Can you Belize it?

SO as you may know i will be coming home soon so this will probably be my last entery. I know its been awhile since the last and you have given up hope on me ever making a new entery, but the internet down at Fe Viva is down and the internet in town is the only one that works. And even then it comes and goes. It is a new era here since the election is coming up. The old predsident is trying to fix up the city nad pretend that he didnt waste the peoples money. So far he is failing at it miserably. He started to build this new road over by the main town we frequent, Chiquimulilla, but he started it in the middle of rainy season. Now the new road that was just built has been washed away. Less than a week, and its gone.
But other than that lets talk about Belize. Its a beautiful country that is full of a dense jungle forest and beautiful rivers that are the strangest greeny blue i have ever seen. A man there told me that if i drank the river water, i would sherly come back 3 yrs later. He said it was a magic river. Dont worry i didnt drink the water but whether it is or not i would love to go back.
The trip to Belize was an adventure in itself. After driving about 12 hrs we hit the first road block. It was the longest and most confusing traffic jam i had ever seen. We managed to bypass more than half of it by drivig on the wrong side of the road and down the ditch. Anthony was driving and let me tell you he is not the most patient driver in the world. In fact hes probably the worst, but heck it shaved atleast 5 hrs off of our trip. After waiting for 2 hrs in the blazing sun we decided to make things fun. We hooked up our portable sound system and blasted christain music. We were just about to do our drama for all the people that had gathered when the traffic started moving again. To bad but we had many more adventures to come against. The next came late at night when we were half hour from the border. We started hearing a funny whistling sound and then our bus van started to swerve. It was definatly a flat tire. We changed it as quick as possible but we still missed the border crossing time. Now we needed a place to stay for the night as staying in the van was imposible. There was barly enough room to sit in the van let alone lay, plus it was very unsafe. The place we ended up staying was the place where the people from survivor stayed when they were kicked off the island in Guatemala. We didnt stay in the same rooms though becuase those were very expensive. The funny thing was it was rediculously close to where the actual event took place. Probably a 20 min walk. So we woke up bright and early the next morrning, my birthday, and made our way into Belize. Belize was great but so much happened i think i will just tell you when i get back. It was a life changing trip with many ups and downs, but most of all chalenging. Oh and all the women in Belize were all pregnant! I had never seen so many pregnent people before. Hope said there must be something in the water. Oh remind me to tell you a realy funny story about that when i get home.
On the way home we went through Tikal and saw some amazing sights, but most of them i dont remember. At this time i was starting to get realy sick. And i mean realy sick. Somehow i had managed to tavel to a foreign country and contract a severe case of a rare strain of E. Coli. Plus 3 other paracites. But with the help of the Great Physician i am well. Plus a realy good hospital story i will tell you when i get home aswell.
Things are wraping up here in Guat and I will be home in 13 days. I cant believe how fast time flys and i will be sad to leave but there are plenty more adventurs to be had. Oh that is if i make it home. Kerry has decided to stay in Guat for an extra 2 weeks to attend a spiffy little language school. Its going to be great for her. Its a realy beautiful place. But air ports are not my forte and i have to make two conecting flights in Las vagas and Miami pero con Dios, todos es posible.
Well i hope you feel more caught up than before. I didnt have much time to write and wanted to get as much in as possible. Tons more stories when i get home. Many of them are simply 'oh dear, only jasmine' moments.
See you all soon!
love
-jaz
p.s. sorry for the spelling, i didnt have time to go back and check.

A few photos before I jet

Well here are a few photos...

These first two are of the processions in Antigua.

Kerry and I eating my new found favorite fruit, hocotes.

What can i say, the kids here are so cute but let me tell you as much as they are cute they have big personalities to go along with them.




Well that's all for now, Its really late at night and we leave at 4 in the morning. Only 3 more hours to go! I just couldn't sleep but I'm counting on alot of sleeping time in the 24-26 hour drive. Yay for bone jarring pot holes and tons of good laughs.

Bye for now

love,

-jaz

Island churches and Mangrove towns

I was going to write about my title but decided instead to share an exerpt from my journal.
Apr. 11 '07.
"Here i am seated on the dirt floor of a church made of less cider blocks than i have fingers and toes and i realize i am closer to God than i have ever been before. It is more than true, i have found, that the eyes of Christ shine through the poor."

Talk to you all when i get back from Belize!
-jaz

oh how the days fly

This morrning i woke up to the sound of my name being yelled quite loudly. I went outside my hut looked across the road and all 21 orphanage kids were sticking their heads out the windows of the orphanage . They all laughingly said that they had decided i had slept enough. At home i think some heads would have rolled because the time was 5:30, but here its different. These kids have so much joy in their faces that its hard not to respond. They have every right by our standards to be down on life, but they have overcome it and seem to spread this joy to others. Who would have known that i would be receiving so much more than i give?
Well other news... oh we did a service beside the river last Sunday. It went really well and afterward we helped the ladies make tortillas for lunch. Needless to say ours were pitiful lumps of soggy corn next to their perfectly shaped crispy ones. One of the ladies even ate one of mine. I felt really bad for her.
Last week on Thursday we went to Antigua for Santa semana, or holy week. They would make these beautiful, very intricate carpets out of sawdust and then carry these floats on their shoulders on top the carpets and destroy them. These 'floats' are made out of carved wood and generally have Jesus or the mother Mary poised on top. People will pay to carry these 'floats', that are laden with metal to make them extremely heavy, on their shoulders. They pay and suffer under the weight as a sign that they are suffering for their sins. They also dress in a bright purple robe and hat with a mask, that looks remarkably like the KKK, as a sign of repentance. Oh and two of out team member were robbed inside the St.Francis roman catholic church. Everyone is OK, but it was symbolic for the weekend. It really was an interesting time, with a great outlook on the culture and its practices. Oh one thing i left out was that for a week or so before santa semana Guatemalans make very realistic men out of old clothing and hang them from everywhere. Like actually hang them with a noose. They then attach a name tag of them, proclaiming them Judas. Let me tell you when you don't know things like this are going on and you walk around the corner and see a life size man hanging from a bridge you freak out. Thankfully someone let us in on it before i went and started trying to pull up the rope.
Everything else here is coming along well and without event. We are having classes on the holy spirit, deliverance, healing the sick and women in ministry. So you can imagine how interesting that is. I am really learning alot and am grateful for the teachers and their wisdom, but if you are the praying kind, pray that i will be given wisdom from God to discern these things. We are also learning more skits and how to make puppets. Trivial i know but man when you have one of those things on the end of your arm the kids are glued. they remember what you said for weeks. They still call me Esther from 3 weeks ago when i played her.
But my time is coming to a close so i must say farewell. I hope all is well. send me an e-mail sometime and tell me of your adventures.
love
jaz
Oh and P.S. happy belated Easter. Mine was sadly without chocolate but we found some large gecko eggs and tried to color them. I would not recommend it.

Market Meanderings

Today for the first time i went to the market. The market is a place that is crowded to the brim with all sorts of things i have never seen before. This market is not your big city market where brand names like Heinz and dole are scattered everywhere. This is a fly infested, smells of rotten fish place, with some of the most wonderful things in the world. The colors are bright, the fruit is beyond gorgeous, and the faces are mostly friendly. I walked down to the end of the road and caught a micro bus into town. These are the equivalent of a mini van with the doors ripped off and a few extra benches put in. When i made my way onto the bus there were already 23 people jammed in there. I gave the driver my 2 quezales and sat on the very edge of the seat with half of me hanging out the door. I now fully understand how the whole one cheek on one cheek off concept can be uncomfortable if not dangerous.
I made it to town, half numb, and waked towards the market. One i made it i decided to take my list out the cooks had given me. Who would have known the words for vegetables in Spanish would have been so different in English. So here i was in the middle of a very bus, crowded market with a Spanish list and my 100 some odd words in Spanish. So i walked up to one of the vegetable vendors extended my list, and said "Yo nesitito, por favor." To my shock and utter amazement he understood and gave me thew things i needed. I even managed to barter the price, but only because the cooks told me what they would normally charge another Guatemalan.
After that i caught another micro bus back to the compound, just in time for lunch.
Wow life is good, God is good. I think i just might be able to fit in down here. Well not in appearance. First of all the 15 of us in Fe Viva are the only white people who are seen in the town, and second i am the tallest girl they have ever seen. Every church service we attend i am always told, Wow you are very big! and then they usually tack something nice on the end. But i hope to fit in with the language and mannerisms. These people are among the most welcoming in the world.
I have so many other stories and wonderful things to talk about but I'm afraid it will have to wait. Yes the Internet is working again, but it is a miracle but who knows when it will decide to crap out again. I hope you are all well. Send me some cold thoughts because I'm frying up. I
ts something like 45-50 every day but i rained yesterday so we played in the rain.
Talk to you soon
love
jaz
P.S. I'm going to be in Belize for my Birthday!

The happenings of a drug infested government

Today I was mugged. Good thing there was no coffee in it.
That was just to get you started. To make sure your awake when you read this. But it actually did hurt.
So yesterday started interestingly enough. We were having Spanish class at 6 am and we heard a plane pass overhead. Immediately Anthony, our Spanish teacher, ran outside and started searching te sky. We were sitting there wondering what the big deal was, when he ran back inside and grabbed his shoes and took off in the truck. Apparently the three years he has lived outside this small remote village, he has never heard a jet, especially a fighter jet pass by.
So he ran into town, thinking Guatemala had just gone to war, and found out the President of the
United States was scheduled to come to the country the next day. The fighter jets were just a display from the US of their presence, and their readiness if anything were to happen tomorrow.
His presence has something to do with a drug ring in government. Apparently some high up drug lords were arrested, but the problem was they were national police. The clincher is that the next day they were found dead in jail. All Burned crispy. Since the civil wars only ended in '97 the US became worried of its investments in Guat. Mainly coffee, fruit and of course some oil.
All night the fighter planes passed overhead at intervals of 5 mins, and it was si that that happened al over Guat. That must have been quite a few army personnel to cover the country. Whethe US is in, its all in.
The next day not much was learned about the meeting of the two presidents. It was very high security but some how 300 American flags were burned outside the Guatemalan Parliament building. Who knows what will happen now....
Other than that my days are filled with learning, teaching, working and much love.
Hope all is well at home
love,
jaz

Plane ride and snippets of the first day

The plane glides gently throught the air. I had planned on sleeping, but you know how it goes, something was in the air. Excitment possibly? Well it just might be.
As i was sitting here, pondering whether I should tell the sleeping man next to me his coffee is leaking directly onto my feet, i was thinking what wanted most out of my trip. My foggy mind came to the conclusion that i wanted to change. Small or large, painful or peacful.
Well as for my first day this what occured.
- I held a boa constrictor that we found in the back jungle. Sorry dad if you concider that unsafe. Who knew i would blow it in the first 12 hrs. But this boa had a sad fate. Anthony went into town and had it made into a belt. Maybe the next one we can keep as a pet.
- Forgot to bring most of my underpants currently i have 5 pairs. Laundry sucks.
-Gathered mangos before the wind storm that is forcasted for tonight.
-Recieved like 500 hugs from the casa espiranza kids.
- had my first language class
-Slept the coldest night of my life. The air conditioner was stuck on like deepfreeze. Its going to be removed and life will be back to normal.

So there is a small taste of waht its like. My entrys will generaly be short because the internet generally works in short 10 min stints, if at all. Plus all of the directions for this page are in spanish and i dont know how to change them so spelling will be hard to check. And i dont have the greatest anyway.

So to end I have concluded GUATEMALA=GREAT.
Your sister in Christ,
Jasmine