The following story is written by Caitlin Rodgers and was featured in the August/September issue of fellowship! magazine.

Sprouting from an original partnership with the Belize Baptist Association and a Belizean pastor training center, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship partner churches of North Carolina have intertwined their stories with the churches and communities of Belize.

After ten years of individual North Carolina congregations partnering with specific churches in Belize for construction work, Vacation Bible Schools and medical and dental clinics, Hal Melton, an associate pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Raleigh, hatched a grander idea. Together with Linda Jones, missions coordinator for CBF North Carolina, Melton began looking for potential projects that, while too large for a single congregation to complete, would offer opportunities for collaboration among multiple churches. 

“Bringing individuals and churches together to do Christ-centered ministry that they each couldn’t necessarily accomplish alone is our focus,” Jones said.

Melton was aware of such a project. Pastor Manny Cowo, a retired college agricultural professor, knew the transforming power and possibilities of a good education and dreamed that dream for the children in his community. Under his leadership, the small, 30-member Santa Elena Baptist Church started a preschool that quickly reached 53 students in the community of Santa Elena, Belize. Melton knew that this was a start.

“They were doing their best to give the kids a basic preschool education,” Melton noted. “But they needed a primary school to go further.”

A school in every community, however, is not always possible in Belize. Before the government will approve a school and provide necessary funds for teachings and books, the village must first have a building. The children of Santa Elena are permitted to attend school in San Ignacio, a significantly larger town in western Belize, located across the Macal River. However, since the trek to San Ignacio involves walking to the highway and catching a public bus to cross the river, the journey is not something with which parents are comfortable.

So, led by the community and sponsored by Santa Elena Baptist Church, construction began for a primary school in the village that would double and triple as a hurricane shelter and community center. A 90-foot by 30-foot concrete pad was poured and some concrete block work completed, and then, as the economy took a downward turn, the project hit a wall.

With no more money to put into the project, the community had no choice but to suspend work. The school sat untouched for nearly six years while the church prayed. “They truly wanted assistance, not someone to come in and do this for them,” Melton said.

With this in mind, several CBF North Carolina churches opted to partner with the village to accomplish this great goal. Beginning with a small partnership of a few churches giving both financially and physically to the Santa Elena school project, the relationship spread to include the First Baptist churches of Wilmington, Whiteville and Marion, as well as Ardmore, Oakmont, Greystone and Trinity Baptist churches.

Although the first team to Santa Elena arrived to a barebones concrete pad, with so many churches helping, the structure is now a two-floor, six-classroom school scheduled to officially open in September 2013.

“Pastor Manny and his people are so excited; there are always church members out there helping us. Children from the community come over and they don’t want to just play, they want to help,” Melton said.

“It’s been a wonderful project that has shown God’s hand at work in so many ways. We have been going to Belize now for about six years, and we have established a lot of wonderful relationships with the people—from Baptist leaders to the people at Pastor Manny’s church to the people who cook for us. We get to know their families and their children. It’s just wonderful. It enables us to do a lot more than any of us could do by ourselves.”

Echoing those sentiments, Jones added, “We think it’s rewarding to see something big get accomplished for God’s glory, for Belize and for the churches and Baptist association in Belize. In connecting churches with a common passion, we’re accomplishing more.”

Looking ahead, CBF North Carolina and Belizean Baptists plan to remain connected in both partnership and friendship. As the work on Santa Elena’s primary school comes to completion, dreams of new and possibly larger projects have emerged.

“It’s just amazing to see folks dream that way, of connecting resources that we have in North Carolina with a country that doesn’t dream on that level and doesn’t have those resources. It’s about how we can partner with them, not to duplicate what we have here in the United States, but to raise the level of their resources to a place where they can meet the needs of their people,” Melton said.