Rockbridge Prayer Overnight

Three weekends ago, I had the chance to participate in an amazing time at Rockbridge Young Life camp in Rockbridge, VA, at which people gather for the expressed purpose of lifting up the Young Life ministries throughout the Virginia Commonwealth region (every part of Virginia except Northern Virginia). Our time

What, fasting? you might ask. Yes, indeed: about 900 people from across the Commonwealth joined in a period of about 20 hours during which we did not eat any food, drinking only water, juice, and coffee.

I loved having the chance to be there, as I feel like the heart of the Father was very evident in the leadership of the conference. Scott Hamilton, the regional director, delivered a roaring speech evoking the spirit of Abraham Lincoln who, in the midst of the American Civil War, called all people across America to a day of fasting and prayer for the guidance and direction of the United States. I, personally, was moved by Scott's talk, as it really fanned the fires of desire in me to truly pray in the name of Jesus Christ not only for the success of Young Life ministries, but for people who do not know Jesus Christ. It was really as simple as that, that I was affirmed incredibly in the desire God has stirred in my heart to pray for schools in Virginia, ask for the lives of the students in those schools to be submitted to Christ, and to seek Christ in whatever circumstances he leads me to.

I'm confident that this was an act of the Spirit, but there were so many people in the club room where we congregated that we had to seat people in chairs on the stage behind the podium where Scott stood, perhaps yet again evoking the heart of Lincoln, who often delivered his speeches in towns and cities at meetings, surrounded in front and behind by people listening on.

"I feel like I'm speaking at a town hall here!" Scott commented at one point as he looked around him at the throngs of people present for this day to ask that God's kingdom would come and that God's will be done in the hearts, minds, souls, and bodies of young students in Virginia.

Scott Hamilton delivers a speech to an overflow crowd at Rockbridge Alum Spring Young Life camp during Prayer Overnight.

Blue Creek Adventure: Blazing Belize, January 2011

On Friday, our last days in Punta Gorda, we finished several of the projects, including carrying the remainder of the cinder blocks to the top of LOL’s roof and applying the metal roof to the kitchen at TCA. On this day, however, we only worked half of a day, as our hosts provided us with the honor of exploring Blue Creek, a local river about 30 minutes from the TCA that mixes a jaunt through the jungle with swimming in a huge river that runs through a cave! For many of us, this last bit of Belizean wilderness provided the best view of God’s heart for adventure in our trip.
“I remember a time back before I was a believer,” Isaac stated as he reflected on the Blue Creek, “when I was just laying in bed, thinking about how much I just wanted to live out an adventure. The whole time I was in that cave, swimming around and hearing every splash and my voice echo off the walls, I knew God’s heart for me was to keep living this adventure with Him!”
It was during this trip, too, that we had our most potent chance to speak into someone’s life for Christ. As we waited near the mouth of the cave for life jackets, our guide, a 45-year old man from a local village in Punta Gorda, sat with several of the people from our group. He pointed out two snakebites on his leg.
“These are deadly.”
“Well, how did you survive?” Jonathan asked.
His eyes trained in on Jonathan as he answered him starkly, “You don’t want to know who I am.” It was clear at this point that he did not feel excited to share his true nature, but Jonathan pressed on.
“No, I do want to know you,” he said frankly. The man seemed somewhat uncomfortable, but he relented to the attention.
“I am a witch doctor,” he answered.
Jonathan sought more clarity. “You should know that in our language, a witch doctor is someone who worships Satan. Is this what you mean with this term or do you mean something different?”
“Yes, that is what I am,” answered Jonathan. Jonathan went on in the conversation to tell the man who we were and what we were doing in Punta Gorda, working with an organization that was committed to the heart of Jesus Christ and that each one of us had a personal relationship with God through Jesus, and that Jesus was the only one who could forgive us of our sin. The man seemed moved and intrigued, so much so that he even said that he wanted to accept Jesus, but that he needed to think about it more and understand more before he did so.
Jonathan promised the man, “We will return here, then, in several months and we will talk more. I will tell some friends who I know who also know Jesus and they can help you understand more, also.” It was a moment with clear indication that the Father’s heart was with us, even as we strayed from our direct “mission” of helping the ministries with their projects—that our purpose remained steadfast even in the middle of a cave in the jungle with a witch doctor in Belize!
Overall, my favorite part of the life we experienced in Belize was watching our team come together and worship Christ in whatever circumstance we faces, whether it was grueling work, competing with local friends in sports, worshipping each night, eating unfathomable rice-and-beans with chicken dishes, or speaking life into the people who God placed in our paths.
“For some reason, I just feel really alive,” Alex Hugel, one of our group members, said as he finished his week in Belize. His face was beaming with a tremendously blessed smile. “I just have this awesome sense that God loves me and that I’m taken care of. This just really changes everything.”

Toledo Christian Academy: Punta Gorda, Belize

Toledo Christian Academy
One of the most significant parts of our trip came at the Toledo Christian Academy, where the remaining ten people from our team who were not working at the orphanage were given two tasks: build a hot kitchen for the school’s cafeteria and dig trenches along the side of the entrance to the school for drainage purposes. Our work at TCA benefited the administration, staff, and the almost 100 students who study at the school full-time, ranging in age from kindergarten to high school. The school has a truly diverse range of teachers who instill vision and the corresponding tools for these students to live a life for Christ. It was an amazing opportunity for us, as workers, to really see tangible results in our work.
Our work at TCA was full of adventure, knowing that every time we thrust our shovels into the ground, there might well be a scorpion or tarantula that emerged from the hole. At one point, my team found three different tarantulas in a one-hour period!
“You know what’s crazy?” Caleb said as he leaned over to me while watching Isaac allow the tarantula to crawl on the front of his shirt, “If I saw anything even half as big as that spider in my house in America, I’d absolutely run the other way without another thought, let alone actually picking it up!”
There definitely was something about this place that helped us let go of our commonplace conceptions of “normal” life: maybe it was the free-grazing cattle in the front of the school which we were instructed to chase away if they came near the student buildings; or the lunch we ate together with Emerson, consisting of the heart of a palm tree that he cut out with his bare hands the day before; or the palm trees and tiny tarantula holes that dotted the entire campus—everything around us spoke of adventure.
However, it was also during our time at the school when our team had the best chance to interact with people from the town of Punta Gorda itself who live their day-to-day in and around the campus of TCA. There was so much life in the young students at the school! At one point, I sat down with Daniel, an eight-year-old boy who looked somewhat out of place among his darker-skinned classmates.
“Where are you from?” I asked him as we nibbled on our meal of burritos and kool-aid.
“I’m from North Carolina. We came here four years ago,” he said in a perfectly astute way, carrying himself like a man three-times his age.
“Oh, really? Why did you come here?” I continued to inquire of him.
“Well, my dad works as a teacher for the high school kids. We came when God called us here.”
I sat, impressed by Daniel’s young faith to follow God’s calling, even in this remote Christian school that stood in stark contrast to life in America.
Sam Vaughn, a college student who was a part of our team, found Daniel later that day throwing a softball to himself in the air and offered to play with him. For the next three days, Sam began collecting a small coalition of young children who would throw the softball and talk about everything from the beautiful weather in Belize to C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series. I felt fortunate to be a part of one of these meetings, during which Daniel and I got to discuss our views on life. I shared with him that I was a huge fan of the Narnia books, although I have not finished reading all of them, and that when I was his age, I was just beginning my first book. Daniel paused as he held the over-sized softball in his hand.
“I like the movies better,” he said in a bold display of technological savvy, to which Sam and I looked at one another and burst laughter, being the bookworms we are.
That was one of the best parts of living among these young people, learning that “life” is “life” whether we are traversing the halls of high schools in the USA or throwing the softball with 8-15 year-olds in a school campus hollowed from the wild jungles of Belize. Craig, another Virginia Tech student attending our trip, experienced this first-hand when he overheard two high school students talking about a girl in their class.
“I mean, it’s just like kids back in America!” he exclaimed as he reflected on their interaction. There was definitely a wall that fell down as our team learned that our needs and desires are not any different than those that God has placed in the hearts of all people, regardless of socio-economic status or cultural affiliation.

Sports
The Toledo Christian Academy is famed in Belize for their volleyball skills, having won the Girls’ National Title twice in the last three years, and the coming within one win of claiming the Boys’ division title this past year. So, when Emerson challenged several members of our team to a friendly match during lunch break, we surmised that this would be anything but “friendly”.

“Okay, our goal has got to be to beat Emerson once by the end of the week,” was our team’s rallying point after we’d lost soundly to his constant barrage of precisely-placed serves and brilliant net play, all of which left things clear as to who was leading the standard for fine sportsmanship here at the Academy. When your principal is leaving early-20s college students shaking their heads in disgust at their ineptitude, you know you have a winner!

Volleyball, though, was not the highlight of our sporting weekend, as our team had the profound honor of competing against several community members in Punta Gorda in a soccer match on Thursday night. As we rolled up in our school bus, our entire group was yelling and cheering: it had the same atmosphere as a huge high school match! We exited the bus to an empty field, lit by the huge lights above the field. I felt like I could almost hear the low, crackly voice of the NFL films voice-over host as he announced the excitement and the energy of the moment: “The under-dog Americans warm-up for their match as the mist rises up from the field, their focus entirely on one thing: the chase for glory before them!”

Emerson had been talking up his team to us for the entire week, telling us that we had better not even bother showing up for the match. As we warmed up, two pick-up trucks full of men rolled up to the sidelines, dressed in various colored soccer jerseys: our opponents had arrived! We kicked off the game at around 8:30, a game that proved to be very competitive from both sides. Fraught with slide tackles, sharp passes, great goalie saves, and amazing shots on goal, our rag-tag team of 16 persevered to the end despite eventually falling to the native team, 3-2. The greatest victory of the night was being able to share in such an event with Emerson and his friends, spreading an amazing spirit of both competitiveness and simple joy at the chance to spend the evening in such a life-giving way!

The finished product: a space for the TCA hot kitchen!

The Toledo Christian Academy skyline at dusk.

Emerson and Alex secure lunch: the heart of a palm tree!

Juan-Caleb and Alex eating lunch

Laugh Out Loud orphanage: Punta Gorda, Belize

My charge to our group at the beginning of our trip was as follows:
“Whether we get to share Christ with hundreds of people or find ourselves lifting cider blocks up over our heads to build a wall, our goals are still the same, that our efforts and hearts would reflect the glory of God to all the people of this region of Punta Gorda as we serve them well.”
Let’s just say, I’m glad that I put in the part about lifting up cinder blocks!
In the morning, we trudged away from our Missions House, making our way to the small chapel at the entrance to the expansive campus. It was an unexpected treat to hear the sounds of drums and guitar flowing, emanating their indiscernible tunes through the open windows of the barn-like structure that housed this small chapel. As we drew closer, the sounds seemed to draw us toward the barn, as though the presence of the Lord was simply singing a fount of praise within.
Inside the chapel, we gathered around the small worship band, led by Jervis and Doyle, two men who both work at the Laugh Out Loud orphanage in the town. We worshipped alongside them, standing and singing with lifted hands, to the glory of the Lord. It was a great surprise to me to have the opportunity to be present for worship in such a passionate forum, as coming into the trip I did not know what to expect in terms of amenities to this end.
During the next five days, our group split into three group of 5 people and worked to support both the orphanage and the Toledo Christian Academy in their work.
At the orphanage, our mission was simple: getting “stuff” from Point ‘A’ to Point ‘B’. You see, the LOL Orphanage has been working for the past three years to build a home/ building suitable for young children to dwell in to live their lives securely, however, they remain six months away from opening their doors for service. For the final leg of this task, they are building a third-story on top of the two already-constructed stories, resulting in a structure that will house up to 50 orphans and staff at any given time. We had the duty of carrying hundreds of buckets of sand and over 1,000 cinder blocks onto the top of the roof, each team laboring in shifts of five people each day to accomplish this task. This was an amazing service to the small staff of the LOL orphanage as they continue building up their ministry, literally, from the ground-up with little-to-no heavy machine in tow.
We loved having the opportunity to really dig into the project at LOL, mainly because the heart behind it is so rich. The social dynamics of Belize are very unorthodox, starting with the family structure. Many times, fathers will not accept full responsibility for their children, coming and going throughout towns and villages without really knowing what the effects of their actions are on their families. I was amazed at some of the stories I heard from Jervis and Melissa, the proprietors of LOL orphanage, about mothers who heard what they were doing and would walk their young infants to the complex, asking for the babies to be accepted at the orphanage. It was a difficult notion to grasp, that these mothers were so burdened by the responsibilities of raising many children that they simply cannot do so any longer.




Above, Top to Bottom: Caleb and Ryan pose while sanding the concrete tabletops; The orphanage building, still under construction; Jervis and Sam jam during morning worship. (Photos from J. Nicoletti and J. Wood)