Xunantunich

Pronunciation: Zuh-nan-too-nich.

We woke up Monday morning, and it had been raining. We were disappointed cause when it rains they sometimes close the ruins cause they are dangerous when wet...thankfully it stopped raining and the sun came out. So off we went! We walked into San Ignacio to catch the bus that takes you near Xunantunich. It wasn't a very long ride. When you get there you take a ferry across the river. After that you walk. Maine decided to go the hard way...

Crystal and I went the easy way.

It was probably about a mile up the hill to where you by the tickets to get in......

After getting tickets, $5.00 US, you walk further up the hill to the actual ruins. Everything was so beautiful and green.

There are 3 large structures. The first one is the Kings old house, then there is some sort of temple (I really think everything was a temple to them), then the 3^rd and largest is the King's new house.

We climbed to the top! The views were AWESOME! These pics don't do them justice.

You could see into the jungles of Belize and Guatemala. In fact the palace actually sits on the border so we were kinda in two places at once. :) We ate lunch at the top. Which was pretty cool. To think that we were eating lunch on top a palace that most ancient Mayans weren't allowed to enter.

After lunch we hurried down the hill because the last ferry across was at 4 and we were cutting it close...turned out we had plenty of time. Maine got to crank the ferry though.

We were disappointed not to see any monkeys, though we think we might have heard a howler monkey. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. Maine is convinced it was a monkey though. We did see a couple of other animals.

For more pictures of Xunantunich click HERE.

The rest of the week was just a normal week. Service everyday in the morning. It is getting hotter and hotter so afternoons are kinda hard. We were able to go to Spanish Lookout again on Friday. So we got a nice long day then. Maine went on a study with a young man who not long ago couldn't sign well. Now he is doing awesome. Maine got to draw some of the pictures for the study. He said Maine's pictures were OK. :) Pictures are so important as everyone in sign knows. They are even more so here where many don't know sign or only know home sign. We have visited some deaf here that we used pictures and lots of acting out to make our points. While in Spanish Lookout we went to the Mennonite version of Walmart... it seemed more expensive. :/ Had lunch at the restaurant with WIFI!

Met a brother from the Creole congregation. FYI they are having there first Creole assembly Feb 4^th and 5^th! I got to go on the study with the deaf family again. Meet Elizabeth. She likes my glasses.

As we drove home we saw a beautiful sunset.

That's pretty much it. We are looking forward to Tara and Millie getting here. We are planning a trip into Guatemala with them to see Tikal! The center of the Mayan empire.

Coming soon to the blog:

Building a meeting place for the Creole congregation. Maine's awkward preaching experience. Our trip to Orange Walk, Belize City and San Pedro for talks and preaching!

Bye for now!

-Becky

Tarantula

TARANTULA

Yep we saw one. It was a peaceful evening, nothing unusual. Crystal was sweeping like she does every evening when suddenly she screamed! Maine and I ran out of the other room and sure enough she had seen it. A tarantula.

We were all stricken with fear. But Maine manned up and grabbed the broom. Turning it upside down and wielding it like a spear he sleighed the giant beast! And we all lived happily ever after only slightly fearful that the tarantula's family would come to seek revenge....so far so good.

THURSDAY

Crystal and I went out with a young girl named Serita. She is deaf and an unbaptized publisher. Aren't they adorable!

SPANISH LOOKOUT

Friday we went preaching in an area called Spanish Lookout. It's where the Cayo Deaf Institute is. CDI is run by the Mennonite community. So there are lots of farms all over. Also the stores and things are allot more like they are in the states. In gerneral everything is allot nicer. It's made up of allot of different villages. They aren't very good at coming up with names for them though...

There is also a Duckrun 2 and Duckrun 3.

To get Spanish Lookout you have to take a ferry boat.

We went with a couple that moved here from the states Tony and Lauren. Tony is deaf, Lauren is hearing. They are both really sweet and lots of fun. They, having been here for almost 2 years, know allot of the deaf in the area so we got to go meet quite a few and joined in on their Bible studies. One family that Lauren and I visited are all deaf.

There were these 2 little kids there, SO cute! I really wish I had taken their picture...hopefully I'll get to see them again so I can. But anyways they were both deaf and so sweet. They were so excited to sit and learn and look at pictures.

Maine and Tony got stuck waiting behind a horse at one point...

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant and had “beefburgers”. You have to be specific cause if you say “hamburger” they will literally give you ham. Thankfully we were warned and didn't have to figure that out the hard way. They also had free wifi there, so that was exciting!

After lunch Maine had to translate for Tony while visiting a deaf boy. The tricky part was that the boys mother only spoke Spanish, so Maine had to translate from ASL to Spanish. :/ It's good practice.

Afterward Tony and Lauren dropped us off at the house....so nice going with someone that has a car. :)

It was really sunny out when I took that picture...

MEETING

So both the Sign Language meetings are on the weekend. The cong. Bible study, ministy school, and service meeting are all on Saturday. Maine got to conduct the cbs at our first meeting here! He felt a little awkward considering he didn't really know many peoples sign names.

After meeting Saturday there was a going away party at our house for a sister that is moving farther south to a town called San Antonio. The area she is going to has a strong Mayan population. And most places there don't have electricity or like an actual shower. But there are allot of deaf. There isn't a Sign Language Congregation there, so they interpret the meetings. I guess allot of it is in Mayan though so the interpreting is hard. Anyhow here is a pic from the party. Elizabeth (in the white top) is who the party was for.

She moved to Belize from Mexico. She speaks Spanish and English, and knows both MSL and ASL. Up til recently (when we showed up) she has been living with Crystal.

Sunday Maine gave the public discourse.

The congregation here is pretty small. Only 22 publisher (people that take part in the ministry work). You can tell it's kinda sparse from the pic.

After meeting Ana Tune, the sister that we rent from who also lives next door, invited us all over for fry jacks! YAY! If you don't remember we had those our first day here at a restaurant. Ana's were way better! I love fry jacks! That was it. Today we went to Xunantunich. It was tons o' fun but I don't have time to put those pics up right now. Soooo stay tuned :)

Also thanks everyone for all the comments!

Assembly and Preaching

So Saturday Morning we woke up early to go to the Sign Language Special Assembly Day. This year it was held in Belmopan which is nice for us cause it was less then an hour away. So first we walked to the Kingdom Hall where most in the Congregation were meeting to take a bus. It's kinda cool, everyone pitches to rent a bus. Makes traveling allot easier since most don't have cars.

The Assembly was in a building they rented...not sure what the building is actually for...but anyhow, we were in an upstairs room. It seemed really small. There are only 3 ASL Congregations here in Belize and 2 official groups that do interpreting, so at most there was only 130ish people there. So again it seemed small compared to the ASL assemblies we go to in Canada. Anyone know how many people are usually at those?

The overseer for this area doens't really know ASL yet, so he spoke spanish. It was weird having ASL translated from spanish. Totally through us off. :) Also we have a new appreciation for padded seats! OUCH!

So we met allot of nice people. One girl we met is here from France for 7 months. She is staying in San Pedro supporting the English congregation that has the ASL group. We met another brother from there too. We are planning at the end of the month (provided it all works out) to go spend a week there!!! I'm so excited! Preaching in the morning, beach in the afternoon, oh ya! Don't worry Mom I'm wearing sunscreen. :)

After Assembly it was back on the bus. We got dropped off at the Kingdom Hall. On the way home we stopped at the Papusa stand. WOW so good!

It's right on the corner near our house. For those that don't know, they are like stuffed tortillas...stuffed with deliciosness! I really want to learn to make them. The other thing here that we are officailly in love with is creole bread! This lady makes it and you can buy it fresh every afternoon. We'll take a pic one of these days. So good!

Also the first day we were here we went to breakfast at this little restaurant and had fresh squeezed orange juice and fried jacks!

YUM! I am also in love with fired jacks....I really like bread.

MONDAY

I woke up not feeling so good so we stayed home. Not to worry I felt better by the afternoon. We ended up all worked around the house cleaning and doing laundry. We washed it all by hand.

Crystal has a little washer but it is boken right now. And it's really not so hard to wash by hand anyhow.

FIRST DAY PREACHING

Tuesday morning we finally got to go preaching. Right out the door we met a man and before we could even mention God's name Jehovah he did! Everyone here is really nice and easy to talk to. Most are religious and have an appreciation for the Bible. For the morning we basically just walked around talking to people on the streets. Then we walked up a huge hill to see some people with a deaf son that Crystal visits regualrly. The veiw was awesome!

But the roads were tough. I don't know how people drive on some of them. Seriously this one road had been completely washed out, but people still drive on it regularly. In fact Maine talked to a man at the top that was fixing his car. Tip: don't don't drive down that hill and maybe your car will work better.

After the morning we came home for lunch, sleep, and shower. Not nessesarily in that order. Then back out for more preaching at 2. We took a taxi to Bullet Tree. It was a really pretty drive. We walked down some roads Crystal had never been down before. Met a woman making tortillas. They knew a little deaf boy, but Crystal already knew him too. But she gave us a sample of her tortillas. Yummy! She sells them, you can buy like 20 for $1 bz or $0.50 US. So we did.

After we were done preaching we went to this awesome spot in the river (Belize river I think) that Crystal knows about. It was so refreshing!

So we sat in the water for awhile then caught a taxi back to San Ignacio. We were planning on getting papusas on the way home, but sadly they weren't open :( So instead we made “Creole pizza” (I made that up) which is pizza on creole bread (great idea Maine)

That brings us up to today. Woke up soar from all the walking. Went preaching and did more walking. :) Now we are having a sort of lazy afternoon. Blogging, emailing, more laundry.

We miss everyone allot! And hope you are all doing good.

For more photos of our day of preaching click Here

This post is actually from Becky I just posted it. :)

Day 1,2

Thursday January 4th- 5th

We left at Austin at 6:00am. We had a wonderful week with my parents.

We arrived in Belize city around 4:00pm

The trip down was a unique and wonderful adventure.

On the plain we had two “movie experiences”.

First: As we were about to board, I saw four men escorting two others onto the plain. One seemed to have a badge, on a chain around his neck. Sure enough they were escorting two people back to Belize. As we got onto the plain I saw three of the men, wearing I.C.E. badges. Later while going through customs I saw the two escorted men in a small interrogation room. I've seen this in the movies never in real life.

Second: Just before landing I heard an announcement. “We are have a medical emergency and need a doctor if you are a doctor let the flight attendants know.” I was like 'did she really just say that?' And sure enough they had a few on board. I heard the lady was fine.

The next bit of fun was the Taxi drive from the airport to the bus station. Wow! The taxi driver drove like Jehu! He flew through town on the small roads of Belize City, passing on curves with oncoming traffic, but we still felt safe. It was clear he know what he was doing.

We met Crystal at the station took a bus from Belize City to Cayo. Cayo is what they call the cities of San Ignacio and Santa Elena combined. On the bus I met a sister from the Belmopan congregation on her way home. Belmopan is the capital of Belize. Finally we arrived at Crystal’s place at 7:30pm.

*Disclaimer: We might be spelling things wrong, please don’t judge us. :) We’re new here.

We met Elizabeth.

She is so sweet. In fact she had dinner waiting for us when we arrived. It was soooo good.

Crystal opened all her notes in the straws. For those of you that don’t know, Crystal loves straws. So Becky and I had some friends back home write her notes and then roll them up and put them in straws. She loved them.

Later we talked while Becky learned to make tortillas.

riday we slept in late. We later went to the market and store. We also had water in a bag! They call it “shilling water". Shilling is their quarter. FYI $1 U.S = $2 Belize

Oh yeah this is Wilbur he’s our new friend. He and a few other’s live with us:

This is my view from the hammock.

That’s it for now. Coming soon: Assembly and Preaching. Stay tuned.

We love and miss you all.

GO DUCKS!!!!

Hello all! So we are currently in Texas at my lovely in-laws. Just watched the Rose Bowl (GO DUCKS!!!!) and the Fiesta Bowl with them and a nice pioneer family from a local congregation. The picture is of us and Maine's parents....obviously. If we look a little tired it's cause we are. :) It's late here.

Maine and I will be leaving for Belize early Thursday. We would love to hear from everyone while we are gone, so please feel free to comment on our post and send emails! From what I understand we will be living close to an internet cafe, so I'm going to try to post something at least once a week.

Love to all!