Moving Up and Moving On

June has been a month of excitement and the start of some new things.  First we had many graduations!  I attended the primary school graduation in San Marcos by special invitation.  This school is located out in the bush.  They have no electricity and the student body is very small, not even a hundred students.  They are all Spanish speakers so the whole graduation was in Spanish, but the children have to do all their schooling in English.  This can get very tricky for these kids.  This year, all 13 of the Standard 6 students passed and graduated.  The principal was so happy because they all did very well on their PSE exams, which are the standardized tests for the end of primary school.  One girl received a scholarship to high school.  This is all very exciting for a school that has in the past had difficulty just getting the students to attend classes.  The principal asked me to hand out the certificates because he said that he directly attributes the improvement in the school program to the Mobile Library that I bring to them every two weeks.  The availability of the books has increased the children's reading and their knowledge of the English language.  The girl that I mentioned, Jessica, also won the spelling bee!

   This past month Ron has also made the decision to leave Step of Faith church in Belmopan to start a new church out here in the village of Unitedville.  We are spending too much money and time to drive people all the way to Belmopan.  People from the village are finding it too difficult to be consistent in attendance.  And there is no room in the Belmopan church for growth.  So after much prayer, Ron feels that we need to start a church right here.  Allison Garoy and Ellis Cruz, two young Belizean men, will be the pastors in training under Ron's direction and we will start a new church.  We were already constructing an open auditorium for the school, so now we will just make it a little bit bigger for the church.  The one thing we have to remember in working with people is flexibility.  I feel like the circumstances are in a constant state of changing, but there is never confusion when the Lord is leading.  Keep us all in prayer with this new direction!