The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning

This is the gorgeous new temple dedicated today in San Salvador, El Salvador (a country whose name means "The Savior"). I attended the broadcast of the dedication at the district center chapel here in San Ignacio and got to see all my friends from both the San Ignacio and Santa Elena branches--most of them, sadly, for the last time.

The dedication was wonderful. Pres. Eyring presided and dedicated the temple--his first ever! Katie, Maren, Sarah, and I attended the 9 AM dedicatory session. This was an extra-advantageous choice since the first session included the sealing of the cornerstone and also had an English dubbed channel which was not present during the later sessions, much to some of our fellow team members' chagrin.

Pres. Eyring talked about how temples should awaken a sense of gratitude within each of us for the things God has given us and the blessings of the ordinances received therein. He noted that the creative beauty of each temple is an expression of our gratitude to our own Creator. All the talks were great and there was much reverence but also great excitement for this, the fourth temple to grace Central America.

After the dedication, I said rounds of goodbyes. Of a few of them I make special note:

This is Sister Sandra Trapp. She is one of the sweetest ladies you'll ever meet and I've really enjoyed getting to know her in the Santa Elena Branch. She has had many trials that have left her mostly paralyzed and her voice is very quiet so you have to lean in close to understand her when she speaks, but she is very wise and has many keen spiritual insights. She has faithfully come to Church every week I've been here and has rarely missed a week for the past decade since she joined the Church. We often talk about the Sunday School lesson and Sacrament talks after Church and she always has phenomenal insights. When I said goodbye today she gave me the most touching goodbye letter including her testimony. How blessed we are to have sisters like Sandra Trapp in the Kingdom to inspire us!

Here's my Belizean Branch Presidents! At left is Pres. Lemos of the San Ignacio Branch. Even though I didn't attend the San Igancio Branch, I had quite a few opportunities to interact with that branch and Pres. Lemos specifically. He is an incredible man and will likely continue to be an important Church leader in Belize for decades to come. At right is Pres. Pinelo, the President of the Santa Elena branch where I've attended. He is soft-spoken, but a great leader also and I've loved helping serve in his branch, even if only temporarily.

Right after the dedication session, I had another goodbye, this time to fellow team mate Katie. She was supposed to leave yesterday, but her flight got cancelled due to the hurricane, so she left today. She had to get back early because she has a race for BYU Track and Field tomorrow in Park City! Best of luck, Katie!

Speaking of the hurricane, Harvey truly was pretty lame, as mentioned yesterday. In fact, as you noticed in the pictures above, especially with Presidents Pinelo and Lemos, the day today has already been completely clear and beautiful. Now, I actually don't mind that at all! In fact, good weather will be a great blessing to be able to get our work done the next few days before leaving. 

Later in the afternoon we watched some "Mormon Messages" videos and now I'm writing my blog post, and that's my day so far. 

Moral of today's post: don't undervalue the blessing of a temple! The saints here in Belize are ecstatic to have a new temple that will only require them to travel a day and a half each way at huge expense to be able to attend. I don't know about you, but for me in Provo, the temple is a fifteen minute WALK from my apartment! Let us not neglect that blessing. Remember: Pres. Eyring taught today that temples should turn our hearts to gratitude, and a great deal of that gratitude should certainly be for temples themselves, especially ones with such close proximity!

Futbol!

Today was great but largely another computer day. Today's post will be especially brief.

I worked a lot on the Succotz tourist map and have a preliminary draft done that I'm very pleased with. It reflects a lot of the data gathered in our recent "business tracting" venture in Succotz, organized and filtered for the most relevant entries and information. Take a look:

Can you find Iguana Rd?

We also had computer class and it went great! We started teaching about the internet today and how it can be used as a tool. Most of our students are adults who sell various things, often to tourists, and already are seeing the benefits of selling online. As they've done so well on everything so far, we decided that next Wednesday we are going to devote the entire class time to how to start a small online sales presence via eBay, Amazon, and social networking. This is all very exciting as it shows how our efforts at teaching these computer classes will not just give our students a mediocre introduction to computers in general, but real skills for application that will allow them to raise their standard of living.

In the evening, Katie had 7 more miles to run for the day to keep up with her Olympic-prep training schedule. I was her escort to the park and while there I ran into Pres. Lemos from the San Ignacio Branch of the LDS Church and his wife. It is fall futbol (soccer) season and he plays for San Ignacio United, one of the regional teams. These are very intense leagues, somewhere between intramurals and minor leagues in the U.S. From all of my observations, these leagues are a great blessing to Belize. Generally, the men who play on them tend to learn rigorous work ethics that translate into career habits since the leagues themselves don't pay so they have to make their living in other ways. It is a positive outlet for the men that can keep many of them from getting involved in gangs or drug rings. President Lemos is a really amazing man (and not too many years older than myself) and from what I can tell, the futbol leagues tend to be full of men of similar caliber. Tonight he and the others on their team began practice for the fall season and were setting up a bunch of cones and stakes to run maneuvers. So, I helped them set things up while chatting with Pres. Lemos and his wife as Katie ran her 7 miles (which only takes her 45 mintues--a consistent 6 & 1/2 minute mile pace and she never runs her fastest while just doing training runs). Anyway, it was great to chat with Pres. and Sis. Lemos, as they are both wonderful people. The evening made me wonder if Succotz has a team in the league and what a blessing that could be to their community.

These are the cones and pegs we set up.

Here are the players for San Ignacio United Futbol team, practicing their drills. Pres. Lemos is #4 in Blue.

I told you it would be short!

So...

So, have any of you noticed how often I begin my posts or even multiple paragraphs within one post with the word "so"? I've started to notice this unacceptable abuse of an unnecessary word, and will try my best to reform.

I have 2 weeks left in Belize to finish up the projects I'm leading while helping others finish up their own projects. It is crazy to think how little time is left and yet how much we have planned to make happen in those 2 weeks! Yesterday and today have been full of lots of little details and meetings with partners to make sure all the pieces are in place for these last 2 weeks to run smoothly and sufficiently to accomplish all necessary tasks. I'll get into some more detail, but first I have to rewind a bit and go back to Friday morning BEFORE the adventure to San Pedro and share 2 more birthday details. First is the happy birthday sign over the staircase:

This poster has been through a lot of birthdays! (I resisted a serious urge to start that sentence with "So,") It was put up originally over a month before I came for a team member from last wave named Shelbi for her 20th birthday. A few weeks later it was Sarah's birthday and the sign was still hanging, so they just put another piece of paper over the "helbi" in Shelbi and wrote "arah" over it to make it say "Sarah," who was also turning 20. That's what it looked like when I got to Belize. A week or two after I arrive, if you remember from an earlier post, it was MacKenzie's 20th birthday, so they put more paper over the name "Sarah" that said "MacKenzie." Finally, as it was still hanging for my birthday, they changed the "0th" in 20th to a "3rd", as shown above, and simply covered up the "Mac" and the "zie" in MacKenzie with yet more paper to make the resultant "Ken" shown above! To my knowledge, mine is the last birthday.

I also had one present to open in the morning before we left. There is quite a story to this. The week before last Lindsay's brother Jonathan came to visit for a week. He did a lot of adventuring around Belize, including a jungle trek for which he bought the standard instrument of choice of Belizeans: the Machete! He didn't intend to bring it back to the states with him as he had no room in his luggage and we joked about him giving it to one of us. He heard it would be my birthday 5 days after his departure, so the day he left I found this package on my bed:

 In case you can't read it, the note on this conspicuously machete-shaped gift says, "To: Ken It's a surprise! Don't open until your birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"

Birthday morning came and revealed this bad boy!

Hmm. Now that I'm conscientiously trying not to start each paragraph with "So," I'm now having to resist the urge to replace every instance with "Anyway". Without using an unnecessary word, let's move on to yesterday and today!

Yesterday in the morning I finalized a street sign template for the street names in Succotz. We also went on a price hunt to different sign makers to get various quotes and find the best price on the job (as well as for printing the map brochures). It was a productive morning and really helped lay out the time frame for the rest of this project.

In the afternoon I did additional computer work, but also taught the computer class. One student, Orlando (the one I mentioned previously who only has 8 fingers) is progressing amazingly. Obviously he doesn't work much on typing, but when it comes to the other computer skills we're focusing on, he's doing really well. We learned a lot more about Excel and were able to focus on not only learning basic things it does, but especially how to apply those functions to basic problem solving in business scenarios. We made up a fictional company and entered in hypothetical transportation costs data and used functions in Excel to help us organize and use the data to make hypothetical business solutions. That way, he not only learns what a spreadsheet is and how to enter things, but thinks about ways to use its powers to solve a problem and help out a business.

After computer class, Kyle, Lindsay, and I went to Succotz to scope out every street corner to see how many already had poles infrastructure in place for the signs. We were delighted to discover that most of the street corners already have places to hang signs on the power poles (very common street sign place in Belize) and that will save us a LOT on costs! 

Rainbow: a good omen shines over the village of San Jose Succotz!

After scoping out the street intersections, we returned to San Ignacio for dinner just as the remaining vacationers from the team arrived from San Pedro. Our wonderful cook, Mama Kay, is out of town in El Salvador this week (I believe she went to go see the temple open house) so we are eating out each night, paid for by the team funds that we'd usually pay Mama Kay with. We ate last night at a really nice and fun Kriol-themed tourist restaurant in downtown San Ignacio called "Flayva's". I'd eaten there one other time. The staff knows all of us and is very friendly. After dinner we finished the night off with our usual Monday night planning meeting.

Today began with more work in Succotz on 2 different projects. I primarily went around recontacting some of the businesses we tracted out, soliciting for some of the larger businesses to advertise on the tourist brochure. The advertising is projected to be immensely effective based on the distribution plan of the brochures and comparison to the virtual lack of advertising structure currently in place. Furthermore, the funds generated from the advertising will be invested back into the village by providing the village council with more money to subsidize the cleanliness initiative, education, and public health. 

We also revisited some locations of a former project: the adobe stoves project. I haven't written much about this project as it was primarily the work of the former waves. This was a great project that gave better cooking facilities to various poor families in Succotz. They formerly would cook in enclosed buildings over little pit fires--i.e., lung cancer waiting to happen. The adobe stoves provide the user with a self-venting system which can cook much more than a pit fire at a time and more efficiently while getting the smoke completely out of the house and away from vulnerable lungs. We built 5 such stoves in Succotz this summer and some of them simply needed some revisiting to finish a few loose ends and improve their efficiency. Meanwhile, the sustainability of the project is already in full swing as various individuals in the community are teaching others how to build the stove and so now at least 2 more stoves are being built even without HELP International's involvement! I only helped a little at the end of the morning today as I was doing business contacting around the village, but I helped a little at the end.

 Here is Jake, doing some repairs on Natalie's adobe stove.

Here is an all-new adobe stove in the making, completely begun by the people of the village themselves at a new location! This is the real fruits of such a project--to know that we haven't just built 5 adobe stoves to benefit 5 families, but that we've taught members of a community something new that will spread after we leave to bless many more families than that!

My business contacting had some good results, as well as some interesting discussion in general about the Succotz Revenue Generation project and its potential effects as well as pitfalls. Considering potential weaknesses was especially important for two reasons. First of all, if we recognize weak spots, we can try to prevent some of them in advance. Second, as not all weaknesses are preventable, it gives valuable insight into the nature of development work. It can give insight into how a project might be improved upon when implemented elsewhere. Furthermore, it reminds us to be humble and remember that there is no "silver bullet" for development work. I am hardly the first person to attempt to reverse the tide of poverty in a village--even this particular village--and should not expect this project to solve every possible problem there! Knowing this helps us remember to remain specific in the goals we want to see come to pass and focus on key areas where our particular skill sets can make the greatest impact that could perhaps win a battle even if not the whole war. I would love to see poverty eradicated from San Jose Succotz, but this one project alone will not do that. However, I do expect it to make a difference. Ultimately, the results I specifically see coming from my project are as follows:

1. Increased revenue to the village council, enabling them to:

    a) Make improvements to village infrastructure and trash collection system in the short term

    b) Subsidize education and public health in the long run

2. Increase the tourist-based revenue flow to private businesses in Succotz, thus helping those willing to work who currently struggle despite their best efforts to provide for their families.

3. Create a platform for further development projects especially via the increased link to the tourist industry, relevant national government agencies, and other partner non-profit organizations.

Not everyone will see a major business increase, but some definitely will. Not every child's education will be improved or decreased in costs, but some will. The public health system will not be completely perfected, but it will be improved. Ultimately, I believe that the impact will be very real, even if there will still be more to do for a very long time. 

After the morning in Succotz and a quick bite to eat, the whole team headed to the national capital of Belmopan to spend the afternoon at an orphanage, where we dropped of a number of care packages sent from the states with supplies such as toothpaste and brushes, clothes, hygiene items, etc. This is not a long-term or continuing project, but rather something we focused on just this afternoon. There were about 30 children there, all very eager for attention and most of them extremely bright. Once again, we are not in a long-term partner arrangement with this orphanage this year but were last year and the team last year recorded that they were not a good partner organization at all. We saw that for ourselves today. Our focus is on sustainable projects with continuing impact. There are literally scores of organizations who come to countries like Belize, do some sightseeing, visit orphanages and take pictures, then go back victoriously in the name of development work. Certainly visiting orphans is nice, and today was wonderful, but to come for a day or two and then leave does not make much lasting impact on the conditions of the lives of those therein, hence why today's visit was a one-time thing since we had care packages to deliver anyway. We quite enjoyed it, but it made me want to cry to see the poor conditions that these children grow up in. To change the orphanage would come down to somehow changing the hearts, minds, and methods of the rather irresponsible caretakers there. From all our observations today and in a needs assessment visit some team members made last week, the caretakers mainly just talk in the kitchen all day while the kids run around wild all day with absolutely no structure to their lives. They desperately need parental CARE but indications reveal very little available to them. Fortunately, other organizations do exist which focus specifically and entirely on orphanage reform around the world and I hope someday they visit the orphanage we visited today and focus on making long-term lasting changes there.

On a positive note, not all orphanages in Belize are like that. In fact, you may have been following the orphanage construction project we are working on I've written about several times before. That orphanage, where we are building additional small single and double room housing units, is a very trusted operation which provides a much better atmosphere for the kids living there than the one we visited in Belmopan today. I've focused a lot in this post on the sustainability of the projects we are involved in as it is very important to me that non-profits focus on making real change in the communities where they work. Too many international groups promote "volun-tourism" where people just visit sights and orphans, as described earlier. To be blunt, I believe this is largely a waste of the funds of those who invest in such organizations. There is already too little by way of funding for work like this to use it ineffectively! I know that may sound somewhat harsh, but I strongly believe that significant reforms are needed in the NPO/NGO world if the goals we all desire for humanity are to become a reality.

I'll get off my soap box now and conclude with some pictures from our orphanage visit. Once again, though not a long-term focus, it was an enjoyable afternoon and eye-opening to additional problems which still plague this struggling country. The kids were all great.

Ashley and Maren (not pictured here) led this mini-project and before our visit put together a small activity to help the kids focus on life goals and plans. In this way, even though we were only able to visit this one time, our visit was able to hopefully at least do a little bit of good for the kids beyond the supply drop-off. It was a great success, as you can see here the kids eagerly participating.

Sarah gives some one-on-one attention to an adorable 3-year-old named Jamesey.

 The kid in blue is Edgar. As part of the activity, we asked the kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. After he told me he wanted to be a police officer, I told him I wanted to be a ninja when I grew up. He looked and me and said, "You're already grown up. It's too late now. You can never be a ninja!"

So, (sorry--old habits die hard!) overall yesterday and today have been particularly thought-provoking. I have been so grateful for the chance to help here, despite the limits that exist to development work. I am grateful to have been raised in a loving home and not an under-cared for orphanage. I hope with time we will someday see problems like that disappear forever as well all pool together to make one small difference at a time, specifically differences that are long-lasting and life changing!

What is a "barbecue"?

If you've been keeping up with the blog, then hopefully the title today makes sense. Otherwise, you'll get it later. :)

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of having to cover 2 days worth of work in one night, yet I keep putting myself in that situation a lot as of the last few days and am about to do so again the next few as well! I'm going to try to make it kind of brief since I have lots of other things to get done tonight, but we'll see.

So, let's start with yesterday, shall we? In the morning, Ashley and I headed to Succotz to fill in cracks in information after mining through all the data gathered in the first phase of the revenue project there. We also had another very important and productive meeting with the village council there and talked about a lot of important details of the project and the next phase which we intend to begin next week--street sign installation! The morning was overall very productive and good for our legs as we did lots of walking around Succotz visiting different businesses to ask different questions. The particulars may seem strange to blog about, but I'll show you a few pictures I took while we walked through the village:

The first time I saw this unusual sight last week, I thought it was an unfinished or destroyed house. It is not. It is the village park. That structure is the play-place. It has rusty nails and rebar sticking out of it. It is boring and not fun for children in any way imaginable. It is covered in trash. With the new revenue flow to the village council resulting from our project, funds will now be available for them to do things like fix this disaster of a playground disguised as an injury factory. On a more meaningful level, the project long-term will give funds that will ultimately subsidize education and public health.

The park also featured this fantastic sign urging us to not litter or bring pigs to the park. Uncertain whether they mentioned the pig part because they are worried for the park or the pigs. Given the park's condition as described above, I pick the latter. Either way, it is a wonderful and absurd sign!

A great view of the village nestled on the hillside, taken from a road near the park.

Can you find the iguana?

We were just walking along the western highway which runs along the river and suddenly Ashley points to the grass 2 feet from me where we saw this beautiful 5-foot male, already turning orange for the mating season. I guess we startled him and he started running off. It wasn't long before one of the many stray dogs saw him and started chasing but he was fast and got to the river where he lunged in and swam out of sight!

So, after Succotz Ashley and I met up with Jorge and Shamira to go get supplies for the Rainforest Haven resort (part of a consulting job project I'm working on) so we could have our team outing there/photo shoot for the website, as will be described later. Along the way, we had to stop off at Shamira's grandmother's house. Her grandmother has a tree in the backyard with 6 iguanas! I couldn't ever get all of them in a single shot, but I have a few pics you can find them in:

Can you find the iguanas?

If you click to zoom in and look closely, you can see 2 iguanas swimming in the river in the background.

Anyway, after the errands we got back just in time for me to go teach computer class. Unfortunately, the Cornerstone Foundation where we hold the class was for some reason locked when we got there. Luckily I had my laptop with me and we just taught our little handful of students out on the porch. It was not very ideal since they couldn't all follow along and do the actions themselves on their individual computers, but at least it got the job done. Hopefully that won't happen again!

After computer classes, I did some work on my computer and also got things ready to go for an evening at the resort! The whole team came out so we could do a big photo shoot in the various rooms and on the grounds for the website. Read my former posts on Rainforest Haven for more details on this project. Ironically, even though it was a photoshoot I don't have many pictures to show you since we did most of the picture-taking on a few of the nicer cameras some of our team members have. I did take a couple, but none with any people; really only shots of the beautiful grounds, like these:

We made a little camp fire at dark and roasted some marshmallows and had a fantastic time together. It was great fun at the end of a productive work day, but also productive in and of itself! I did learn some interesting things while staying there. First and foremost is that domesticating parrots is a really good idea. Why? Because wild parrots are the most annoying creature known to man! Several flocks of parrots live around the property and they make the most annoying squawking noise I've ever heard in my life. They are super loud and all squawk together as they fly in little groups of 7-15; for any other type of bird I'm sure you'd need at least 50 to make that much noise! They are especially annoying at 4:00 in the morning. I also discovered that they are rather violent birds in the wild and like to fight each other. In fact, I witnessed such a battle, as two parrots in one of the flocks got in a fight in midair and wrestled each other in free fall until they hit the ground about 10 yards away from me, whereupon they looked up startled and flew off. 

So, after our beautiful resort excursion I worked most of today on the Succotz project again, most of my time on the computer. Then, in the evening I learned yet another area-based definition of the word "barbecue." Let me explain the history of my experience with this word. I grew up believing that "Barbecue" meant meat, like hamburgers or hotdogs, grilled on a barbecue grill, and possibly served with barbecue sauce. However, when my family moved to Wisconsin when I was 9 I was introduced to an alternative definition of the word, as it was there used to describe sloppy joes. Yet again, later while living in Florida, it seemed to refer specifically to pulled pork. Well, I have another even more unique definition to add to the list. 

You see, last week the branch of the Church here in San Ignacio invited us to have a "barbecue" with them in our honor this evening. We've grown very close to the members in both the San Ignacio and Santa Elena branches, even though we aren't here specifically as Church members doing Church things. We still become very attached to these branches as we offer our services on Sundays at Church and often in the evenings with activities, etc. Furthermore, several of the church members have helped us out a ton on our projects and even given us great leads on places to help out. We were touched and honored to be invited by Pres. Lemos, the branch pres in San Ignacio, to this special barbecue in our honor, to be held Thursday night. So, Megan and Kyle told our cook, Mama Kay, to take the night off since we'd have a barbecue. However, when we got there they had set up a great big branch dance party with some snacks but no actual substantive food. This is when we discovered that in Belize, "Barbecue" means "Get-together" or "social" and doesn't necessarily entail food. After having a good laugh, Megan and I went and got some food for the team so they didn't starve to death while dancing. 

In the middle of the party, Pres. Lemos stopped the music and called everyone together for a bit to bring things down and make a presentation for us. He talked about his love for Belize and how touched he was that we would leave the comforts of our own country to help make his a better place. He bore the sweetest and most touching testimony of service and being where God wants us to be and we were all in tears. He then gave each one of us a beautiful and personalized magnet in the shape of Belize each with various unique pictures painted on along with our names that the branch members had made for all of us. It is a simple gift, but perhaps one of the most meaningful I have ever received in my entire life.

This is my magnet handmade by the branch members in San Ignacio. I was particularly glad to see that mine featured the ruins of Xunantunich as they are the major attraction attached to Succotz village where most of my work has centered and the ruins serve an important role in the revenue stream of that village. Truly the gesture of the gift itself as well as the images it depicts will forever remind me of my experiences here in Belize.

After the gifts and a few more remarks, a much larger portion of the branch showed up to turn the party on! Belizeans absolutely love music and dancing. The branches out here have dance parties (or "barbecues") all the time, and dance parties often just break out at people's homes (like Jose Luis' house in Succotz a few weeks back if you remember). The music is a fun blend of American dance music hits (often slightly remixed) and the native Belizean hits that are in English, Spanish, Kriol, or even a mix of the three! (I haven't yet heard any in Mayan, but that is primarily only spoken down in the southernmost areas of Belize) Do you remember how last summer every other song on the radio was "Hey, Soul Sister"? Well, the current mega-hit in Belize is a song called "The Tornado Song" that is a really silly dance song with a very simple dance associated with it that every man, woman, and child in the country can do. The song tells the listener to "shake your tornado" and some times has bouts of "slow tornado" followed by "faster, faster tornado." YouTube it, as you probably won't hear it on an American radio any time soon. :)

Belizean dance party! Yay!

I have a FANTASTIC video as well that I took, but photos take long enough to load on this internet connection that I don't think I'm going to try a video. I'll just put it on my YouTube channel, probably when I'm back in the states. If sooner, I'll let you know. It was another unique interruption to the dance party that can only be seen and not described. 

Anyway, I guess this post wasn't very short after all! I have to warn you again that I'm going to probably be internet-less again, this time until Sunday! You see, my wonderful team member have planned a birthday getaway surprise trip for me to the Carribean islands that are part of Belize off of the mainland coast. During our time down here, we get weekends off and as you've probably read we've had some great adventures on the weekends. We also get 2 additional "vacation days" and I'm taking one of them tomorrow for this birthday trip with the team. So, it will be a 3-day weekend without internet till we get back on Sunday after Church in San Pedro. Talk to you then!

Succotz Revenue Generation Project Phase One: DONE!

Sorry for no post yesterday. At the end of the day I just had lots and lots of little loose ends to tie up for things related to school and my business back in the states and I just never found the time to blog. However, yesterday is pretty easy to summarize. In the morning, 7 of us went to Succotz to finish up the business tracting project there, and finish we did! My companion for this third round was Maren. Overall during the three days we went to Succotz, we collectively gathered information profiling 67 businesses or notable public buildings/organizations in Succotz. That was a very exciting accomplishment! (See my previous posts on Succotz to get more information about this project if you're just joining the blog--it is my personal lead project and the flagship project of my entire experience in Belize).

However, in writing most of my day yesterday and much of today seems rather boring. Besides a break in the afternoon for computer classes at 3 (wherein the students continued to learn about Microsoft Word, specifically how to add and use objects like shapes and pictures), I spent most the time yesterday pouring through the 24 hand-written pages of collected information and entering it into an Access database with corresponding symbols of various kinds filling up a computer copy of the map I created, plotting where each business is located. Pretty boring from the outside, but as the project lead it was very exciting to see some of the fascinating discoveries and trends unfold as I sorted through all the information. This continued into today, interrupted at one point by a shorter-than-usual shift at the orphanage construction project, which I'll talk about a little later in this post. By 6:00 this evening I was finally done compiling all the information. For a taste of the madness of this project, let me show you a screen clipping of the map which has all my annotation symbols on it marking the locations of these various businesses by their types.

Besides the orphanage trip, the other trip I made beyond my computer today was to do some brief research on street sign prices. Rin and I went out to get some price quotes and although we managed to get information from the San Ignacio mayor's office about where they had the nice signs like the one below made for the streets of San Ignacio, we were unsuccessful at contacting the man they referred.

A loverly street sign in San Ignacio. Not sure what the origin of this street's name is, but it sounds awfully familiar...

Speaking of street signs and names, allow me to address that topic once more in relation to Succotz. As you may remember, I worked with the village council to come up with names for the streets in Succotz. The street names in the map I showed you above are mostly accurate, but a couple have changed and a handful have just been traded around. A final map will definitely be given later and tomorrow morning all street names should be final and we will send in our order for the street signs. If you examine the names on the map above closely, you'll find a blend of names with local significance (like Jose Luis St) or traditional association (like "Good Shepherd lane, which leads to the Good Shepherd clinic or Church St. which runs by the large Catholic Church at the center of the village); you'll find names from Mayan mythology (like Itzamna and Kukulkan); you'll find names of native Belizean animals (like Jaguar and Tapir); you'll find Belizean national figures and leaders (like George Price, Manuel Esquivel, and even Queen Elizabeth). You'll also find a couple surprises. I will not comment on or explain these surprises at present, but will showcase them in a later post. 

Now, as I mentioned, we worked a little bit today at the orphanage we are building as well (you may want to see previous posts for a description of this construction project). We had to start late due to rain and finish early because we all still had other afternoon projects to attend to. However, it is coming along nicely and hopefully should be done just in time before we leave Belize! Because it has been raining so much the last couple days, everything was super muddy today and we all came back pretty caked. The muddiest, of course, was our increasingly dwindling dirt pile, where our dirt crater became a lake we had to work around as we shoveled out the number of buckets of dirt we needed for another row of bags:

In the background you see Sarah and MacKenzie leaning over some worms that were found, as we are also still trying to acquire more worms for the soilet project.

Anyway, that's all I've got for today. Tomorrow should bring the beginning of Phase Two of the Succotz project, more computer classes, and an overnight visit to the Resort with the entire team for the Rainforest Haven project! That reminds me--I'm forewarning you that there will most likely not be a post tomorrow night because I won't have internet access. If I DO post, it will be because the weather is still too bad to make the resort trip worth it and I am thus still at home in San Ignacio. So, let's cross our fingers for good weather and I'll write again on Thursday! :)

The Visa Adventure

So, yes, this makes 3 posts in one day. I posted my summary of Thursday and Friday earlier today and just posted my "Meet the Team" post for the day, spotlighting Pete Harris. Now I'm finishing my catch-up work by posting for yesterday and today!

If you remember from the Thurs/Fri post, I was very sick all night between Thurs and Fri and into Friday morning. I was wiped out all day and continued to sleep through the night! Luckily, Saturday morning found me feeling much, much better. The queasiness was all gone and I was just a little worn out still and definitely hungry (since all I'd eaten on Friday was a couple soda crackers)! Encouraged by my good turn of health, I was back on my feet for another Saturday in my orange adventure pants! For those new to the blog, Saturday and Sunday are our "days off" each week. Additionally, throughout our 6 week stay, we get 2 additional "vacation days" which I have not used yet (but a certain commemoration approaches this week that may merit the use of such a day...). We often use our Saturdays for exciting adventures here in Central America! Yesterday was no exception and indeed had another purpose as well. We needed to renew our passport visas. This can be done in two ways: go to the embassy in Belmopan or leave the country for at least a few hours. Since we live ridiculously close to the Guatemalan border anyway, we chose the latter and spent the day in Guatemala!

 Here I am in the "no man's land" between Belize and Guatemala. Click the pic to see the blue "Bienvenidos A Guatemala" sign!

Basic thoughts on Guatemala:

*Much more militarized. Lots more cops with big guns than Belize has. Sorry, didn't think it wise to take pictures of Guatemalan cops with guns.

*The same poverty I see and fight in Belize also exists in Guatemala. Very similar, in fact. However...

*Though they have the same degree of poverty in many areas, they also have much more development. Let me illustrate these two points:

Besides being a sweet (albeit poorly lit) gangsta pic of me, if you look behind me at the river's edge you'll see some crude little huts with rock on little tables. This is where the women come to wash clothes, beating them against the rocks with other smaller rocks and rinsing them in the river. This is just like Belize, where I see the same thing in Succotz every day. In fact, in Succotz I've never actually seen little huts like this--just the big rocks and the women pounding away. However...

Guatemala clearly sets itself apart as more developed than Belize with shopping mall complexes like this one. I have never seen any shopping centers like this at all in Belize or even a building this modern for any purpose! It was actually quite an awakening seeing buildings like this in Guatemala and realizing that I haven't seen a single building in Belize that looks younger than ME, except for the LDS chapel in Succotz. Even other buildings I've seen which I know are relatively new still LOOK very old as they rely on old forms of building and architecture. Many of them are not hurricane proof and many are falling apart. It may seem like a delightful little splurge of romanticism at first to come to Belize and feel like you've traveled back 40 years in time, but as reality sets in it's just downright sad. These are very smart people who want the same opportunities we have and yet are held back by immense lack of resources to get them there. Anyway, this is a weekend post, so I'll get off my soap box now because weekend posts are supposed to be about adventures!

We started our day in the island-city of Flores, Guatemala. This is a major tourist town that is fun because it is its own little island and is filled with lots of little restaurants and gift shops. I felt a lot richer in Guatemala since the Guatemalan Quetzal is worth a lot less than the US dollar. Where the Belizean currency trades at a simple 2:1 with US currency, Quetzales trade at 7.5:1, so a single Quetzal is worth about 13 cents (or about a shilling in Belize money, but not if you trade Belize money straight to Quetzales as they trade at a lower rate than US dollars). So, if you come with $100 US, you will be given Q750 and feel a lot richer! Furthermore, the prices at the little shops are a little better than those in Belize and the people are a little easier to talk down in price. I felt pretty good about some of the price negotiations I managed to pull off when buying some souvenirs for my family members. 

 The mainland from the island of Flores.

 In a photo that is unfortunately victim to poor lighting choices, Maren and Ashley pose with this interesting statue thing.

Guatemalan grub! I actually couldn't eat all of it since my stomach was still somewhat recovering from a day of weirdness. Also, the flip-side to seeming a lot richer because of the exchange rate is that the prices also seem much higher. For example, this burrito is Q44. If you think in dollars, that's outrageous, but in Quetzales it really isn't that bad for a nice meal (especially since it originally had these yummy spicy chips with it that were devoured already before I thought to take a picture). In US money it would be slightly less than a $6 meal altogether and it was from a really nice restaurant, so it was a good price. 

Anyway, from Flores we headed to our primary destination: Tikal! We first did a little zip line adventure in the jungle area just outside Tikal. Most of the pictures from that part of the day are on other cameras I haven't taken the pictures from yet, but I have a few:

 Here I am in full zip-line gear!

These little orange centipedes were everywhere in the jungle!

Can you find the spider monkeys?

After our zip-lining jungle adventure, we entered the Tikal national park, which is also in very thick jungle. This was absolutely indescribable! I took nearly a hundred pictures, so I clearly can't post them all, but I'll put some of my favorites up. Basically, when I visited the ruins at Xunantunich a few weeks ago, it was pretty awesome, but this is a whole new league! Let's just say that Xunantunich is to Tikal as the theme park rides at the county fair are to Disney World! In fact, Tikal is nearly as big as Disney World altogether and you'd have to be there a week to really see everything. We saw most of the major temples and lots of the smaller ones and other ancient city buildings like the acropolises where the royals lived and had their political offices. The entire time the eerie haunting cries of the howler monkeys echoed through the jungle--I must say that they make the most unsettling growls I've ever heard! But now, on to a sampling of pictures:

So, five major temples have been excavated so far at Tikal. They are numbered by order of excavation. This is "Temple 2." Several hundred smaller buildings and temples have been excavated either partially or completely and TONS more are waiting to be excavated. You can see lots of mounds with trees growing out of them and bits of building sticking out all over the place, awaiting future attention from the archaeologists.

 Temple 1, first excavated and shortest of the 5 major temples.

One of the sacrificial altars, against the backdrop of other monuments, perhaps with ritual significance.

Detailed view of one of the monuments.

View of the North Acropolis from the top of Temple 1

We spent a good deal of time exploring the Central Acropolis--a complex of housing and offices for nobles and leaders. In the second picture above, Temple 2 looms in the background. Originally, additional wooden and thatch structures would have been build on top of and around these buildings.

 In one of the rooms of the central acropolis, presumably the bed chamber of some nobleman.

He had a nice jungle view through his window!

Originally, all the buildings were painted red. This is one of the few spots that still retains any traces of that ancient red pigment.

Like I said, there is still lots of excavation going on and tons of mounds that haven't been touched. Here is a project currently underway.

Here is Temple 5, the most recently excavated of the larger temples. Nearby, there was a display documenting the excavation process, including this picture from early on in the process when it was mostly still covered in trees and only the top was dug out:

Many structures there still are completely covered like this. In fact, the right side of temple 5 still is. Let me show you...

Here is the completely excavated right side of the temple, contrasted with...

...this still completely overgrown left side with trees coming out!

This small temple--one of seven right in a row--has been adorned in a thatched overhanging much like those which originally adorned most if not all of these ancient structures.

This is called the "Lost World" pyramid and isn't considered one of the major numbered temples (I don't know why). It's claim to fame is that it is the oldest major structure in Tikal, dating back to 200 AD. The gringo in front with the orange adventure pants is its sacred guardian, looking rather threatening with that palm branch! :-P

From the "Lost World" we got our first glimpse of what would be the climax of our journey--temple 4, the tallest ancient American structure still standing not just in Tikal or Guatemala, but anywhere! We started our journey for this great temple, but on the way...

...we found these holes in the ground! Of course, they begged to be explored, so we climbed in and discovered...

...sets of 5 branching cubby holes in each tunnel. It was actually pitch black, but luckily my phone has a fantastic flashlight that also serves as the flash for the camera which took this picture of one of the cubby holes. Each hole was about 3.5 feet wide and some of the sets of cubby holes were connected. We made a few guesses as to their purpose and one of our theories was later confirmed by one of the park employees, who told us that these were storage cellars for the Mayas and many of them were found with objects inside that have been removed to study and to protect from looters.

Finally, after a few other fun diversions, we made it to the base of temple 4. At first we didn't realize this fact because it just looked like a big grassy hill with a staircase:

What you're seeing is actually not a hill, but the temple itself and the staircase (which makes about 6 switchbacks on the way up) takes you to the top of it. Only the very top portion has ever been excavated of this enormous temple, and you don't realize the fact that you are actually climbing the temple until all of the sudden the top portion suddenly appears as you come around a switchback in the staircase:

So here is the excavated portion, from the side where you enter at top after climbing all along the BACK of the pyramid. Once you come around to the front of the pyramid at top, you immediately gasp as you are met with this arresting view:

You can clearly see temples 1-3 (the really prominent one is #3) and if you click to make it bigger you may catch the top of 5 peeking behind that big mound, which is full of more ruins awaiting excavation. Even further right you can see the "lost world" temple peeking out. Tons of ruins lie between each of these bigger structures, like the small temple and the acropolis shown above. We saw so few of the ruins there in the 3 hours we spent in Tikal. You could easily spend a week and not see everything. By the way, does this view look familiar? You may have seen it before in very popular movie...

Yes, this is Yavin 4 at the end of the original Star Wars film, where the Millenium Falcon is being signalled to fly in at the tallest temple in Tikal, where the interior will be substituted with a Hollywood set at which Princess Leia will smile at Luke, Han, and Chewie and put medals on them. When Star Wars was filmed, the top of temple 4 had just barely been excavated and George Lucas saw it as a fantastic view to serve as an exotic alien background, which his audience fully assumed it was! By the way, when the dude in the helmet turns around...

...he is revealed to actually be me in disguise! :)

I'll let that picture serve as an adequate conclusion to my adventure in Tikal. From there we headed back to Belize, which ironically feels like "Home Sweet Home" even though I'm just as much as foreigner here as in Guatemala! It felt like that moment near the end of The Emperor's New Groove where they're trying all the potions on Kuzco. After changing into a bunch of different animals he is changed to a llama--like he has been most of the film--and says, "Yay! I'm a llama again! Wait..." We were all like, "Yay, we're home to Belize again! Wait..." And yet, Belize becomes part of my home more and more each day that I'm here. As someone who's moved around a lot in my life, I always am unsure what to say when people ask "Where are you from?" Do they mean currently or recently or where I was born or where my family currently lives or where I've lived longest? All those questions have different answers! I think I've come to conclude that throughout my life I've simply acquired multiple "homes." Now, I don't use the word loosely enough to mean anywhere I've ever been, but certainly to describe places my heart is especially attached to. Provo, Orem, Washington, Wisconsin, Florida, Colorado, Belize... they all collectively represent home to me, some more than others. Even specific buildings resonate as "home" to me, like my house here in Belize, or my high school, or my family's house in Longmont, or BYU campus. On the other hand, there are plenty of places I've visited and absolutely loved--such as Guatemala--but they aren't home.

So, that was my Saturday. Sunday, in a nutshell, was relaxing. Church was great and in the afternoon I did a lot of blog catch-up and scripture study. In the evening the team all got together in the lounge/family room and sang hymns. It was great. Also, this week I remembered to take a picture of the the little building which serves as a chapel in Santa Elena:

 The lower half of this house is where the relief society and primary meet. Notice that there is a Spanish sign on the right side of the building and English on the left. The upper half of the building is someone's apartment.

The wooden structure to the right of the building was added on to serve as the chapel and also is used for Sunday School and Elder's Quorum. They are trying very hard to increase attendance so that they can qualify for a real chapel like the ones nearby in San Ignacio and Succotz. The one in San Ignacio was the first real LDS chapel built in Belize back in 1987!

One of the exciting topics discussed Sunday was the upcoming dedication of the San Salvador, El Salvador temple which will occur my last Sunday here. This will be the new temple for saints in Belize. Even though Guatemala City is closer, political relations between Belize and Guatemala are tense so it is easier to make extended temple visits in El Salvador. They will be broadcasting the dedication at the San Ignacio building and I'm going to be talking with President Pinelo (the Branch President in Santa Elena) this week to get the special dedication recommend required to attend. Very exciting!