My address and my gecko

My Address:

Brooke Wilson
Santa Familia Village
Cayo District
Belize, Central America

Mail takes about 5 days, and packages can take up to 3 months if you don’t use Global Express, but I think postage on any package will end up costing more than the value of what you are actually sending… so letters would be great and most encouraging ☺

The classes today were all better than yesterday (communication and content-wise) and the students were great, but my stomach was upset throughout the day and I all I could eat was cornflakes. Also, yesterday was hot and I wore a t-shirt and capris. Today I wore shorts and a tank top, and, of course, it poured all day. The downpours were so hard that students were dismissed at lunch.

I was thrilled to go home early, but Antonia scheduled a meeting with the teachers to pick hymns for Confirmation next month, and since I am trying to fit in and help in other areas, I stayed. After the meeting, we went to visit sick people in the village, one of which was Antonia’s great uncle or something, who is dying and in constant pain, to sing and pray over him.

I know some people have a gift working with the elderly, and we are all called to visit and care for the sick, but I will openly admit that this was a stretching hour for me. We all squeezed into the uncle’s room and sang song after song while he moaned and rocked and threw-up, and while the nurse hooked him up to oxygen and changed him. Antonia held his hand and cried, because when she last saw him before Christmas, he was happy, alert and talkative. Now the nurse said he just moans and cries, and can’t keep anything down.

I could barely sing the songs (mostly because I didn’t know the words, although we did sing a few rounds of Alabare and Renueveme) but I hummed along like I’d done this all before—as they do, pretty regularly—and I’m sure my eyes were wide and scared-looking.

I felt so heartsick from everything when I came home that I just wanted to go to bed at, like, 5:30. But just as I sat down at the table to visit with Ida, Antonia pulled up in the driveway. She said she got home and had a bad feeling about how I might have felt visiting her uncle, and seeing him so sick and her so sad. We talked about his sickness and she described how she remembered him when he was well as a great musician in the church. Then, ten minutes after Antonia left, David pulled up and said he just wanted to bring a bottle of Pepto to leave with Ida in case I ever got sick.

Is that not some serious provision?! I love them.

On top of that, while David and I were talking, Ida made me French fries for dinner because she could tell I was homesick.

Even on a bad day, I am totally hemmed in.

Now for a picture of my new roommate:

He eats the spiders, which is why I think he is cute. I told him to bring his family and camp out at every corner.