Me-star Teem

In our last update, we shared a little about what Ginger does most days. This one is about what Tim does. For the most part, Tim does different things every day, but there are goals that we have which link all the different stuff together. Tim’s goals right now are to help the “Valley of Peace Partners,” to take care of things that “The Word at Work” is doing in the area, to learn Spanish, and to learn about construction methods used in houses in the Valley of Peace. To those ends, here is what Tim has been doing:

For the first few weeks we were here, Tim worked on a construction site, helping a local church to build a house for a family in the valley. The head-builder doesn’t speak any English, but he was very kind to mime things for Tim, and to explain different parts of the construction of the house in rapid Spanish. Tim picked up a little Spanish, and a little construction know-how. This is a picture of the job site:


The "Valley of Peace Partners” is a group attempting to link the various churches and ministries in the area together. The membership includes representatives from all of the schools in the valley, most of the churches, and a few other leaders. Tim tries to help the partnership by being the communication link, by being the way that money from the U.S. gets to the various projects that we try to do, and by trying to get and keep the members excited about the partnership. This has involved scheduling meetings, researching projects we’d like to do, and trying to follow through on projects already started.

Recently, Tim, Josh Tam, Kenny Logan (our friend from Belize City), and Ron Butterfield started re-modeling the kitchen of the “King’s Home” (an orphanage in Belmopan). We poured a gigantic concrete sink and repaired most of the countertops. We hope eventually to install vent-hoods over the industrial stoves and repair the rest of the cabinets in the kitchen.

Most recently, Tim (and Ginger) worked long days unloading all the supplies for the VOP that came on a 40-foot shipping container from Texas. It took two truckloads to get it all here from Belize City (one day’s work) plus a whole other day to unpack, sort, and get things to their final destination. Many nice things came, including 19 computers and 12 printers, a scanner, a huge TV with DVD/VHS player, chalkboards and whiteboards, folding tables and chairs, thousands of books, and countless school supplies. The teachers at both elementary schools were really excited to get so much stuff and worked right along beside us the whole time. We had a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of that:



Tim with principals from the elementary schools, Mr. Chan and Mr. Cowo.



Also, Tim has been doing a few odd jobs for the schools here: repairing chairs and desks, building cabinets and bookshelves, etc.

So, there is no standard “day in the life of Tim.” Some days he’s really busy, other days he has time to read, clean the house, do his Spanish lessons, and have long conversations. It’s good in some ways, but Tim has never been very good at multi-tasking or organizing his time. Please ask God to give him wisdom to know how to spend his time, and to give us both (as the Book of Common Prayer says) “diligence in our several callings.”