Holiday Club

This week was the last week before school starts back for the kids here in Cape Town. Their school year follows the calendar year, so they are beginning a new school year starting Wednesday. Because this week was the last week of "summer holiday" we held holiday clubs in each of the Living Hope areas. As usual, I worked in Red Hill this week helping out with the club there. It was such a great week! Jeremy also spent those five days working in Red Hill, during which we each had the opportunity one day to lead the bible story of that day. So, Wednesday I told the story the prodigal's son (and acted it out with the help of one of the Red Hill kids). Jeremy told the story of David and Goliath, which he and I acted out. As I'm sure you can imagine there was some serious acting skills being showcased on those days...award-winning for sure. ;)

For this week of holiday club the life-skill educators for Red Hill, Stanton and Mzo, decided to try something different. Instead of doing club in the same location in Red Hill each day, we held club each day in a different area of Red Hill. It was such a fun way to not only see and experience more of the Red Hill community, but to include more kids and be visible to more of the families and community of Red Hill for them to witness what we are doing each day. Each day we had anywhere from 50 to 75 kids, many of whom came each day to all 5 locations, but some who only came and were only able to come to the club in their area. It really was a great week of fun and games, stories and songs as well as outreach to new kids and families.

Friday, our last day of holiday club, ended up being a day with a quite a few special moments. The day started with our sighting of almost 1 dozen baboons on the road to Red Hill, one of which was sitting a top the sign reading "feeding of the baboons prohibited" while the ones beneath it sat eating food that people had thrown out of the car to them...a great photo opportunity, unfortunately the only camera we had was Mzo's camera on his cell phone. We also saw a few ostriches and a mongoose on our journey to Red Hill. Once at Red Hill, we started an intense game of soccer with the kids, which unfortunately ended for me with a rather unfortunate collision with one of the teenage boys. We both went for the same ball in the air with our heads and unfortunately neither of us ever got to the ball, rather I connected with the back of his head instead of the ball. I ended up with quite a good cut on my forehead just above my eyebrow which of course bled quite a bit, which most of the kids thought was "so cool" but some were a bit confused and concerned. However, my newly acquired head wound provided for a much more realistic enactment of David vs Goliath, me being Goliath and now having a real head wound to show as a result of the pretend stone David(Jeremy) threw at me to defeat me.

It's been a great week. January is flying by! Its hard to believe we're already half-way through the month. Next week is back to the regular schedule for us, and the Music Academy will start back the end of next week, which is very exciting.It will be great to be back with those kids.

Hope everyone is doing and enduring the crazy cold front moving across the States that we keep reading about. Stay warm!

PEACE