Brudda Kennitt

I love the Santa Elena LDS branch so much! Today I spoke in sacrament meeting and subbed for Mama Kay in Sunday School. The Branch President usually calls the HELP International volunteers by "Brother" or "Sister" followed by our first name, always with the classic Belizean accent, so I was announced in sacrament as follows: "An' nah ah concludin' speakuh will be Brudda Kennitt." The "th" becomes either a "t" or a "d" and other letters get similarly substituted or flat-out dropped. Most people speak English just fine (albeit with the accent just mentioned) though they often speak Kriol or Spanish. I can generally understand both of those languages pretty well, though I have a hard time saying my own words in return, especially with the Kriol.

Anyway, my talk was on resisting temptation. To sum it up briefly, I mentioned that the most common temptation defense mechanism Christ gave in His lifetime was prayer (Christ recommends prayer against temptation 8 times in his personal ministries--6 times in the New Testament and twice in 3 Nephi). Furthermore, Christ exemplified resisting temptation with his own experience recorded in Matthew 4, wherein he draws upon the scriptures for protection against Satan's temptations. Every time Satan tempts Him, He responds, "As it is written..." and then quotes a scripture. These things are the absolute basics we've all learned since primary or since we first met missionaries: Scriptures and Prayer! Yet, clearly they are vital to righteous living since the Savior's teachings and example point to these two things as the greatest methods of defense against temptation. And doesn't that make sense? Surely if we are communing with the Lord daily through these divine appointed methods, we will be endowed with greater strength to withstand temptation. Paul taught us that "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man..." Isn't is comforting to know that temptation is normal? We are not sinners because we are tempted, but rather only if we act on that temptation. He continues, "but God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it." May we all choose to take that escape given us through the power of God to resist temptation which He imparts as we come to Him in prayer and through the scriptures.

Anyway, Church was great overall and the rest of the day has been pretty laid back. The evening had a brief moment of excitement while I was video chatting my family wherein Ashley came in needing "male assistance" to take care of a "creepy, possessed bat-moth thing." Sure enough, the creature perched on a drying swim suit was just about the creepiest looking insect I've ever seen in my life. It had red eyes and looked like something straight out of Satan's nightmares. I took some pictures:

This bad boy is has about a 3-inch wingspan. So, he's definitely not the largest insect I've seen in Belize (remember Frank the moth?), but he's pretty big.

Captured!

Anyway, that's just one more exciting creature to add to my list of bizarre Belizean sightings. So, I really don't have much else to say about today, but I do have some random pictures from throughout this last week, especially the last few days, including some that are from other cameras and others from my own but which simply didn't fit in earlier posts. So, get ready for a photo potpourri! 

These are actual Mayan artifacts that were on display at a resort I was doing research at on Tuesday (the one I had to drive a minivan through the jungle to get to). The two big ones on the left were probably ritual axe heads used for killing sacrificial victims. The one on the right was probably a gardening tool.

A beautiful garden from that same resort.

This picture would be much cooler if you could see the MUCH bigger frog that the one pictured is sitting on top of the nose of! Unfortunately, he didn't really show up, but he's definitely the largest frog I've ever seen. By the way, can you find the Katie?

Can you find the basilisk (aka "Jesus Lizard")?

Jake is on the right and on the left is Nathaniel, wearing the flower one of the girls picked for him. Nathaniel is our driver we hired. He's also the Young Men's president in the San Ignacio branch of the Church and also hangs out with us when we play. For example, this is right before our Friday river tubing excursion, which he joined us for. 

Can you find the 9-inch tarantula? These are relatively harmless, but more than relatively awesome.

 "When you look under the rocks and plants and take a look at the fancy ants..."

"...and maybe try a few!" (Click to see them up close. And by the way, these are not actually ants, they are termites. They taste like carrots with a slight hint of mint.)

 This is the first cave we tubed into.

Same cave, from the inside.

 Maren and I are tubing buddies.

 Getting deeper into the cave.

 

We explored a side cave full of bats! These pictures do absolutely no justice for this enormous cave. There were literally hundreds of them flying around sending their little echolocation clicks. Does this remind anyone else of Batman Begins? That's what it felt like in there!

 The end of the cave...

 ...is a great place for cliff jumping!

 Heading out of the cave.

Cave exit from other side.

Just around the river bend

Okay, I've officially decided that taking a night off from the blog is an absolutely retarded idea because it's hard enough to try and describe just one day here in Belize in a blog post let alone two! But, here goes:

Yesterday began with the skit I mentioned on Thursday. In case you missed that post, three of our team members (Katie, Jake, and I) helped give a skit on Self-Esteem to a bunch of kids at a summer camp, in connection with the Cornerstone foundation--another organization we often team with for various projects. Here's the audience for which we gave the performance of our lives:

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of us actually performing the skit (which was REALLY cheesy--but don't blame us; we didn't write it), but I do have this picture of Katie hold the "Self Esteem Shield" (Exciting, huh?)

My part was easy. Mostly, I just pointed and laughed at Katie while throwing things at her.

Afterwards, we met up with the others at the orphanage we're building. For a very detailed description of our construction methods, see Monday's post. Meanwhile, in that post I promised to give you a better picture of the buildings the next time we're there. Well, I've kept my promise and have both inside and outside pictures for you. Now you'll know what I meant when I said they remind me of the Flintstones:

The one on the right will house 3-4 teenage girls. The bathroom & shower facilities are in the one on the left, which is designed to catch and recycle rain water (it's like a giant bowl).

The buildings in the first picture are a vast improvement over these flimsy and rotting buildings currently being used. Can you imagine having to live in a building like that? We are currently using this one to store our shovels and other tools when we aren't there, and that's about all it's good for. The new living arrangements should be quite a lot more comfortable! Here's a look at the interior of the new buildings:

 Going through the doors...

 ...you are immediately greeted by a living room area with some comfortable couches and a staircase which leads to...

...a little bedroom upstairs!

So, this is the building we're currently working on. The guy to the right with the backwards hat is Yan. He's from Holland and came out on Thursday with a British non-profit and heard about the orphanage project so he came to help us out that day. He's a pretty cool guy who has done humanitarian work in at least 3 other 3rd-world countries. He's octo-lingual (he speaks 8 languages, all fluently)!!!

 Katie, Pete, and Emily take a moment to smile for the camera.

 When completed, this smaller building will house the caretaker who lives on sight.

Sarah and Jake pack a bag with our special moist dirt concoction. Once again, for a more detailed explanation of the crazy construction process used to make these buildings, see my Monday post.

Emily has a dirt-funnel on her head. Does this make anyone else think of that song from "The Jungle Book," where the girls says, "I must go and fetch the water, til the day that I am grown..." :)

Well, after our time building the orphanage, Kyle and Megan decided to let our weekend start early in honor of the productive week we've had and even more so in honor of our team member MacKenzie's birthday! So, we headed to my favorite little village--Succotz!--and river tubed along the Mopan river! It was great fun. I don't actually have any river tubing pictures myself since I didn't really want to risk getting my camera wet, but Katie had a waterproof camera and tomorrow I'll get some pictures from her to show you all. 

After the tubing , be headed to the house of Jose Luis, one of the village council members I've been working with on the Succotz Revenue project, where we had a Belizean chicken barbecue in his backyard and played with his two adorable kids, like little Calvin here, who loved my hat:

The evening turned into a dance party, having fun dancing to the Belizean music, which is always an interesting techno-reggae driven mix of English, Spanish, and Kriol songs. As you know from yesterday's lame and short post, when we got back home I was actually tired (a rarity) and went to bed without blogging. Deepest apologies.

As for today, it started out on a somewhat frustrating note. Even though Saturday is typically our day off, this morning the Succotz village council was invited to a special meeting at the University of Belize for all village councils, but they were also going to have a special one-on-one sit down with the Belize Board of Tourism and the National Institute of Culture and History to discuss their current improvement initiatives and petition for funds with a proposal I spent hours this week writing with them and perfecting. They invited me to come along for the meeting and I was very excited to get an in-depth look into how the Belizean government works. Unfortunately, they stood us up! The big meeting for all village councils was cancelled and they forgot to contact a few of the councils to tell of the cancellation, so a small handful of councils were waiting there with nothing to do after paying to get all the way there and setting a good portion of their days aside for the event. Anyway, we were of course quite frustrated, but we used the time to have another small meeting amongst ourselves to discuss our game plan from hereon out. Then we headed west, I to San Ignacio and the council a little further to Succotz. Anyway, it was frustrating but we still feel very good about our proposal for the BTB and NICH; hopefully it will happen next week.

However, the rest of my day has been an absolute blast! After returning to San Ignacio, eight of us headed on a Saturday adventure (so, of course I wore my Orange Adventure Pants!). We went with our fun and knowledgeable guide Feliz on a jungle hike and cave tubing adventure. The jungle hike was the most gorgeous hike I've ever been on in my entire life, hands down. The rock ledges and exotic plants, the beautiful flowers, the smells--everything was amazing. Unfortunately, like yesterday, I didn't always have my camera with me since most of the hike I was in my swimsuit as we headed to the river where we would cave tube. However, once again Katie did have her camera with her and I'll get some pictures soon. I did take a few gorgeous jungle shots though, as shown below:

That braided vine actually grows that way! Crazy, huh? 

 It may look gorgeous, but it's a noxious weed.

 Not a weed, just gorgeous.

 Leaf-cutter ants! My favorites! A much better picture that I've managed to get in my previous posts on this subject. Be sure to click the picture and zoom in to get a good look at these crazy buggers!

Left to right: Katie, Jonathon, Kyle, Lindsay, Ashley, and Maren all prepare for our jungle adventure!

Okay, so tomorrow I will post a lot more about my Friday and Saturday adventures when I have more pictures to show you. It's really hard to describe how amazing the jungle and the cave tubing were. The caves are enormous. The Mayas used them anciently to send sacrificial victims to Xibalba (hell). Cheery, huh? Some of the caves still have Mayan artifacts in them you can see, though we went to a less expensive cave. :) It was still phenomenally impressive though, as you'll see tomorrow.

After the cave tubing and jungle adventure, after eating some dinner and going to the track with Katie (I'll describe that more in depth at a future date) the team got a karaoke bar almost entirely to ourselves and rocked the night away. It was such a blast with these amazing people I work hard with all week and then can have such fun times with on the weekend. I'll leave you this evening with some karaoke pictures:

Crowded into the van on the way there (you can't see the other 8 people also in the van!) Left to right: Pete, Megan, Katie, Jake, Maren