Reflections on Belize
The 2024-2025 Tahoe Resident Leadership Program had the incredible opportunity to partner with a missions organization called Praying Pelicans to go over to Belize and spend a week with a local Church in Bella Vista. Leading up to this trip, our team met weekly to review “When Helping Hurts” by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett, a book on healthy philosophy for missions, to discuss our approach to this trip and to prepare for the various activities planned for the week.
People in America often go on mission trips to impoverished countries, where they volunteer to do something for the community they visit, such as building a house or digging a well. In doing this, they emphasize doing something for the people there instead of building Christ-centered relationships with them. This is an unhealthy view towards missions and towards serving in general because they come in focusing on material poverty and act like they are the saviors for people who cannot help themselves, instead of recognizing that our greatest poverty is spiritual, and that we are all poor spiritually and need Jesus, and that the greatest poverty relief comes through encouraging each other through Christ centered relationships. This trip was not like that at all. From the moment we arrived, instead of having a “doing” mindset, our primary goal was to build relationships with the members of the church in Bella Vista. We came from very different backgrounds and cultural contexts. Still, on this trip, American believers from Lake Tahoe, California, and Belizian believers in Bella Vista came together as one family in Christ, as God’s children, and loved each other as such. It was so sweet and beautiful to see the love, respect, honor, and dignity that was shown to each other as we spent time getting to know each other and as we did ministry together. This trip was a demonstration to me of how much is gained when we focus on loving people relationally and how much beauty is lost when we focus only on what we can do for others or give others materially.