July 2010 Letter from Roy Goble

Dear Friend

Summer is a wonderful time for PathLight. There are 19 new sponsorship students who just graduated from eighth grade. They are being measured for uniforms and getting prepared for their first year of high school. It's a huge deal for them!

Plus summer is the season for one of our most popular programs, the Teacher Training Conference.  Starting with just a dozen or so Belizean teachers, this annual week long training session has grown to over 100 Belizean teachers!  Volunteers from North America, all with exceptional teaching skills, visit Belize to share their expertise.  It is a tremendous way to raise the quality of education.

And summer also means it is a busy time for our Teams program.  Groups from all over North America serve a week or longer on a variety of service projects.  It's important that these are more than merely "make work" programs, so the PathLight staff work hard at identifying real needs in the schools and communities.  Ideally, the people in those schools and communities receive the same kind of spiritual boost that those who go on the trip receive.

As I reflect on the value of those Teams and the spiritual impact they can have, I'm reminded of something Dr. Robert Wennberg recently wrote in his book, "Faith at the Edge."  There is one chapter in the book titled, "Why a Week with Mother Teresa Might Be Better for the Doubter than a Week with C.S. Lewis."  It's a humorous chapter title with a very important message.

Wennberg points out that our walk in faith is cyclical.  We go through times on the mountaintops and times in the valley.  In the course of that cycle, we often find ourselves simply needing to serve.  We need to do something tangible with real impact, and to get away from merely analyzing or thinking about our faith.  It's the difference between Mother Teresa (a doer) and C.S. Lewis (a thinker).  Wennberg writes, "It is more likely, I am suggesting, that God will be found in the course of serving others in the name of Christ than in the course of constructing, even if successfully, good arguments for the existence of God..."  He concludes the chapter with, "So give alms.  Yes, spend a week with Mother Teresa.  Go on that missions trip."

And there it is.  Sometimes our best step in faith is to put our intellectual arguments aside and simply serve others.  To give, to love, and to offer hope.

That's why PathLight hosts teams all summer.  That's why teachers leave their homes during their vacation and head to Belize to help other teachers.  That's why there are 19 new students preparing to go to high school.

I hope you are having a wonderful summer.  Please pray with me that this summer the students, the teachers, and the volunteers will all find God in the course of serving others.  And think about going on a trip yourself sometime.  Or think about a way to give alms through PathLight.

Blessings,

Roy Goble
President and Co-Founder