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It is the responsibility of the sheep to listen for the shepherd ...
Thus began our time in Belize this year with Arturo and Esther Mendez, the pastor and his wife serving a Presbyterian Church in Corozal as well as church plant in Calcutta being constructed with financial and physical assistance from our congregation.
 Our Belize mission team was small in number this year, but as in years past we spent Sunday exploring some of the local culture by way of a 28-mile river tour of north central Belize. The trip was both entertaining and educational. We saw exotic birds and howler monkeys, but missed the crocodiles due to recent flooding. We climbed a Mayan temple and visited a Mayan museum. After a great fried grouper dinner we were eager to return to the city to hear Arturo preach at Sunday night services.
English is the official national language in Belize, but Arturo is a Honduran who, along with his parishioners, speaks Spanish as his first language. Esther, a native Belizean and daughter of a pastor, provides the translation for most of the worship service. The Sunday evening congregation at the Corozal church was small, but engaged. Young men were scarce at the service and everyone seemed to know all the words to the songs without a hymnal. Some of these young men turned out to be co-workers with us on the jobsite for the rest of the week. Many were non-believers before Arturo and Esther shared God's word with them.
Our work this year involved pouring the concrete roof of the sanctuary. With the exception of our fearless trip leader, Mark Tipps, the work was too strenuous for most of us to sustain for more than a couple of hours at a time. In order to "rest," we would find less strenuous jobs like bending and tying rebar steel. Fortunately the young men we had met on Sunday night at church did much of the heavy lifting.
The time we spent building relationships with the local workers was the most rewarding of all. One day we ate lunch with one young worker, Alex, his wife, Rosemarie, and their three children. We had soup with rice, chicken, and vegetables, a standard meal in Belize. The solid concrete home they rented was decorated by Alex's caricatures drawn on the walls for his children. Additionally, a young boy named Rodolfo would visit the worksite each day during lunch. Someone gave him a pack of crackers one day; he ate a few and put the rest in his pocket. When his sister came by we thought he was going to show off what he had, but he just quietly gave the rest to her. It was humbling to see him share so freely.
The week of hard work ended before we knew it. On one hand we were glad to be headed home, but on the other we knew we would miss the people, the sunrises, and the weather. If you are looking for a rewarding week of hard work, listen to the gentlest shepherd of all, Jesus, and answer His call to serve in Belize next year.
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