Two years ago I convinced my friend Brenda Salter McNeil that she should visit Belize with me and see the great things happening through the PathLight ministry. Even though she’s a city girl, she agreed to go. Even more surprising, she agreed to come back and work with the students on racial identity issues!
So this past weekend we hosted Brenda and her colleague Rosanne at the PathLight conference center in Belize. About fifty students, from first year high school students to college students, came to learn about how much God values them. Brenda and Rosanne did a wonderful job of sharing Biblical truths about the diversity within God’s Kingdom.
At first the students were a little cautious to engage in the conversation. That’s to be expected for a lot of reasons. Brenda and Rosanne were strangers to them, and diversity is not a common topic in Belize the way it is in the States. Plus being outgoing is not a cultural norm in Belize.
But as Brenda’s bubbly personality began to show, the kids began to warm to the topic. Rosanne showed pictures of her family (her father is African-American and her mother is Chinese), and it was amazing to see how the students locked in at that point. Through a series of games, videos and conversations, the students began to grow in their understanding of diversity. They began to see it as a value that goes to the core of their faith.
On the last day the students were asked to complete the sentence, “This weekend I learned that …” Writing on 3×5 cards, the responses were amazing. Here’s a sampling of those answers:
“This weekend I learned that Belize has many different cultures and that everyone has to be together as one in the view of God.”
“This weekend I learned that to be a good leader you don’t heed to be born from a leader. You just need to have responsibility and a great courage to do the things you want to gain your goals in life.”
“This weekend I learned that you should not judge a book by its colour.”
“This weekend i learned that … we are made in the image of God and we are special.”
Get the idea? There are many more answers and PathLight is going to share those over the next few weeks. It was so great to see these students — all of them poor, many from underrepresented communities, half of them girls — begin their journey to self-understanding and self-identity. God showed up this weekend, and it was marvelous to see!
Here are a few pictures I took (and I’m no photographer…sorry) to share with you:
