Update From Belize

SEPTEMBER 2005

I’ve been wanting to send out this updated report on some of the happenings here at the Belize Mission & Retreat for sometime, but now I know why the Lord has held me off. If you can give me grace and bear with me in reading the email, you to will see the amazing things God is doing here! It’s taken a long time and we’ve wanted to throw in the towel, many times, but through God’s prompting and Grace we’ve continued to stay faithful to His call on our lives and now we are seeing some of the fruits of our labor coming to fruition.

More and more people in the village are showing the signs of Aids and we are finding out that they do have it. Please pray for the village. It seems that unfortunately this is a wake up call for the villagers to change their immoral ways with the lives. Again this is the work of our Lord to show them, but at the same time it grieves our heart to learn of some of the people who have AIDS that have become close and dear to us. This is a hard time for us here, knowing what is ahead!

We’ve have had such an incredible movement of the Holy Spirit in the village in this last month. The head drug family in the village, Dana (the man) and Orsel (the woman) have both come to know the Lord. Orsel has been in my bible study since last year, and this year I have seen tremendous growth in her. I actually am seeing God’s love shining in her eyes. She is even going to be teaching my bible study when we are back in the states for a week to load a container. She told Dana whom she’s been living with for 26 years and has 6 children by him, that unless he changes his way and gives up the drugs and drinking she wasn’t going to remain with him, that she would leave. One day he was doing his usual thing, drinking and stoned and she felt the Holy Spirit tell her to pack her bag and just leave, this was the time. That was a couple of months ago!!! She followed the prompting and moved out, and then 3 weeks ago, Dana was baptized when a team was in the village from N. Carolina We were not in the village we were picking up a team and didn’t know about it, until we arrived just after the baptism!!! We were actually amazed beyond belief. The following Thursday Basil and I had the privilege of baptizing Orsel and they tell us that within the next couple of months they would like Basil to marry them!!!! PTL!!! Amazing !!

Now along with this has been some big time spiritual warfare, one good example is the day that Orsel was to be baptized her two oldest sons had a major fight ½ hour before the baptism was to take place, and of course this made Orsel to try to calm her sons down and not focus on the baptism. They wanted to kill each other, literally they both own guns, Brandon, whom you may have heard me mention in previous emails and many have been praying for, has been coming to church and listening to Basil and I and changing his life, from selling drugs to selling crafts and trying to turn from the evil things he used to do. This is a 26 yr. old man with many scars from knife and gun wounds. He has become a dear friend of mine too! It was him and his younger brother Elvis that were fighting. They are known to kill and hurt people, and they were daring the other brother to kill the other one. One of our interns came running down to get me to stop the fight. I went to where everything was going on and realized that I couldn’t do anything, if you could have seen the look in their eyes and heard the tone in their voice you would understand what I’m saying! After we got them separated I asked to talk with Brandon alone, he wouldn’t even look at me he was so angry (vex as they say in Belize), finally he calmed down we talked and I told him how I didn’t want anything to happen to him, there was a lot said, but for the most part he agreed and he told me that he had even stopped smoking weed 2 days ago, I said, that this is probably one of the reason that it was happening, he was a bit on edge, but how very proud I was of him for doing this and how proud God was of him! He actually started crying and telling me how very hard it is in the village to go against the grain of what the norm is!!! Does that sound familiar???

All that to say the baptism took place plus their were 2 other young men, Kevin and Shannon who are 18 and members of Taliban gang in this village, now that’s a huge step for them to go against their ways. We also have had the privilege of baptizing other young men at the same time of the above mentioned; Alric, Jamal, Kenny and Conway, did you notice that those are all men? Yes, the Holy Spirit is at work in a most amazing way!

Please continue to pray for the village and especially for those who have come to know the Lord personally, as they will be tempted to go backwards. Satan isn’t happy right now and he’s trying in many ways to win back what God has already won over!! What he doesn’t realize, is it’s too late, God has been victorious and there is nothing that these new children of the Lord can do to take away their grace and love from the Lord, they are His forever now!!!! Again, Praise the Lord! (PTL)!!

We’ve ran across people here in Belize that have found out we are missionaries in Gales Point and they have said that if you ever get Dana Myers into church then I’ll come to church. Because they are so sure that it would never happen!!! So there are quite a number of people who should start attending church now. I’ve been asking Dana for a few months now to come to church and play his drums, and he is doing just that plus attending Basil’s men’s gathering! Basil has been having 25 to 35 men attending this meeting recently, these are not your average men in the village, a good portion of these men are the “bad guys” of the village. So this in itself has been pretty miraculous. Our women in my bible study have been praying since Jan. for the men in the village to start coming to the Lord and becoming the leaders of the village and to go to the Men’s bible study. We have had some more incredible blessings too! Last week, Basil and I decided to bite the bullet and start buying school books for the kids that need to be sponsored to high school. Now this was a big step of faith as this year we have 31+ kids to sponsor and only 3 people had said that they could renew.

We stand in awe for all that is happening. Dorita, our cook came into Belize City to help me with purchasing the books. We were in A&R buying a good many books, when we came out we were going to the van, when we had a security guard approach us and ask if this was our van and if everything was alright with it. I took a quick look and it appeared fine, it was locked and I said that no one appears to have gotten in it, it was still locked, Dorita then looked up front and let out a gasp! It turns out she had left her purse in the car with $470 in cash, her bank card, her account book, cell phone and her passport. It was gone and a few groceries I had bought which was no big deal. I felt terrible for Dorita, and since she was helping us we decided to give her the $470 that she lost and I took her around to the bank and police to make reports for all of it.The very next morning I opened up our email, and there was an email from George a man who was on the last medical team, in which we had shared our dilemma on not having enough sponsors and we had asked if there were any on that team that would consider sponsoring a child. This team had such an impact on our village and especially some of those who were baptized!!! George had gone back home and shared with his bible study group, and they are sending $10,400 US to our Belize Mission & Retreat office to cover the sponsorship of all the children that needed to be sponsored. Well, I was in tears all morning, how could we have ever doubted our Father’s faithfulness! Many, many other blessings have happened this year that we still are in awe of and are giving our Father the Glory for!!! Thank you to all of you who are a part of each blessing, you have no idea of just how humbled we are as we stand before our Father in AWE!!!

Our Love and prayers to all of you!!
Basil and Vera de Klerk

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