us coming and all the joy the community saw from it. Just amazing!  I am truly sad to have left Alta Mira. A little piece of my heart will always be there, with the church, the community, all of the people, Alleen, and North Shore from Tennessee. I loved every minute of this week. You could say I left feeling pretty much like this:

Anyways, thanks so much  for reading!! Tomorrow we start our next trip in the village of San Luis …YAYYY. We pick up Christ Evangelical Presbyterian Church from Texas and head up to San Luis right after. I CAN’T WAIT. Then, after this trip some of the leaders and myself drive up to Cancun Mexico on an overnight bus and stay at a hotel there for another night to prepare and pick up a group that is flying to Cancun on the 25^th. We will be doing the 6 hour bus ride back into Belize from there, and starting our third trip. I’m sure I’ll be posting before that though! I’ll let you all know how trip #2 goes for sure. Mucho mucho mucho love to you all. :)

-Shannon

OH, and one more thing. Last night we had our goodbye meeting on the Caye with North Shore Fellowship. One thing their youth pastor Ben talked about really stood out to me. He asked us to draw a mental picture of the world, and place ourselves in the center. He then asked if that looked familiar. Do you see your world with yourself in the center of it? And if so, how can there be much room for other people to fit? Now, put yourself on the outside of the world you drew. Look how much space you have to fill it with others. I know that I often put myself as the center of my world. If I am not happy, comfortable, or satisfied I usually complain about it. But it shouldn’t be all about me. This summer, I want to work on stepping outside of that and knowing that my purpose is to simply love others and do what I can to put people in front of my own selfishness that I experience at times. I want to focus my life more on giving, rather than receiving.

<3

The Mosquito Massacre

Oh.my.gosh.
 
Brace yourselves for this one.
(To my family, especially my sister Sarah, you are really going to get a kick out of this...)

Do I like insects?
No. 
Do I like insects that can FLY? 
Especially not. (if you know me very well then you definitely know my ridiculous fear of flying bugs getting trapped in my hair hahah. Don't judge.)

Well, near Corozal there are some Mayan ruins named Cerros. So we thought "Hey! Let's check this place out and maybe we can take one of our groups up here! We will explore! It will be fun! Yeah!"

Yeah???
NO.

First let me tell you, the drive out there was beautiful! It was about an hour on a long dirt road in the middle of the rainforest. Then we had to take our car across the river on this tiny little wooden "ferry" as they call it where two Belizean men cranked it the whole way across. All was well... life was good... I was justttt fine.

And then our car approached Cerros. We pulled up, we parked, and we opened the doors of the car.

You know the scene in the lion king, in the beginning where Scar sets Simba up for a stampede of hyenas? How it's all quiet and peaceful until suddenly a swarm of them come out of nowhere and attack him almost to death...

We were Simba. The mosquito's were the hyenas.

Except times, like, A HUNDRED. We opened the doors and next thing we knew a black wall of mosquito's swarmed straight into the car!! Naturally my first reaction was to scream like a little girl and run out of the car...little did I know it was WORSE outside. It was just Pastor Angel, Elizabeth, and I and the three of us frantically in a panic scrambled to find our bug spray in our bags while being literally swarmed, covered head to toe, by mosquito's.

While running in panicked circles doing what probably looked like the Irish Jig, I was screaming "What do we do?! Where do we go?! Get me out of here THEY ARE GETTING STUCK IN MY HAIR!!!" Pastor Angel (who is also running around swatting himself like crazy at this point while we are all screaming and spraying bug spray at the bugs like it was mase or something), points to the dock across the little forrest and yells "over there! The strong winds at the end of the dock will blow them away!" and so we ran...
Who would have known that Mosquitos can fly so fast? This was like Jumanji status running through the forest jumping hurdles of tree logs and coconuts with the mosquito's swarming us still following our every move no matter how fast we ran, a black cloud surrounded all three of us head to toe and they were buzzing so loudly in our ears!!! By now I am almost in tears because all I can think about are how many dead mosquito bodies will be tangled up in my hair tonight...I think that may have been the fastest 200 yards I've ever ran in my life.
At the end if the dock we were all panting, I'm practically crying and Elizabeth and I are repeating "NO NO NO WE ARE NOT BRINGING ANYONE HERE EVER LETS JUST LEAVE NOW PLEASE!"
 
So we prepared ourselves this time mentally, physically, and emotionally for the sprint back to the car. 

When we made it to the car (after blood sweat and tears, literally haha!) we opened the doors and the mosquito's filled the whole entire car. So I began screaming "I can't get into the car like that!!! I can't do this!" I am such a baby it's embarrassing. And Angel and Elizabeth were sitting in their bug swamped seats fighting the mosquito's for what seemed like their lives yelling "Get in the car Shannon!! Get in so we can drive away!!" I was shaking and freaking out and I finally got the courage to jump in this van full of what Pastor Angel later told his wife was probably at least 70-80 mosquito's. We had no other choice but to close the doors, blast the AC and drive away while swatting and killing them in every inch of the car as fast as we could. I was squealing and shrieking and we had shoes, napkins, and our own palms smacking every inch of window, seat, ceiling, and part of our body for a good  thirty minutes.  I felt like I was in Fear Factor competing for the final prize.
 
Anyways, you'll be glad to know that we finally made it home and crashed absolutely exhausted (as well as slightly traumatized) after our wonderful trip to Cerros.

I counted how many bites I had when we got here. Fifty one and counting!
 
Well at least I can thank the Lord that I have officially been humbled. I will never complain about an insect again.

Hope you don't have nightmares tonight,
Shannon


P.s.  (excuse the hat haha I put on Elizabeth's big protective sun hat over my curly ponytail so it stood up real tall!)


Elizabeth took this picture of me when we had almost finished killing all the mosquito's today.  This is pretty much how we were all feeling after that adventure.

 

On a more serious note...

Surprise! I am randomly able to get internet here for a bit this morning, so I wanted to share a story with you about last night. It is kind of long and a bit shocking/intense, but I simply retelling you exactly what I heard last night.

Yesterday, we arrived in Orange Walk at around 3:00pm and are staying in Pastor Angels house for the next two nights until we leave for our first trip in the Alta Mira village Sunday morning.

To finalize all the plans for this first trip, Elizabeth (one of the other interns), Pastor Angel, his wife Leonora, and I traveled to Alta Mira yesteray to meet with the pastor of Alta Mira Church, Pastor Ermilio Guerra. It was about a thirty minute drive (along what seemed to be the jungle!) and was very hot, the village is a small place with few houses and sugar cane fields, etc. When we arrived at Pastor Ermilios house, he welcomed us in and we met his whole family, except for his wife who was bathing at the time. Things in Belize are not planned out like they are in America, we do not call and tell him we are coming we just showed up at his house on a whim haha.

Anyways we were sitting there talking with the family and finally his wife walks out and sees us. She walked over and looked at me and Elizabeth, smiled really big and gave us both a huge hug! I was a little caught off guard and then, to our surprise, she looked at Ermilio and said "I have seen them before. I know both of them already." Elizabeth and I looked at each other like uhhhh....okay? And the look of confusion must have been pretty clear because Ermilio said, "girls, before we begin talking business, I need to tell you a story. I must tell you our story."

Their story, in the words of Pastor Ermilio:

"I work construction far away and one day I got called to come home, something had happened to my wife, it was an emergency. So I rode my bicylce fast as I could home. My wife had never had any health problems ever, but she had simply fallen unconsious for no reason and was not waking up. I fell to my knees and cried out to God and we rushed her to the nearest hospital, where they did all they could but pronounced her dead. For fourty five minutes, she had been pronounced dead, and suddenly she began to breath again. It was a miracle! But although she was breathing, she never woke up and was officially in a coma.

My wife stayed in a coma for twenty three days. They sent her home with me to die and I didn't know what to do. I laid her down in our home to die when suddenly, she sat up, looked at me and spoke. "What are all of these people doing here?!" she said with confusion. I was in shock! She was awake!! I scrambled to find the words to say and simply replied "My wife! what people??" She said "All of the Americans in the house. They are everywhere, they are walking around and staying in out attic. Where did they come from?" and then she passed back out and was in her coma again for the folowing weeks. No Americans had ever come to our village or church before.

And then, two weeks after she said that, I got a call saying a group from America wanted to come to mission work at our church. They came, they stayed in our house, slept in our attic, and while they were here my wife awoke again with a smile and said 'I have seen them before. I know them.' (at this point Elizabeth and I both have goosebumps...)

She stayed in her coma for weeks. Doctor after doctor traveled here to see her and they did countless of tests on her at hospitals. No idea what was wrong. One day she woke and said "when is the service today? take me to the service." I was shocked again and because it was a Wednesday, I told her "we do not have church today dear" but she replied "take me to the service!" and fell back into her coma. So I called my pastor friend at a church further away and found out they have Wednesday service, so we went. I wheelchaired her there unconsious, and in the middle of the service she woke up, STOOD UP, and walked to a perfetly healthy and normal woman and said "the Lord says to get ready" and passed back out, falling to the floor. That woman dedicated her life to Christ that night. She died two weeks later.

Eventaully, with time, my wife woke up for good and began to get healthier and healthier. Sometimes she had these visions and they always came true. I will tell you more about them later. I truly believe God shows my wife things. It had been a few years that she has been healthy with no more problems, and I have not heard her talk of one of these visions in years... until today. Earlier today, she looked at me and said "who are those two girls?" ... I replied "what girls? there is no one here" and she said "there are two young women. They are in our house, here to help us." I did not know what she was talking about. And tonight, you two arrived. And that is why when she saw you, she smiled so big and gave you a hug. She has seen you before, she already knows you. God is intentional. You are here for a purpose." -Pastor Ermilio Guerra

Woah.

We De Goen? Me Name Da Shannon...

I AM HERE!

I already absolutely LOVE it.

And I am now learning to speak Creol.

Or “Kriol,” as they spell it in Belize. (Which explains the weird subject line of this post… “We de goen” means what’s happening/what’s up? And “Me name da Shannon” means my name is Shannon. I feel so cool.

Anyways, wow. The past four days have been soooo crazy/hectic but exciting! My travels went well and at 2:25pm Monday afternoon, I arrived in BELIZE! Some of the Belizean Thirst Missions staff, Luda and Perla, and one other intern, Elizabeth from North Carolina, were there to greet me. We waited for the last intern, Kelly from California, to arrive and then were off to Caye Caulker Island via a water taxi along the Caribbean sea!

Each day on Caye Caulker has consisted of lots of training/meetings with staff on the roof of our hotel, with a beautiful view. Want to see?

 We have a bit of free time in between meetings to explore and enjoy the Island. The weather has been HOTTTTT. The food has been so delicious. I have never consumed so much orange juice in my life. In fact here is a picture of Jose and me, one of the staff members (he's from Honduras) with my giant bottle of freshly squeeze O.J…he kept joking around and pretending to take it from me haha! 

 Well clearly, I have not had to sacrifice much yet. :) But hey I suppose we deserve a little paradise for these three days seeing as the next nine weeks are going to be very challenging and hard in many ways once we actually start the trips! Yayyyyy.

I got my schedule and it is really exciting. I will be leading seven mission trips, all in different towns/villages with one week off in between. Some of the staff and I are possibly going to take a trip to Guatemala or Mexico on that week and again on another day later in the summer because technically we “have” to leave the country and return two times this summer, since our passport is only a 30-day visa! So I suppose if I HAVE to…

_

My schedule is as follows in this order: Date ~ Church we are serving in Belize (construction, VBS, teaching @ local school, etc. ) ~ Church teaming with us from the U.S. and state they are from:

June 10-16:  Alta Mira Church ~ Corozal ~North Shore Fellowship, Tennessee.

June 17-23: MCA Church ~ San Luis Village ~ Christ Evan. Pre Church, Texas.

June 25-July 4: Libertad Church ~ Northern Belize ~ Christ Covenant Pres. Church, Texas.

July 12-19: Buen Pastor Church ~ Orange Walk ~ John Knox Presbyterian Church, Seattle. WOOOH SO EXCITED!!!  (This is my home church for those of you who don’t know!)

July 20-26: Tabernacle Bautista Church ~ Belmopan (central Belize, this is the capital) ~ Destiny Church, Virginia

July 28-Aug. 4: Yo Creek Church ~ City not on my schedule yet, oops! ~ Cornerstone Church, Missouri

Aug.3-9: Chapel School and Church ~ Near Orange Walk I think?  Also not on sched. yet ~ First Presbyterian Church, Wisconsin.

And there you have it, my summer in a nutshell. So awesome. More details will come later, there is a TON of work and planning behind the scenes that goes into each trip. I am going to be a busy busy girl. But it is worth it. Tomorrow we are leaving Caye Caulker and heading to Orange Walk to prepare for the first group arriving Sunday. No more hotels or A/C from here on out for me. Now it will be sleeping on the floors of churches, schools, host homes, etc.! (Except for one day/night in between every trip we go back to the Caye to prepare and plan for the following trip arriving that next day)… 

For now I am off to go hang out with the Spanish speaking Belizean pastors para practicar mi espanol. I am already getting so much better at it. They told me I am 99% fluent which was a major compliment for me! But my Creol on the other hand…let’s just say they laugh at everything I attempt to say.  

Wish me luck and pray for health & safety for the whole group please! Thanks so much for reading and feel free to keep leaving comments, they make me very happy. Mucho mucho mucho love to you all!

Go Slow, (the motto of this Island, you see it everywhere!)

-Shannon

p.s. Two things

1. If you want me to send you a postcard message me your address on facebook please!

2. If you would like to send me anything, which would be oh so kind of you, my address on the Caye where I end every week is:

Pasero Street

P.O. Box 80

Caye Caulker

Belize Central America (you can just put Belize, C.A.)

GRACIAS! I'll be posting again probably the 16th after my first trip. Prayers por favor.

Adios Seattle!!!

At 11:30pm tonight, in approximately 4 hours, I will be taking off in a plane on my way to BELIZE!

 Finally... I've been waiting for this day for months. :) So as I am sitting here procrastinating on last minute packing as usual, I thought I would post some final thoughts before I leave.

1. The last few week have left me slightly overwhelmed and amazed at all the people who support me in my life. To my wonderful friends, family, and co-workers who have stayed by my side this last year: thank you for everything. I could NOT have gotten here without you! 

2. I haven't been able to stop thinking about all the people I will meet while I am in Belize. Especially the cute little kiddos. Since I will be staying in many villages/towns there are going to be a lot new faces and there is nothing I love more than learning about how each person in this world is completely unique in their own way. Everyone has their own story, family, friends, struggles, passions... and I hope that I am inspired by every single one of them!

3. I have been oddly at peace this final week leading up to the trip. I think it is because of the service I went to at Mosaic church last Sunday (thank you R.J.!). It was all about living a life free from fear. If you know me at all, you know that fear is something I struggle with a lot. The pastor said many times "Do not be afraid, He is with you always. God never promised us that life would be easy, but His promise is that He will be with us at all times." I need to remember that while this trip will be extremely hard at times, I am not going for my own pleasure and comfort; I am going to serve. And I will do it with a loving heart because even if I am unhappy/sick/uncomfortable at times, I know that my only true comfort is in Jesus. And that is something that's far beyond any happiness I can find on this Earth. :)

Anyways, I guess my last words before I get ready to leave are from a quote that I absolutely love, and what I want to strive to be more like in my life:

"You have not lived a perfect day unless you have done something for somebody who will never be able to pay you back."

Adios Seattle, I'll see you in ten weeks!

-Shannon

p.s. I will be posting in Belize about once a week I think, so check back here when you can. :) Much love!