MOVE Belize
- Ethan Currier
- Jan 23
- 4 min read
The past 3 months, I have been in Belize at a mission training school called MOVE (Missionary Outreach and Volunteer Evangelism). The school trains people, young and old, for mission service through classes and practical education.
MOVE has four elective classes that someone can choose, health, education, construction, and mechanics. I decided to take the mechanics course because I figured it would be the most useful to me in aviation, knowing more about how engines work and how to identify and fix certain problems. When I got to MOVE, we started working on small engines. Each of us took an engine from the storage unit by the shop where we worked. We checked the oil and gas levels and started the engines to make sure they worked. Once we knew the engines worked, we took the engine apart piece by piece and cleaned everything out. Once that was finished, we put the engine back together and started it to make sure it worked. When I put mine together, I forgot to adjust the valve timing belt to make sure they opened at the right time so I had to take the valve cover off and align the belt before I got it to start. During the ceremony at the end of the 3 month program, they have a sharing time where each elective and class share something that they did. In mechanics, we decided to make water bottle holders because when we fill up our five gallon jugs they just sit on the floor and take up a lot of space. This is the final product:
MOVE also does practical education. Rather than sitting in classes all the time, we would go out to the surrounding villages and give Bible studies, preach, and do small groups. I gave Bible studies to a man named Beiro. He was drunk for almost 30 years, but had been sober for about 3 months before I came and to my knowledge is still sober. I would prepare a Bible study and give it to him, but there were many times he just wanted to hear a Bible story, so I would tell him stories like Noah or the wise and the foolish man. I also preached a couple times at the church I went to about the sanctuary and led out in a couple small groups.
Near the end of the MOVE program, each generation (they call classes generations, I was part of generation 22) will go on a mission trip. They must plan and execute everything themselves, from setting up a place to meal prep. We decided to go to San Jose, a town in southern Belize with a large Mayan population. We left on Monday morning. On our way there, we had a couple of mechanical problems; there was a fuel line leaking in the bus engine that we needed to replace, and we discovered that the front tires on the Ford were both about to give out. We only had one spare, but fortunately one tire was much better than the other and lasted the whole trip. When we got to San Jose, we unpacked all of our things to the community center where we stayed for the week. The locals brought us lunch, and they had some of the best tamales I have ever had. They used palm heart in the tamale as a filler and it was really good and not dry like others. That afternoon, we divided the town into sections and went door to door inviting people to the different programs we were going to do. The first one was a small group every evening focusing on the topic of family. We held these small groups in the homes of the people so that it was easier for people to attend. We only had divided into four groups to lead these, but we ended up having about 7 small groups. We also invited them to a health fair and to bring any broken machines to a mechanics clinic that we held all week. When my group stopped at our third house, we found out that the man's horse had just died and he was about to burry it. I stayed back with Mr. Jeff and his son Andean to help them dig the hole for the horse. We got about 2 feet down before it started raining and we unfortunately ended up digging a cistern because it filled up with water. After the rain stopped we started helping get water out of the hole but we had to leave to go to supper soon after.
Throughout the rest of the week, we worked in our assigned areas. I worked in mechanics. People from the village would bring things that were broken or ask for help with things they couldn’t bring to our center like sewing machines. We fixed a lot of weed eaters, chainsaws, and other small engines. We also sharpened many machetes and axes. In the evenings we would go to the homes of the people and have a small group study with them. The home my group went to happened to be the same one where we helped the man bury his horse.
We had to leave the town early unfortunately because of a tropical storm. If we had stayed, the main highway running north south in Belize would have flooded and we would have been stuck for possibly a week or two. We hadn’t prepared for a longer stay so we had to leave Friday evening. On Sabbath, we gave a concert at one of the churches near MOVE.
After the MOVE program, I went home to Indiana for a few days to spend Thanksgiving with my family, and then I traveled to the Philippines where I am currently serving.
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