A Letter from Beverly

Cathedral Mission Trip to San Ignacio, Belize

We, at Christ Church Cathedral in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada are blessed to have a relationship with our Anglican brothers and sisters who live in Belize - in particular, those in San Ignacio, and even more so, those at St. Hilda's Elementary School.

This is the Cathedral's third mission trip to this wonderful country. The first time, in 2005, ten members of the Cathedral Puppeteers went to Belize City with their puppet ministry. The puppeteers shared their message of God's love with the children and teachers in the Anglican schools, conducted a puppet workshop for leaders and your people in church youth groups, and performed at St. John's Cathedral, making new friends everywhere they went.

The second trip was with a much larger group - 26 people from our Cathedral, from 16 to 79 years of age, went to San Ignacio and to St. Hilda's, St. Barnabas, and St. Andrew's schools. While there we met and got to know a delightful group of students and teachers. Together with our Belizean friends we worked, prayed, laughed, toiled, ate and spent our days together. Our missioners presented daily puppet shows, assisted teachers in their classrooms, tiled two classroom floors at St. Barnabas School, painted a classroom at St. Andrew's School, built a foundation for a bathroom at St. Hilda'sSchool, conducted a health ministry for students and teachers, and organized a first aid workshop for teachers at St. Andrew's School. Needless to say, we slept soundly every night!

Now it is time to go again. Although there will be 17 people actually travelling there, our entire congregation will be there in spirit and in prayer. We look forward to new adventures, to meeting old friends and making new ones, to building picnic tables for the children at St. Hilda's, to putting on daily puppet shows, to sharing our faith with each other and with our Belizean brothers and sisters, to exploring their beautiful country, and to growing in our love for God and for each other.

It takes many people volunteering countless hours behind the scenes to make something like this happen. The missioners are most grateful (a) to the Cathedral Missions Committee, which is the body that oversees missions work at the Cathedral - Kurt Schmidt, Gregg Finley, Sam Mayo, Carol Gregory, Justin Ancheta, Ann Deveau, Michael Pope, and Vicki Garrett; (b) to the Belize Steering Committee, which is the "Control Centre" for this project, and manages all the details - Doug Milander, Michael Pope, Wayne Phillips, Janet Garland, and George Porter; and (c) to George Porter and Keith Joyce, for leadership in the spiritual preparation for the Away Team - along with Leith Box, Gregg Finley, Kurt Schmidt, and Caryn Gunter. The missioners are also thankful to the "Home Team" which is our church family, for prayers, financial support, words of encouragement, and participation in the various fund raising events to raise money for St. Hilda's School.