Sorry, what? I was thinking.: 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!