Back in the Swing of Things... My final post on this blog

Well in my last post I briefly mentioned the air-travel woes experienced by 4/7 of our group last wednesday. I'll attempt to detail them a little better here.

When our plane was scheduled to leave Belize City, it was time for another torrential downpour. Because of this, American Airlines had to board our plane one person at a time, providing an umbrella to each one of us. (They don't have Jetways in Belize... just the big metal staircase that goes up to the entrance of the plane). Since boarding took much longer than expected because of the rain, our plane was at least a half hour late taking off from Belize City. We thought "This will still be alright. We'll still have two and a half hours to catch our next flight in Miami."

Upon arrival in Miami, there was this exceedingly long wait on the tarmac. Since we had left Belize late, there were two planes at their respective terminals, blocking our way to our own terminal. After about 45 minutes waiting on the tarmac, we got to our gate. As we exited the plane, I thought to myself "This will still be alright... We still have an hour and 45 minutes to catch our next flight." Upon exiting the plane, we found ourselves in this seemingly-never-ending corridor, winding around and around, through various hallways, with the occasional sign saying "International Arrivals ------>" Once we got to the end of this labyrinth, we soon realized that an hour and a half was not a lot of time, when pretty much everyone else in the entire world is trying to get into the USA via Miami Customs. We all got separated into different lines waiting to be "stamped in" to the USA. After this, we still had to get our baggage, as well as re-check it, and then get to our gate, and get on our plane. My hope was that the lines would be moving fast enough to somehow miraculously get us all to our plane before liftoff... Unfortunately, an hour or so later, when we were still in line, I pretty much realized that there was no way we would be making it to our connecting flight. Dave and I had stuck together, and we kept visual contact with Dan and Kim, but no one really knew where Ann, Morgan and Pam were at... Had they made it through and were on the way to the plane, or were they way back in another line still waiting for Customs? Finally, Dave and I made it to the customs checkpoint. After about 0.68 seconds (seemed like an eternity), of looking at ourselves and our passports, he stamped them and we were on our way to find our baggage.

We got our baggage, and also tried to gather up any luggage that was there from the rest of our team. Dan and Kim were still behind us, and we found their luggage, but there was no sign of Ann, Morgan or Pam's luggage anywhere... Could it be that they made it onto the flight???! We grabbed our things and proceeded to re-check our bags. We told the person at the bag check what our final destination was, and instead of taking our bags, he told us to "follow the green dots" and get in that line. Looking back on it at this point, the line they put us in was to talk to American Airlines representatives to re-book the flight we had now missed, and figure out what to do next. As we were waiting in the line, we noticed Dan and Kim about 100 people behind us, and then suddenly they were rushed off to another line by airport personnel.

When Dave and I finally got to the agent, she gave us some choices of flights... all connecting through Dallas to get to MSP... departing at 6:50 AM or at 9:20 AM... It was now around 9:30 PM so we didn't really want to do the 6:50 flight. We called Dan, and he seemed pretty set in his ways to do the 6:50 flight, so Dave and I decided to go on our own. we chose the 9:20 flight. We politely asked to be put up in a hotel room for the night because of our inconvenience. The agent gave us a voucher to get a room at the Doubletree for $99... ok that's not a horrible price, but we expected it to be free... When we asked her about that, she said that because the weather delay in Belize is what caused the whole thing, that they could not provide a hotel room. Even though most of the delay was from waiting on the tarmac and getting through Customs... I'm sure if we would have pushed the matter, we could have gotten a free room, but by this point, we just wanted to get some food and sleep.

After talking with the agent, we met up with Dan and Kim, who informed us that they were taking the 6:50 flight, and that they had gotten FREE hotel rooms at the Sofitel for the night... FREEEEEEEE! I wanted to go yell at the lady behind the counter that helped us, but what good would it have done? Around 10:00 PM, Dan and Kim hopped on the Sofitel shuttle bus, and were off. We were waiting for the Doubletree Shuttle. Upon calling the Doubletree, they said that the shuttle should be there in a few minutes, and that it ran every half-hour.

After an hour and a half of not even SEEING a Doubletree shuttle, we were ready to go back inside and complain to American to try to get a free room, and maybe get booked on a later flight. We also called the Doubletree at least 3 more times, each time being assured that the shuttle was running, and that we must have missed it each time.

Just as we were about to go inside and start negotiating, the Doubletree shuttle arrived. By midnight, we were at the hotel, and checked in. Dave and I had snacked on some M&M's and Pringles, but that is all we had eaten since Noon. I was so exhausted, I basically just crashed in bed and fell asleep.

Wednesday morning came WAY too quickly, but by the grace of God, I was pretty refreshed, and ready to deal with another day of airtravel. Dan and Kim may be getting home earlier than Dave and I, but we definitely got more sleep than they did! We arrived at the airport around 8:00 AM, and pretty much breezed through security and got to our gate with time to spare. Now it was off to Dallas.

We arrived in Dallas with barely 10 minutes to spare before boarding our connecting flight. Luckily it was just 3 gates down from our arriving gate. We hurried to our new flight, and as we're approaching the gate, I notice something that really caught me off guard... Dan and Kim are standing at our gate! Evidently they had left Miami at 6:50 as planned, but when they got to Dallas, they were unceremoniously informed that their connecting flight to MSP had been canceled. Their only choice was to get on the standby list for the remaining flights to MSP that day. They were numbers 6 and 7 on the standby list, but after Dave and I took our seats on the plane, we never saw them board before the captain came on the speaker informing us that the flight would be full. Once the doors had been closed, we realized that Dan and Kim would be getting back home LATER than us lazy guys who wanted to sleep in!

Once we were on our flight to MSP, the trip got horribly uneventful (darn...) so I will not bore you with the rest of the details. Suffice it to say, we made it back to MSP, my wife Amy picked Dave and I up at the airport, and then we brought Dave to Northwestern to get his station van so he could drive all the way back to Waterloo, IA.

When we got to NWC, we stopped by Ann's office, and she greeted us with the most excited happy hug I've ever experienced... She really didn't know much about the details of our difficulties, but she was definitely glad that we made it home safely. I'm not exactly sure what time Dan and Kim got back, but I saw both of them at work on Friday, and they both looked fairly sane (Kim moreso than Dan!) so I assume their trip was fairly uneventful after they got out of Dallas as well.

Well, that's pretty much the end of my story about Belize 2009... We're all back safe and sound, the seminar was a great success, and we had fun while glorifying God in the country of Belize! With this, I will officially end this string of blogs, knowing now that I shouldn't have named the web address "brianinbelize"... but hey, I'm new at this blogging thing!

To borrow a line from my friend Goose, "May God richly bless you, and may he multiply your descendents like the sands upon the seashore"

Good night!

Brian

I'm home

Dave and I flew into MSP this afternoon around 3pm... Dan Wynia and Kim Brown were stuck in Dallas until a later flight, but (I assume) made it back to MSP later this afternoon... I sure hope so! I'm beat though, so perhaps I'll blog some more tomorrow about the details of our trip back... Here it is in a nutshell:

• 3:30pm - 8:30pm Belize to Miami Customs,
• 8:30pm - 11:30pm Miami Customs to the curb outside the Miami Airport
• 11:30pm - 7:30am Curb to the Miami Doubletree Suites
• 7:30am - 8:00am Doubletree Suites to the Miami Airport
• 8:00am - 12:00pm Miami Airport to Dallas Fort Worth Airport
• 12:00pm - 3:00pm Dallas Fort Worth Airport to MSP Airport

Finally... a warm shower?

This morning it rained from about 5am until 10am... straight. Dan says this is the most rain he's ever seen on a trip to Belize. When I got up around 9:00 AM, I decided that a shower was a good thing to do before starting my day.

When I turned on the water, it started running into the bath. When I pulled up on the valve that would divert the water out of the showerhead, I heard a rather echo-y "CLUNK" on the bottom of the bathtub. I looked down, and there in the bathtub was the entire Bathtub spigot... just lying there. Sticking out of the wall is a bare 1/2" piece of CPVC pipe, with a nice constant stream of water pouring out of it. Needless to say, I washed my hair and that was good enough today. The hotel was notified and it looks like they've fixed it... Hopefully this is true. We haven't tried turning on the shower yet... I'll let you know in the morning whether it works properly now, or not... :)

Around Noon we went to Lighthouse Christian Radio here in San Pedro. Pam and Dan were interviewed on the air, and it was recorded by the folks at the station. I really hope they give us a copy of the recording to post on the KTIS Morning Show Blog!

This afternoon, around 5:00 PM it started raining again... a LOT... like enough that if we wanted to leave the island, we couldn't because neither the boat taxis or local planes will run in this type of rain. So please be praying for not only the weather back home tomorrow, but for the weather here in San Pedro to be favorable enough for us to get off the island on time to catch all our other flights.

Thank you all so much for reading this blog and praying for our team! :)

Brian

Closing Ceremony, Rice & Beans, and San Pedro

The closing ceremony was at 10-ish AM today. It was a great time of sharing with the Belizeans how much this trip means to us, and for them to share with us how much it means to them. It was a really great time of fellowship and sharing for everyone, and it was really fun to see how proud they were to have the certificate from Northwestern College.

After the ceremony, Lunch was served to us - the meal Dan and I had been waiting for all week... Traditional Belizean Rice & Beans. In case you may be wondering, yes there is a difference between "Rice & Beans" and "Beans and Rice"... I'm not exactly sure what it means, but Dan could explain it to you... his number is 651-.... never mind I dont' suppose he'd like it if I gave that to you.

After lunch, we got all our luggage together, bringing with us only what we'd need for the two days on Ambergris Caye, and then we got on Richard's bus, and he drove us to Belize City to catch the water taxi to San Pedro. We were running late on the way there, but Richard was able to call the taxi company and they held the boat until we got there. Needless to say we were a bit rushed! :)

As soon as we arrived in San Pedro, it started raining. There were about 2 hours of very hard rain, and then we ate supper with Clive Welsh (the manager of Lighthouse Radio San Pedro)... We went to Dan's favorite place the first night on the Island- The Blue Water Grill. I had a Mongolian Pork dish that was really really good. Dan had Snapper, along with Dave. Ann and Morgan had Black-Bean crusted Snook, and Chuck had Black Pepper pork chops. All in all it was a great meal! Pam and Kim, I didn't forget you, but I don't remember what you had to eat! Sorry...

I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but I do know this for sure... Tonight I'm going to sleep until I wake up... then I'm going to sleep some more!

God bless you all and thanks for your continued prayers throughout this trip.

Brian

Sessions completed

Well everyone, the sessions have been completed, the production groups came up with 13 fine examples of audio production, and Chuck Pollak, Dan Wynia and myself have come up with three finalists which we will award tomorrow during the closing ceremony of the seminar.

This evening was filled with dismantling all the laptops in the production room, packing everything up as good as we could, and then getting all the names of attendees into the computer so we could print out their Certificates of Completion. I still need to burn CD's for everyone in the production workshop so they are able to take their creations home/back to their stations with them. I think, since it's almost 1:00 AM that I'll be doing that tomorrow.

Tomorrow, after the closing ceremony, we leave for San Pedro Town on Ambergris Caye, Belize. We will hopefully arrive in San Pedro around 3:30 in the afternoon, with some time to walk around before nightfall.

A hot shower will be nice, since all we've had at My Refuge have been semi-warmish-cool showers. But hey- they're still showers. I have nothing to complain about... and all-in-all, the coolness of the showers usually felt pretty good.

Thank you all for the prayers for our seminar, and I would ask that you continue to pray for the health and safety of our team as we wind down our trip with a little R&R in San Pedro. Pray also that the weather in Florida and Minnesota on Tuesday is good enough to not delay any of our flights back home. We are due to arrive in Minneapolis very late on Tuesday night, and any delays would definitely be another adventure!

Thank you all and God bless you!

Brian

Seminar Day 2 Morning

I forgot to mention in my last post (which was sort of single-tracked... oooh a digital audio editing reference for you this morning!!) that Chuck Pollak gave the opening address last night, as the first official event of the Belize Media Seminar 2009. Never before have I heard a man talk with so much passion, and so much heart, and so much vision for Christian media in the country of Belize. We are all grateful to be working with Chuck as well as Sharing International on this project! We couldn't do it without you, bro!

I slept VERY well last night, considering the circumstances (read the last post if you don't know what I mean...) And it's now 7:19 AM and we'll be eating breakfast at 7:30 and the first sessions of the day starts at 9:00 AM. Before that time I have to turn on all the production laptops and make sure they're ready to go for the first production Workshop at 9:00 AM.

I'm very excited to hear and see what these Belizean Christian media personnel have to create through audio this weekend, and hopefully to post and share some of it for you on here after we're finished!

Thank you for your continued prayer!

Brian

TAR...AN...TU...LA

The whole thing happened so fast, but the basic things I remember were this:

• I was in my room with the door shut
• I heard Dave say something like "holy crap... Brian, come out here..."
• I went into the living room and saw this... (the ceramic tiles are 8-inch square for reference)
• Before it got into Morgan's bedroom, Dave cornered it with some pillows and tried to get it to go toward the door.
• It didn't like being cornered, and decided to jump up onto this... (a TV Stand)
• Here's another pic to illustrate the size of this thing...
• Dave's getting ready to put a can over it here...
• And succeeds here... with the help of Chuck...
  
• Dave carries it outside while I hold the door open... Chuck & Dan are just observing by now.
• And finally, Here's a picture of it after it had been dumped out on the ground.

That is definitely the closest I want to get to a live, wild tarantula ever again in my entire life.