Nine Weeks

Nine Weeks at Jaguar Creek
At this point in his life, Calvin, (our grandson) doesn’t like to waste energy with a lot of words in a sentence. Often, when he walks into a room and sees you, he will simply say “doin?”, which means “what are you doing?”. (My guess is that he learned that from his parents who often have to check up on him and see what kind of mischief he might be “doin”). At this point in our life at Jaguar Creek, you too might be wanting to ask what we have been “doin”, so in this blog we will tell you what’s really been going on down here.

Before we got here, we already had an Excel spreadsheet listing the key tasks and priorities. Roy told us that it would probably change as soon as we arrived and he was right.

On our first night here, a tree came down on the solar roof, damaging four tiles. Suddenly our list of tasks had a new high priority. Steve, our technician for solar/electrical/water/gas and almost anything else that breaks, moved some of the panels around to minimize the impact on the power output. Jim Beard visited in February and is working on a design for a complete upgrade of the solar system and water treatment facilities.

In our first day here, we realized that our internet connection (via satellite dish) was not working. We quickly learned about the local "Internet Café" (which didn't even serve coffee) in Belmopan. It took many days, and many hours of work to get the system going again and, in the end, we really don’t know what caused it to stop working in the first place, or what fixed it. Anyway, it’s great to be “connected”, and we even watch Survivor – Fiji on CBS.com when we have the patience to sit through the long periods of video “buffering”.
While “repairing” the satellite dish, Mark discovered that among the 700 acres of rainforest, 8 cabins, 4 staff houses, lodge, office, classroom, workshop and laundry facility there was only one screwdriver. Being sharp as a tack, he concluded that we might need to buy some tools. (Thank God for Kirk Ohlendorf who gave us a Gerber tool – it comes in very handy here).

Thus we launched a new priority, getting tools. It’s sort of like buying tools in the states, except you almost never pay the price marked, and you have to drive to six different places (in different cities) to find what you want. Of course we really didn’t find what we wanted, but we managed to get what we needed.
Matt spent several days organizing the tools and supplies in the workshop.

Repairs and cleaning the boardwalks were a high priority. With our newly purchased pressure washer (that has been back to the shop twice already, and is going again soon) and many days of work, we managed to remove the slippery slime from the boardwalks. And some of the worst sections got repaired.
One section is now named Egusa Gulch in honor of Mike, our pastor. When Mike and Jolie came to visit, there was a section of boardwalk that had been removed but not replaced. Instead there was a little “bridge” made of three 2x6’s . In their first evening here, we were approaching the “bridge” and Mark said to Mike “watch your step”. When Mike responded “step up?” we all knew that he didn’t get it, and it was too late. He missed the bridge entirely, and went down into the dirt. Fortunately he moves like a gazelle, and no damage was done.


Several of the roofs here are made of thatch. They blend with the local vegetation beautifully, but like any roof, need repair from time to time. The Bayleaf Palm tree provides the materials. About 1000 leaves were required to repair the dining lodge, and another 1500 leaves to replace the roof of both the small and large palapas.
Harvesting is a huge chore. It requires hiking through the jungle with a machete, finding suitable palms, cutting the leaves, bundling them (using vines for "rope"!) and hauling them out. We harvested the leaves from our own property. Mark and Matt thought they were in good shape until they tried working alongside a local man named Victor who carried twice as much, and worked twice as fast.
The next major construction project (in progress) is to convert the two staff houses into bunkhouses. Because of the humidity, two things don’t work well here, drywall and ceramic tile floors. Drywall doesn’t hold up very well when it is not dry. And while the tile floors look great, on many days the moisture condenses on them, so you are always walking on a wet floor.
So, in both buildings we are replacing the drywall with wood. In the “Large Bunkhouse” we are removing the floor tiles and also raising the roof that we can accommodate bunk beds, giving it the capacity to sleep 16 people.
Some of our less visible projects have included “re-hiring” the staff here, and establishing routine maintenance and cleaning procedures, a payroll system, employee benefits, lodging pricing and reservation policies. We also purchased T-shirts (that we were not allowed to import), cleaned and organized a ton of files, papers and books in the office and classroom, and sorted through piles of linens and mosquito nets.
Beyond all of the projects and tasks, the most important job in these first nine weeks was to develop our relationship with the staff. That’s going well. In our second week here we started a weekly devotional time with them so we can all pray for each other, pray for the ministry and keep focused on what (Who) is really important. Mark plays basketball with the guys during the lunch break (then complains for days about his aches and pains). We also play lots of “Uno” and “Phase 10” with Mateo and his family (who live here on site). We have a great group of people here, from a variety of backgrounds, and it has been fun getting to know them.

We thank God for our great staff, and also for keeping us healthy and safe here. Sometimes we really wish we were doing more "hands on" ministry (and Adrienne has helped at the Armenia school), but we do realize that this is a necessary time of preparation. Please pray for us, that God would help us to seek him every day and to just trust in his promise that "all things work together for good for those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose". If we can do that, everything else will fall into place.
Blessings from Belize!