February 2009

This month has been that of ups and downs.
Alexander was sick for two weeks with Dengue Fever – but thankfully he was well enough in time, to head to Cuba as planned to meet with leaders about Children’s programs in there country.

While Alexander was away, I was holding down the fort here in Belize City. A couple of days into Alexander’s absence my sister Becky came out to keep me company since she was on spring break. I spent the time alone preparing for a workshop I was asked to do at a Belizean Youth Conference in Balmopan. Last minute they didn’t end up needing me, but my sister and I hoped on a bus to Balmopan anyways. It was a good chance to meet other youth workers in the country and connect with the youth we’ve been working with over the past year.

Alexander’s adventure in Cuba was a bit more interesting. I’ll let him tell it in his own words:

(*above: I flew from Cancun; I got to Havana and ride the bus for 12 hr to the City of Holguin. Then I visited churches and camp site on all the Orange Stars. I visited 4 cities and 2 were poor. I also got taken into place where the Government do not allow foreigner.)

"Thanks to God for the opportunity to represent CCI in Cuba. It happens that I was going to meet with Ray Wieler and Steven Zacharias in the City of Holguin and the Representative of World Server - the Organization CCI is partnering with to reach Cuba.

Unfortunately Ray and Steven missed their flight because of a snow storm. So I got to observe the Cuban Church on behave of CCI with goal of planting camp ministry into the heart of the Cuban Church.

Some things I got to see in the church: their were more youth than children, their were some children programs and lots of interest on the development of children outreach, need of Children resources and training, the churches are oppress by the Government however there is a big movement through house church plant, 95 % of church are poor, a pastor gets 35$ U.S dollar a month full time ministry. (*above: Small village of Cacocum. 1 hr drive from Holguin we visited the Church by Name of “En Espiritu Y Enverdad” 200 hundred members not including the children. )

I visited 4 cities in Cuba with ministries and I meet the most outstanding leaders and pastors of two denominations. I visited many churches and camps site that were run down. House churches in Cuba were 18 ft by 24 ft with an average of 200 people. Cuba government does not allow building churches on empty property. The only way to have a church is in a house.

(*above: "Play Guardalvaca was where I visited the church that was hit by the hurricanes 6 month ago. To Sad to say that the church does not have any roof since then. Lack of mullah")

In other words, Cuba Church is trusting in the Lord, and doing good, and they feed on God faithfulness."

Since being back Alexander spoke at a Children's Rally that had been planned for January but was postponed to this past saturday.

Also: this past weekend Spanishlookout youth visited us again and here Elsie and Nancy are doing the object lesson for the kids.

Coming up:
Training in Blue Creek this saturday
Soccer camp on March 9th Baron Bliss day
Cross-current comes on March 27th
Easter camp, April 6-9th

Into 2009!

These past two months have been full of blessings and opportunities.
In November we had many plans that fell through, which was a great lesson on how we needed to wait on God’s timing and schedule. We then saw that what God had planed was much better.

In November we were blessed greatly from a visit of a Bayridge Church member, and we got to see the Spanish Lookout Church bless the kids of a Belize city church with two baby chicks for each kid! The next weekend we then had the opportunity to visit Spanish Lookout and do a training with the youth.

On the first day of December we received our first Christmas gift - a visit from Leah's mom and Aunt, and they came baring gifts from friends and family for the ministry (and some personal treats too!) Thank you to all of you who gave! We received almost everything on our ministry wish list and we even got the Mac Laptop. God is Good!

In December, while showing mom around we had the chance to speak at the Blue Creek High school for chapel and then invite them out to our training that Sunday. We were very pleased with the turn out as we had about 13 youth show up and a record number of boys -3!

Lately we've been receiving calls from Churches to come and speak to them about what BCE can offer them. We even had the opportunity to speak to an elder's board about starting to train their youth this new year. How Exciting!

We had a great holiday season busy with visiting friends and family. Thank-you for all your personal and ministry support that you have shown us this past year. Your prayers and financial gifts, or gifts of balls, sports equipment, art supplies or soup mix... all have been such an encouragement to us. May GOD Bless you as you GO Bless others, as you have already done with us.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, from Alexander and Leah Perez

Looking ahead to January 2009:
6th Leah’s Birthday
9th Denis and Janice visit
12th Visit Church in Dangriga
16th Speaking at a Children’s rally
17th Youth Training in Orange Walk
31st Youth Training for Belize City

NOTE: This will be our last Blog at this web site – we have a new Blog site:
http://alexanderandleah.blogspot.com/

BCE Christmas Wish List!

Christmas is coming, the turkey’s getting fat.
Would please put a shilling in the poor kid’s hat.
If you haven’t got a shilling a small sweet will do
If you haven’t got a sweet... (Run away real fast!) ...the kids comin after you!

Enjoy my Belizean rendition on the classic Christmas carol? I thought it was pretty clever myself!

Christmas is coming. Tis’ the season to remind the children that it is better to give then to receive. So with that spirit we present to you the:

BCE Christmas wish list!

Filing Cabinet – we currently don’t have any place to put our papers. This makes it really hard for two naturally unorganized people to stay organized.

File Folders – These would come in really handy if “Santa” or “The Christmas Angle” (which ever you prefer) were to actually bring us a filing cabinet

Power Point Projector – Not only would it come in very handy for some of the councillor training that we do, but it is easier to present to churches and business people pictures and video of camp – without having to have everyone crowed around the computer

Soccer Balls – all of them were destroyed last year at camp, and we still tried to use them again this year. So we are in desperate need of the only object needed to play the only game that the boys at camp ever want to play.

Volleyballs – While the guys like “football” the girls like volleyball, and again we’ve only ever had one of these, and its in it’s dying days

Assorted kids balls – Aka. Nurf balls. Another favourite game of the children is dodge ball. But with basketballs – the only type of ball we now have the game can be quite painful – and bloody. (Please realize that we don’t actually let the children play dodge ball with basketballs.)

Whistles and Sports timers etc. – Our voices are only so loud, and our cell phones are not the best for keeping time in sports activities. Any little thing related to sports that you feel the urge to give – do so. I guarantee you we don’t have it.

Mac Laptop – Ok, let me explain. The laptop we have is good – we are very thankful that God has provided us with it, and we don’t know what we would do with out it (Could you imagine Leah and Alexander with out spell check!).
The reason we are asking for another, specifically for a Mac, is because of the nature of our work. We are often making videos and flyers to promote BCE – we make video’s of a churches camp to show the members what’s going on; video’s to encourage the youth and show them in action to their parents and churches; as well as to give a small taste of camp to interested supporters and business people – not to mention staying in contact through youtube to our friends, family and supporters back at home. Mac computers specialize in such software – and currently, for an unknown reason the video programs on the computer we have (a vista, go figure!) wont work.
Also, a second computer would make life easier for writing follow-up material with other individuals – and for when big projects come around that require lots of computer work, either Alexander or I wont be waiting for hours to get other work done. We realize its quite the request, and probably belongs on a dream list rather then a Christmas wish list – but they say you have to ask to receive.

Not wanting to be greedy, we’ll leave it at that.

Have a Merry Christmas – although I’m sure you’ll be hearing from us again before then.

P.S. If you are from the Kingston area and have something to send, Leah's mom is comming down to Belize December 1st. You can contact her and she may have some room to send it along.

A Blue Creek Blessing

This past weekend, Alexander and I had the most adventurous trip going to Blue Creek. We knew to expect flooding – but this we did not imagine. In place of a road and rice fields there is now a lake. We had to leave our truck in the trust of some friends and take a boat ride across. Take note in the pictures – where there is water, there usually is none.
(Below is Umpas, our pilot, driver, supporter and friend)
The lake behind us, should not be there. And the whole time we were there it kept rising. But even this amount of water could not dampen our trip.

We arrived on Saturday and spent the afternoon visiting with friends. On Sunday we had the privilege of reporting and preaching in the church. We trust that the Holy Spirit will have used us to challenge the people as much as we have been challenged by that same scripture (Duet. 32:11) – as we feel that in our context we have been pushed out of our comfortable nest, and into the dangerous world of Belize City.

It was a little difficult to find the time to visit everyone, but we had the pleasure of connecting with the churches pastors some leaders, and head of the mission board. We are thankful for the support they have shown us and look forward to working with them more closely in the future.

On the way back home we made a stop in Ship Yard, where we connected with Pastor Didrick and the youth leader. We are hoping to arrange a small camp with them in the upcomming months. And on the way out we picked up some fresh meat - what a treat! And Alexander got one of his wisdom teeth pulled. He's in alot of pain and some how thinks that he should be healed up already, please pray for him.

As always we were incredibly blessed with the food, friendship, lending of vehicles and encouragement for our ministry and marriage. Thank you to all those women who sat down with me to talk and just be a female companion – it was refreshing (and I know Alexander will greatly appreciate all the cooking lessons and advice I recieved). And thank you to all those men who let Alexander help out on the farm and get his hands dirty – he misses those days on the Altona farm.

Basketball Belize

This past Monday BCE held its fist annual Basketball FUN-Raiser!
We didn’t make any money (in fact it cost us a bit), but it was defiantly FUN.
Two churches that we have been doing camp came, bringing over 40 kids hyperactive kids– which was plenty enough for only 9 leaders. With the help of some talented guys, the kids were put through plenty of warm ups and drills to teach kids the game, before breaking them up into teams to compete. It may have seemed like chaos – every kid had fun.

The weekend was a busy one. Before Basketball camp, we had spent the weekend at a Pastors and Leaders conference here in the city. We were also able to set up a booth and connect with many different church leaders who may be interested in using our services.

But before the conference even ended we had to take off a little early to help some youth do a follow up program. We had done a camp this summer, with two of the youth from the church, but after that there didn’t seam to be anyone willing to do the follow up program. So for the past month we have been meeting weekly with the youth for an hour or two about what they have to offer and the importance of children’s ministry. Last week we challenged them to do a simple follow up program with the kids. They seemed sceptical, but when we assured them that we would be there with them, and set out a simple outline of what all happens in a follow-up program, they had no end of ideas of all the things we could do. It just proved to us that all these youth need is some direction, encouragement and a push.
The actually program went off pretty well. While there were a few kinks to be ironed out, we were very please at what the youth had accomplished. We hope the youth feel the same way and are as encouraged as we are to continue on – eventually with out our help.

Prayer Requests
We will be speaking in and giving the sermon in the Blue Creek Church on Sunday the 26th. Pray that we can continue to connect and build relationships with the church people there, also that we can bring an encouraging spirit led message to the church.
Please also pray for Alexander and I as we continue to adjust to married life. Lately it seems as if things have reached a head with tension and frustration in our relationship. Pray that when the hard times come, we will cling to each other and that God will bind us closer together as we struggle through the valleys.
Leah is still having a hard time connecting with Belizean girls her age and making friends – and deeply misses the soul friend she had back in Canada (shout out to Angela, Ashley, Char, Tab and Nikki!). Pray that the few female relationships she does have can grow into fulfilling friendships.

September

This past month has been one of adjustments and transitions from summer.
The kids are now back in school and our focus has shifted to the youth. While the churches continue to connect with the kids through follow-up and Sunday school, we are working with a few key people in creating curriculum. While it was a rough start- none of us having done this in a group before, we finally came up with our focus and format of what we will be creating. Starting in November we want to cover lesson from Abraham, and David then lead into the Christmas story. Our curriculum will be easy with a key bible passage, questions, memory verse, simple puzzles or activities relating to the lessons, suggested songs and a challenge for the kids to complete that week. It’s meant to be simple and easy to adapt to a range of kids and young teens ages 7-15. The difficult part is arranging a time for this group to sit down and get things done.

This past month Belize celebrated its 27th year of independence so there were many events and parades going on around the country. We were able to join the celebration by entering BCE in one of the parades here in the city. Unfortunately because of some of the gang activity here in the city and an incident at a previous parade, some of our councillors from out of town were not permitted to come. Yet we marched on with the support of two churches from within the city. It was so much FUN! The kids waved banners that we had made, and we had some fun with water balloons we had prepared to use to cool down the kids. We also got lots of questions about the meaning of BCE, hopefully God will use that opportunity to get word out about this ministry in the city.

(We do not support or encourage the viewing of inapropriate videos advertized by youtube after our video clip. If tempted remember GOD IS WATCHING YOU, WATCHING YOUTUBE!)


Want a new means of keeping up to date with us? Do you often get bored and start looking up random video’s on youtube? Then check us out on youtube! You can find us in the search engine under “alexanderandleah”
Keep us in your prayers – please, we really need them.
Bless.

End of Summer Review

The summer session has officially closed. This past week we finished our last two camps and on Monday the Children head back to school. Both camps went very well, and we were able to find extra help for the last minute cancellations of a few councillors. At the first camp 10 children accepted Christ, and in the last camp, the pastor led the whole camp in a prayer of salvation, to which all of them raised their hand too. We were then able to hand out donated Bibles to each child. Both these Pastors have committed to following up with these children.

This summer ended off busy. 3 of the 5 camps happened in this last week and a half.

Here is a look at some of the summers numbers:
25 youth from 5 different churches attended councillor training
9 new councillors worked with us for the first time
10 councillors crashed at our place and for 5 of them it was their first time staying an overnight in the city
4 Churches ran camps
5 camps completed
134 kids attended camp this summer
40 kids made first time commitments to Christ
402 hugs shared
1 out of 7 balls survived the summer, leaving us with 1 volleyball for next year
Approximately 100,000,000 bug bites endured

We keep being asked, now that summers over what do we do?
Well, we need to keep these churches accountable and help them develop a follow-up program that will meet the needs of the Children and the Church. We are continuing to reach out to other churches who may be interested in working with us next year. We are currently putting together a fundraising basketball tournament that will act as a follow-up event connecting churches we’re working with, and inviting other churches to join us in some fun fellowship. Also this month is September celebration so we are putting together a group of councillors and kids to represent us in the business parade. There are also a few people and teams wanting to visit and see what we are doing so we need to prepare for that as well. There is also the task keeping contacted with our councillors and getting some of them involved in developing curriculum for next years summer camps. The to do list never ends…