SWEEPING

            My trip to Belize was absolutely amazing. It was by far the best week of my life. I could probably write at least five hundred stories from just one week there. This seems to create a problem because as I share stories with my friends and family I attempt to tell them everything and that just seems impossible. So much has happened and it’s frustrating that my stories aren’t near as great as the actual experience. I want them to understand why it was so amazing, but I don’t know how to express it all. I have decided that as I blog, my main goal is to let my writing “breathe,” just as we discussed in class. I will try to focus on describing a few specific parts in detail as opposed to trying to cram in a little bit of everything. The following was written on my first day in Belize.

            We arrived by bus, pulling in through the gate that Waynesburg students built the previous year. We walked up to a building with metal doors that slid up like garage doors. Inside there were three people setting up for the church service. We tried to help the man align the pews, but at the same time we didn’t want to get in the way of their normal routine set up. I began to wonder around to take in all of our surroundings because this was where the majority of our week would be spent. There was a school and small playground outside, within the same gate. The school and church seemed to overlap. The church included the principal’s office in the back and classroom for the younger children.

After a few minutes, I returned inside the church where the man and his son continued to set up. They assembled a projector and put a microphone in the front. There was also a pregnant woman sweeping. Once she made it down the first row, she stopped and let out a deep sigh. One our team leaders, Martha, approached her to begin a conversation. When Martha asked her a question she just gave a little smile and responded, “I’m so tired.” Martha proceeded by offering our help. I was closest, so I took the broom from her and Andrew grabbed the dust pan.

Immediately I understood the woman’s exhaustion. Sweeping this building was an impossible task. I had a straw broom which was to gather all the dirt from the dirt from the ground. The problem was not the broom but the ground. Their floor was an old cement floor that was decaying into dirt. I swept the dirt forward and then would create more dirt by just moving my foot. Even if I did manage to create a pile, a gust of wind would blow through the build and spread it to a new area. Knowing that perfection would take forever, Andrew and I agreed to just get the majority, and then go see if we could play with the children.

At the end of our last row, we stopped to search for where we should return the broom. Then the man that had been preparing everything else approached us and asked if we were finished. He took the broom and went to work. He swept with such determination to get a clean floor. The way he went over each section of floor several times showed how much pride he had in his small church. He would have made a ground of dirt, dirt free just to worship the Lord.