A Family Retreat Sharing

Our daughter Rachel spoke earlier of the courage. faith and determination of our great, great, great, great, grandfather Jacob in leaving his home and most of his family to cross the ocean to begin a new in life where his faith could be lived out for his family and descendents. He had a commitment on which he based his whole future life which he left as a challenge to all his descendents.

Almost 200 years later, my father was a young man of 19-21 who also had a dream. He imagined going to India, half way around the world and be a missionary. It was a time when there were very few Mennonite missionaries yet, and to have such a dream for an Amish youth was just too much. It never happened to him.

However, less than 25 years later, my father begin to see his children go out to  Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Arkansas, Colorado, Texas, Virginia, and Ohio. Even Red Lake Ontario, Brazil, and Belize. What he dreamed about in his youth was greatly expanded by his children in ways he would never have imagined when he was young.

The challenge today for my generation and especially the generation following us is to live by example and conviction so that the work of God will continue to be done around a world which is getting smaller and smaller. Loretta and I pray frequently for our grandchildren that they will respond to what ever call God has for them. None of our own grandchildren are married- yet. Thus we are very mindful that there are likely more than a dozen youth and children “out there” who will some day link to our grandchildren. So we pray for them also like as for our own, that they will join in the call of God on their lives. As the Scripture says,“So the next generation would know…even the children yet to be born, and they in turn will tell their children.

Let me then turn to our life in Belize. W knew that it was a risk to do something very different in mid life, going 2,000 miles away in a country we only heard about ( Next door compare to our father Jacob’s daring venture) But we have never regretted going there in almost 25 years. It was life with enough challenges and rewards to stay and stay, so that sometimes I wasn’t even too excited to return back to the States every year. Let me just tell you one story, bits of which some will already know.

About 30 years ago there was a young, 13 year old girl in the town of Georgetown. Her father was abusive, she told me, especially when he was drinking. So she sneaked off to the town we later came to, and when her parents pursued her, she went on to Belize City. You can imaging the girl was ill-equipped to live on her own, especially so far from her mother who would have had much to teach her. I am not sure that she ever retuned to live with her family. Instead, over the next 20 years she had 8 children, from several men. The first child served time in prison before he was twenty. The third, also served some months, and the latest I heard, the police were looking for him. But, the second son, while we were here last summer, e-mailed us that he had turned his life over to God completely. There is one daughter. While she was in catholic confirmation classes some years ago, it seems she made a serious commitment to Christ and this year she told me that with her husband, they were attending a church, at least some. She is a fine Christian character, a most kind friend of ours; so near and dear like a daughter.

Here is where some of you know bits of the story. The last 4 children, preschool boys were with us in Dangriga when the mother had left them with us to go to the city, supposedly to escape someone. While there she called us and said we could give the children to the welfare. (She denied she said that later) For 9 months we cared for them as our own. I was likely more involved with them then I had been with our own, perhaps as Loretta had others to care for. Each evening I put them to bed, praying for the older ones sleeping in a big bed, and then kneeling over the younger ones on the floor, praying that they would grow up learning to know God’s love. In the daytime they were always with me, if they could be, and when I would sit on the sofa, they would pile on me sometimes until I had to beg for space to breathe.

After nine months we received legal custody of the kids and brought three of them to the States with us for 6 months. When we returned to Belize with them, two couples came to Belize to adopt them. (7 years ago Aug 2. We were reminded last Sunday by a father.)

One of them wanted to be baptized several years ago- when we were here, he requested.

To experience this family and be to there for them in crucial; times, which was continuous at times, certainly was a high plateau of our experience as to both challenging and rewarding. To see 6 out 8 children now on the track for God, where only God would know where they would be otherwise.

It was hard for me to think over the years about leaving Belize. I wondered what could compare to the life in Belize. Perhaps two years ago we began to think about it a bit more. But in a journal where I keep some of my personal thought, in December 2008 I asked,”Is there life after Belize?” Slowly and gently God showed me that there may be life after Belize. One of the encouraging points was when I realized that the work of God would go on around the world after me, and that some of the grandchildren were already committing them selves to that. My father had a dream which he could never fulfill in his life. Now I have a vision that is realistic and just over the horizon, with the light of a new team of workers from the grandchildren of all my brothers and sisters. Already some have been in Thailand, Zambia, Jamaica, Mexico, Belize, Brazil and Paraguay. Likely more countries then come to my memory.

The challenge for my generation and the one right after is to be most supportive to the next generation to carry out the work of God in what ever vocation they choose. I expect some will make mid life shifts in vocation like we did as God calls them in His timing. At mid life I ask myself and God, what might I do that I will have few regrets when I turn 65. God had the answer. He also has the answer for each of us, if we ask him in all sincerity. Each of us is a chain link in the purposes and work of God in generations to follow us. May each of us dedicate our selves continually to God’s work for each of us, and persist in prayer and be an example as we teach our children.