A love of God and a love for the people of Belize brings a group from Lakeview Covenant Church back every year to minister to their needs.

Thirty-two people from Lakeview Covenant Church in Duluth, Minn., plus one person from the Praying Pelican Missions organization in Minneapolis, went to Belize on a short-term mission trip from June 21-28.

Submitted / For Living Stones News Thirty-three people from Lakeview Covenant Church spent June 21-28 in Belize, Central America, helping with a variety of ministries. Back row, from left: Joel Weyenberg, Susan Pannkuk, Dylan Williams, Loren Janson, Jessica Primozich, Sue Janson, Tony Garay, Pat Pfingsten, Elsa Janson, Gordy Johnson, Dave Graham, Luke Eastep, Steven Knuth, Steve Eastep and Matt Williams. Middle row: Beth Graham, Sarah Knuth, Kristin Milbrath, Maran Lund, Barb Lindberg, Sue Kulas, Terri Graham, Jill Scharold, Grace Knezevich, Alex Primozich and Kyle Milbrath. Front row: Gail Brooks, Megan Holmes, Cassie Williams, Jackie Osterlund, Anna Plys, Svetlana Eames, Mike Eames, Steve Pfingsten and Timmy Perez.

Belize, a small country in Central America, borders the Caribbean Sea, between Guatemala and Mexico. This was Lakeview Covenant’s fifth mission trip to Belize, all organized by Praying Pelican Missions.

Praying Pelican Missions partners groups from North America with local churches and communities in Belize and Jamaica. The organization makes all arrangements for the groups, including everything the team members need from when their plane touches down until they leave again. There is a leader from Praying Pelican with a cell phone and a vehicle on site so groups feel safe at all times. For more information, check out www.prayingpelicanmissions.org or call (763) 208-5922.

Sue Janson, 53, a special education teacher at Duluth East High School and one of three adult leaders on the trip, and Anna Plys, 18, a senior at Duluth East, shared details of the 2008 mission trip recently in an interview at Lakeview Covenant. (Pat and Steve Pfingsten were also adult leaders on the trip.)

Plys has been on all five mission trips; Janson has missed only one. The Lakeview Covenant group ministers to the same church every year -- La Democracia Baptist Church in La Democracia, Belize. Janson said the church only has 10-15 members, but when the team comes, attendance swells to about 65 kids and parents.

The mission team includes adults and teenagers. Janson said this year the youngest was 16 (the minimum age) and the oldest member was 62. All participants were from Lakeview Covenant except one.

“One of the impacts of the trip is getting to know people on the team,” Janson said. “Room assignments are two adults and two teenagers, so we become friends with teenagers.”

The cost of the trip to Belize is $1,650 per person, which includes the flight and land accommodations. Individuals raise their own support primarily through sponsor letters.

“We can see how God supplies for every person,” Janson said. “We have seen His faithfulness.”

The team is formed by January each year. Plys said the full team meets about once a month to pray for and plan the trip’s basic needs. Members need to get prescriptions for malaria, typhoid and traveler’s diarrhea and to ensure their tetanus shots are up to date.

“Team members also decide in January what ministries they feel God is calling them to do,” Plys said. “This year, our ministries included children’s Vacation Bible School, teen girls, teen boys/sports, school ministries, moms’ ministries, men’s ministries, the orphanage and work projects.”

Each team member chooses one primary ministry and a secondary ministry. The team also does outreach evangelism work, showing the “Jesus” movie for two nights, doing some medical missions and leading music and worship for Sunday school and church services on Sunday.

Plys said the team brings everything it needs for its ministries, such as construction materials, children’s books, basic medical supplies, and craft supplies of scissors, tape, glue and tissue paper.

“We (each) have to bring two suitcases,” Janson said, “one for personal things and one for supplies.”

Work projects include improvements on the church building, which, when the first mission team came in 2004, was just four walls and a roof. During the past five years, the team has added windows, installed electricity for lights and fans, redid bathrooms, painted walls and added doors.

Janson said construction is just one part of their ministry, but she believes the most valuable part is building relationships with the people of Belize.

“The people are like family,” she said. “We’ve gotten to know them so well and the trust level is high.”

Submitted / For Living Stones News Jackie Osterlund, an LPN, presents a nebulizer to Brenda, who manages the basic medical supplies in the village of La Democracia in Belize. (A nebulizer is a device used to administer medication to people in the form of a mist inhaled into the lungs. It is commonly used in treating asthma and other respiratory diseases.) The nebulizer had been donated to the Lakeview Covenant Church missions team. At the La Democracia Baptist Church where the team worked, they discovered that Pastor Cecil’s son had severe asthma. Although he did have a nebulizer, it was the only one in the village and many people would come in the middle of the night to borrow it. A second nebulizer was a huge need.

While in Belize, the team members stay in a hotel -- “comfortable, basic, but no frills” -- in Belmopan, the capital city. They eat breakfast there and then are transported via bus to the village of La Democracia, which is about 20 miles away. They eat lunch and supper in the village, and according to Plys, “the Belizean food is amazing.”

“The chicken, rice and beans with a Belize sauce is amazing,” Plys said. “The bananas are so good because they can ripen on the trees.”

Janson bought a recipe book and talked about the wonderful spices, such as all-seasons spice and a ricardo spice.

Other foods the team enjoyed were lots of red beans and rice, coleslaw, fruit, fish, pork, and Johnny cakes and fry jacks, which is like Ojibwa fry bread.

“Praying Pelican provides five-gallon jugs of bottled water because we need to drink lots of water,” Janson said. “We have Kool-Aid, but we never see milk. Not sure why, perhaps due to lack of refrigeration.”

One of the challenges of going to Belize is the heat. Janson said the humidity was high and sweat was always dripping off them.

“We were never dry except at night when we had air conditioning in the rooms,” she said. /p>

Plys said she felt God’s call to be a missionary at a very early age. She was only 13 when she went on the first trip, getting in under the minimum age of 16 because her father and brother were on the trip.

“I have such a heart for the people of Belize and they have absolutely become my passion,” she said. “The children are the most beautiful children in the world. I’ve watched them grow up, and they write to me, ‘To my sister.’ They have become my extended family. God put it on my heart to minister to them and that’s why I go back every year.”

Janson was hooked after her first trip to Belize in 2004 as well. That first-year team stayed in Belize City and each night they would gather in the open area of the hotel to debrief, worship through singing and pray for the next day. Unbeknownst to them, one night a woman was walking under the balcony where they were singing. Janson said that after the team had gone to bed, the woman called the hotel at 1 a.m. and asked to speak to the missionary.

“The hotel needed a room number before they could ring the room, so the woman just gave them an arbitrary room number, which happened to be Kim, one of the team members,” Janson said. “Kim answered and the woman said she’d been drinking and was ready to commit suicide, but heard us singing a hymn. Kim talked to her and invited her to come to the village with us the next day. She did and she helped with Vacation Bible School. She then got hooked up with a church in Belize City. God is amazing and does things like this all the time, and that’s what got me the most.”

Plys said, “You can see God move. You’re blown away by it down there.”

“The people of the village are excited and waiting for our bus when they know we are coming,” Janson said. “They are so open to talking about everything. … They have so little, but have so much joy and gratefulness.”

Jason Swartz, a member of the Praying Pelican staff, wrote in a Web journal on June 26 that, “Today has been greater than anything I can describe. We had a total of at least nine people give their lives to Christ! We did indeed finish our time in the village strong.”

On June 29, Swartz wrote: “As we think back over this amazing week, we are in awe of all that God has done. We were blessed to be part of the sowing, watering and the harvest this week. Our prayers continue for our new brothers and sisters in the Lord.”

Another team will return to Belize from June 13-20, 2009.

“The deposit is in,” Janson said. “We now wait on God to pull leaders and a team together.”

“He always does,” Plys said.