iguanas, boas, and bats...

The other night as I went to get my laundry bag out of the laundry room my friend yelled for me to watch out for the boa constrictors. "Real funny!" I replied. Little did I know she wasn't joking. As I turned on the light in the laundry room there was a little boa constrictor sitting atop the washing machine to greet me. This lead into a pretty eventful evening revolving around Jeff (one of the staff), a mop, and bucket vs. the boa constrictor. By the way things appeared I think the mosquitoes were on the snake's side too. Boa constrictors are really harmless, but there are a lot of dangerous snakes around here, so we're told not to assume any are harmless. This is the second snake we've found on base in the last week. Not to mention the bat that was flying around the dining hall one evening; and iguanas/geckos are more numerous than deer in Wisconsin!

We're already starting week 3 of our Discipleship Training School!! Each week we have a new guest speaker who comes down to Belize to teach on different topics. Last week our guest speaker was Karen Padgett. She is from Vancouver, British Columbia and taught about abundant life and personal development. Some of the topics included conflict resolution, different leadership personalities, and our individual personalities. It was a pretty intense week of learning about ourselves and releasing the characteristics that are in us that are being held back in some way. We gained a lot of insight about the differences in each of our personalities within the students and staff. What is even more important is that we've begun to understand the importance of each individual and how we can all work together to make the best team possible.
The majority of our time here is spent learning, working, and having fun. We spend the mornings in lecture and some afternoons are given time to work on a variety of assignments that are due throughout the next three months. Assignments look like anything from oral book reports to gospel presentations to geography quizzes. We've spent time growing as a team through different activities and challenges and also have learned more about each other through sharing our testimonies. We also share work duties. Work duties vary from things like raking sand to planning our menus to tutoring the staff's kids in math. My work duty is hospitality host. I mainly take care of the guest speaker's accommodations, which has a bonus of getting to know the guest speaker a little better. Each of us is assigned to a cooking team and end up cooking and cleaning up for about two meals a week.
We are very intentional about our learning and growing, which also means we get to be intentional about our having fun too! One of the "fun factors" about this DTS is that we can get certified in scuba diving during our training. We did our first dive last week and are finishing our certification this afternoon. We've done a total of four dives so far. And who else would be certifying us than SCUBA STEVE? Yes, he goes by Scuba Steve. Even though we haven't done a ton of diving yet, we're all hooked on it. I can't believe we're already starting week three. That means we have ten weeks of training left before we go to outreach. I am hoping to get into town next weekend and then I will be able to upload some pictures for everyone to see what is happening down here. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement! I appreciate them!