The Old Age Home – Octavia Waight Centre

We arrived at Octavia Waight at about 2:30 pm. We spent a bit of time setting up out stuff in our new room. Lauren Gringhuis and I are staying at the Old Age home in a room upstairs. We will be here for the next two weeks. We took part in a Bible study. The lady talked about how our Bibles were wrong calling God “God” and “Lord” because that is not the name in Hebrew. She said that we don’t call President Bush something else when he is in another country. She said that it is using the Lords name in vain to call Him these other names. Lauren and I had a hard time really understanding her. She referred to a lot of different passages in both the New and Old Testament. I can’t remember where she all pointed us to. I am not really sure what to think about this lady. I will pray about it and see what God tells me is right or wrong.

In the evening we went to the circus. It was pretty interesting. There were clowns and acrobatic people. When we got in the tent the first person that we saw was a lady on stilts. It was fun being there. I think that my favourite part was probably the elephant. It climbed up on a fairly small stool thing and it stood on two feet, then it climbed off of he stool and then sat on it. It was really neat. There was also this lady who was doing tricks with a hula-hoop. She had so many of them spinning around her! It was amazing. There were several interesting tricks done by people. I took some videos of the performances. My camera wouldn’t take good pictures though, and it ran out of batteries half way through. I would say that my first trip to the circus was a good experience. I even bought a candy apple!

Before going to the circus we talked to the lady who stays here during the night. She said that the one lady, Hilda, tries to run away all the time. She old Susan that she planned to hop the fence that night. She is so funny… she even had a little sack packed.

We got up at 6:00 to be ready to work at 6:30 serving breakfast. After breakfast we played bingo with the old people for a while

I went to the hospital with one of the workers and Jose to get Joes eye checked out. He had a cataract surgery on Thursday and needed a checkup. The doctor there was a missionary doctor who comes here every year. Today was his last day in Belize. His assistant was a guy from Niagara Falls. He is studying to be a doctor at a school in California right now.

Hilda fainted at the beginning of lunch. They took her to the hospital. It was a bit scary because she wasn’t breathing at first and her pulse was really low and when we opened her eyes she didn’t respond at all. She is fine now, as far as I know. She had to stay at the hospital for a little while to get checked out by the doctor.

In the afternoon Lauren and I helped to shower people… I think we showered about 7 ladies in 45 mins! They were just quick shower to cool the elderly off. They didn’t want any more of them passing out.

Working at the old age home will be challenging. We have to do things that are somewhat uncomfortable… but that is all part of the growth that God wants to put us through I suppose. Please pray for Lauren and I while we are here.