Mon 2 March 2015 - Sun 8 March 2015

Well we started off with one of those 'everything goes wrong' days. We had agreed to meet my parents at the Amway shopping Center and then go for brunch at a small cafe near there. On the way to Amway we get stuck in a roadblock- induced traffic jam. We then followed my parents to a different cafe due to a miscommunication - which was closed. Then back to the cafe I had originally wanted to go to - closed down, completely gone! Finally decided to go to Dros as we were running tight on time with Mike needing to go to college. I had a glass of wine there which made me soooo tired for the rest of the afternoon! 

On Tuesday Mike collected 20 odd pc's from a school, which he now has to fix up and distribute. Our house has way too many pc's now! Most of the KINOS kids and two teachers have already ordered them though so shouldn't be for too long. At homework club we played a bunch of games focussing on mathematic concepts - rummicub, dominoes, battleships and had playdough as a sensorial activity for the younger ones. The afternoon went really well, with us managing to coordinate the small groups playing different games quite well. Having Mike there full time hands on makes a big difference! 

On wednesday I was home with the girls all day - a rare occurrence! It was a lovely slow day full of the kinds of stuff toddlers do! 

Thursday was the epic garage sorting day! At first Ded wasn't very keen on us clearing out all the random stuff he has hoarded over the last two years but once we did, and threw away a trailer and bakkieload of useless stuff there is now lots of space for him to start hoarding the next two years worth of junk. Also the passage to the new bathroom is no longer a safety hazard so the KINOS kids can walk through without fear! 

On Friday we took the KMP KINOS kids shopping for school uniforms. We had 14 kids between Mike, Kam and myself. The tricky part was that they each had only R500 to spend so they had to prioritize their needs accordingly - which they found really hard to do! It was a great lesson in being content with a no-name brand bag so that you could also afford shoes! The staff at Boundary Silk were surprisingly patient and helpful which was a real God-Moment. Each child managed to buy at least three items which is that much less that their parents need to buy. 

Bible Club went really well with myself really enjoying the younger class - we made peg "Isaacs" after learning about God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Michael unfortunately had to be really stern with the older boys who were being destructive and taking the stationery outside. 

The meeting went surprisingly smoothly too - i just kept telling the kids to go play outside with the playdough and the books and managed to hear quite a lot of the very educational exhortation re the sacrifices in Leviticus. Liezl taught the youngest Sunday School class about the walls of Jericho and had them make a tower of blocks fall down which was great fun. We then had Leone and Lira visit with us for the afternoon while the Get Going meeting was on. Despite their obvious lack of discipline the afternoon went well and all the kids enjoyed playing together very much! 

Sat 14 Feb 2015 - Sun 22 Feb 2015

I have decided to rather work Sunday to Sunday as that is how most of our programs run. Also I constantly forget to write on Fridays! 

I guess what I really need to get on paper and off my chest is the fact that for the last month Sundays have been absolutely awful for me. Three out of the four have caused me emotional breakdowns when we get home. Some of it was the vast number of new kids suddenly attending and not knowing what/where/when they're allowed to do what, but this last Sunday it is Leone and Lira in the mother's room, causing chaos with my daughters and constantly nagging me for stuff, tea, yoghurt, banana's... Also Nosipho left baby Tariro with me so suddenly I am the only adult with 5 kids - all wanting my attention, and even my girls acting out which they don't usually do. Another factor is that I had become accustomed to my daughters occupying themselves so that I could actually feel part of the service and so that was my expectation for today, which of course did not happen. I know I could tell their mom that they are her problem but I am too softhearted, wanting her to rather enjoy and learn from the service. Murphy's law played a part in that we had a visiting speaker who just went on and on and on... 

The only good part about today was that Catherine got baptized. 

Zante has been ill all week and really bad Thursday - Saturday. She has a low fever, earache and constipation, and really struggles to sleep. Needless to say, that hasn't helped matters either. 

At Bible Club we made Valentine's Cards with the focus on how much God loves us, and that is why we should also love others. My daughters and Leone and Lira were there and none of them wanted to cooperate. Kam was also there so fortunately he could help Mike with the older group. The second Saturday Mike and I were supposed to go to a SAMA meeting but stayed home with Zante being so ill.

Either way there was no Bible Club.

On Monday we took the four girls to the bunny park. Because we could only fetch Leone and Lira after 10 we arrived after the animals had been fed, and so they had no interest at all in us. The kids still enjoyed the play equipment and the walk though. Mike then had to go to college and the girls and I played outside most of the day. My mom, Llewellyn and Phoebe came by for a coffee which broke the afternoon nicely. 

Homework Club took an exciting turn for Cameron when he volunteered for Michael's magic trick which ended in him being covered in water! I took cloud dough for the younger ones and my girls and Leone and Lira, Martin and Cherish and Mikayla really enjoyed it for about an hour, after which fortunately Liezl fetched the four girls to bake a cake for Lira's birthday the next day. Martin and Cherish and then Mikayla continued to play for the rest of the afternoon. The older group played hangman and then did language based exercises in books. Armetta surprised me by being able to read quite well for her age so I will need to give her more challenging work in future. 

At the creche course we started to wonder whether anyone was going to return as there was no one there until 2:10pm, even though we are supposed to start at 2! They did all eventually arrive, and hopefully we can start building some momentum now. The next few weeks are the more fun ones! 

On Saturday afternoon Zante seemed a bit better so we went to Jolene's for Ronan's 5th birthday gathering.

After that we had a 'cuzzie-get-together' at the Viljoen's. We all made sushi again, and it was delicious! Leon brought his brother, Louwrens, along and the two of them were serenading us with songs they had written themselves. They are both very talented! 

Sat 7 Feb 2015 - Fri 13 Feb 2015

Mike and I went separate ways on Saturday - Mike to Bible Club and myself to a SAMA regional meeting. I was incredibly nervous about going and there being a bunch of strangers but I ended up really enjoying my time there. We each had to take a food related practical life exercise to demonstrate and I took a cheese slicer and then also showed everyone how to slice cheese with cookie cutters. Not many of the others brought anything so I'm glad I did! It was great meeting Shan again and also several other older teachers - one opened her school when I was only a year old! As an added treat we all learned to make our own sushi and it was delicious!

Sunday was again a very stressful day. 4 new kids arrived, plus all of the ones that were there before, and the youngest class had 12 kids attending. Although my mom presented the class I was helping her and afterward it just felt like everyone was asking things of me at once. We then also went to the Congolese in the afternoon where they ended up arguing after the meeting about that Patrick and Nyota were planning to poison Paderi. I did however take a worksheet for the kids to do while the meeting was going so that is one step in the right direction! Another disappointment was confirming that Nyota was indeed pregnant again - how irresponsible! 

Michael spent most of Monday working on Llewellyn's new car, my parents came to our home as we have internet and they don't, and helped me do some cleaning. 

Homework Club was quite chaotic as the Hill family joined us. We made Valentine's cards using toilet rolls shaped into hearts as stamps. There were several glitches - one being the unexpected extra attendees and the other being that they stamped thick blobs and so the paint didn't dry fast enough for us to glue their message to the back. Next time I will leave the painting part till last. The kids all seemed to enjoy it though, even Lexi did really well, and didn't eat any paint! 

It was my responsibility to present the study at sister's class this week. I looked at the character "archippus" in Colossians. He had not yet fulfilled his ministry from God and Paul was calling him out for it. Class was at sister Rene's home and her carer also attended the class. 

The creche course has finally started! We had 11 ladies and 1 gentleman attend at the Tswelopele Good News Center. It felt really strange to be presenting again after such a long break but went smoothly enough. One of the attendees is Erika, a mother that my gran has gotten involved with at MES. Things have progressed as such that she, her husband and two daughters (Leone,6, and Lira, 4) are going to be living in the caravan at Adieu for the next two months. 

The Bible Class at Adieu was really interesting, we studied the theme of whether dead people can "curse" you (eg Tokolosh, ghosts, zombies). It was very informative and Leon and Erika also seemed very interested. 

The involvement with such a family is quite new to me, and it will be interesting, if nothing else, to see how it all turns out. Zante seems to enjoy playing with them, and they are quite attached to me too. 

Sat 30 Jan 2015 - Fri 6 Feb 2015

This week at Saturday Bible Club we started following a "Bible Hero's" series that I found on a website called "Jesus without Language". Michael shared the lesson on 

the Apostle Philip who teaches us to invite people to come to Jesus. After that we split the kids into a younger and older group for the craft - we had already precut the younger group's craft for them. This system worked really well and I look forward to trying it with Zante and Lexi there too.

Sunday. Oh man what a day. Hendri sat with the girls which meant I could be in the meeting room and I really enjoyed that and my dad's message re the name of God. However during teatime 8 new kids arrived for Sunday School, 11 and younger. One of the boys, Abraham (5yr old), was there with his father, Peter. I welcomed them, showed them where to go and offered refreshments, then asked Peter whether he wanted to stay with his son or attend the adult's bible study class which Mike was leading. He said he would stay with Abraham because he was, and I quote, "naughty". When the time came to start Sunday School we gathered the children inside but had to ask Peter to fetch Abraham out of the rubble filled empty swimming pool as he refused to listen to us. When we broke up into classes I had to run around collecting extra stationery for the classes with so many extra kids, while also trying to keep an eye on Lexi and prevent her from being a distraction. There were about 12 kids in the youngest class which Liezl handled really well. We quickly realized that there was something seriously "off" about Abraham as he could not even colour and was very aggressive toward his dad. When the class was over he promptly tipped out all of the stationery onto the floor. In the midst of trying to jot down the new attendees' names, change a dirty diaper, and prevent the horde of preschoolers injuring themselves and/or Zante on the jungle gym I noticed Sipho in tears. He is in the "middle" class and the older class had shooed him out of their classroom even though they were done with their lesson and watching funny videos on youtube. I did my best to reassure and console him and then went in to admonish the teens, when I heard Liezl's voice raised in concern in the swimming pool area. Worried that it might be one of my kids I went to check and found her and young Tania trying to stop Abraham from throwing rocks at the dogs. Liezl then asked him and some of the others to go play in the front yard. The others quickly ran off but we had to "herd" Abraham in the right direction. Liezl eventually took him by the arm and walked with him to where we could see Peter sitting talking to Bro Itayi. She told Abraham to go to his dad. He took three steps away from her, picked up a big clod of earth and threw it at her, hitting her on the back of her head as she managed to turn away. I then ran to him, took him by the arm and marched him to his dad, angrily telling Peter what had happened and that such behavior was not welcome at the church. Then, and only then, he starts explaining that Abraham has a brain tumor and is severely mentally and socially delayed. I then told him that he needed to be with Abraham at all times then and make sure he didn't hurt anyone or thing. This whole episode upset me to such an extent that I was in physical stress-induced pain the rest of the day, and ended up crying in bed that night. I do not regret my actions so much as I am furious with Peter for not clearly explaining Abraham's situation to me right at the start. I certainly believe the day would have turned out very differently if he had. 

On Monday the guys went fishing and Zante along with them. She absolutely loves it! Lexi and I enjoyed our morning together and then went to the dam in the afternoon, which was lovely, lush green grass and not another soul (except the security guard) in sight. Sadly the day ended with Hendri and Mike having to rush to the aid of my parents when the Mahindra developed trouble on their way to Nelspruit. They then had to tow it back so we slept over at Adieu Monday night. 

On Tuesday it dawned on me that I had a majority of preteen boys at Homework Club, but I was still doing a lot of 'girly' crafts with them. Pinterest to the rescue - found some simple catapults made from popsicle sticks and rubber bands. God moment: I had exactly the right amount of popsicle sticks for the amount of kids that showed up! The younger kids, including Zante and Lexi, completed several worksheets. After making their catapults the boys came inside to test them in a game that we had created by sticking targets to the floor. The further the target the higher the value. After the first round they realized that some of the catapults performed much better than others. We encouraged them to consider in what way they differed and then adjust their's accordingly before the next round of 'shooting'. The best kind of learning is when you think you're just having fun! Everyone had a blast - not sure what we're gonna do next week now that we've set such a high standard!

We are still taking the girls swimming several times a week and they are becoming more and more confident in the water, floating on their backs and swimming backwards too. 

I finally found a shelf wide enough for my math rods, and after an epic traffic-delayed journey and lots of rearranging the classroom is now pretty much full! Zante finds the math rods past 4 quite a challenge and tries several times a day. Lexi is enjoying building towers out of the knobless cylinders. 

On Friday while Michael went to present the Bible class at Aphiwe Zante and I played 'shop', with items costing either 1, 2, 3 or 4 coins. At first she struggled to count out only 4 coins but after about an hour of playing she managed great!

Sat 24 Jan - Fri 30 Jan 2015

Still a 'quieter' week, with the creche course not yet running. I am however finalizing a lot of the pre-course admin work as more ladies register. So far I have 17 ladies registered for this course. 

We had a ton of fun at Bible Club, last week I mentioned that we 'might' bring water balloons, but that they did NOT need to wear swimming costumes. So of course they all arrive in their swimming costumes, while we have no water-including activities at all planned. We had planned for it to be a games day and so left the girls in their grandfather and aunt's care - which turned out to be a very wise decision as 45 kids running and playing in a small space can seem chaotic, is loud and potentially dangerous to toddlers. We opened with a few songs then played the always popular "groups" game (a few times) and split them into two circles for a game of "fruit basket". We adapted the fruit basket game by having either myself or Michael shout out characteristics/colors according to which the kids then had to find new chairs as they are too young to think of such criteria themselves. After a juice break we asked them to congregate outside and Michael turned on the hose. Our plan was to play "poisonball" and simply intermittently spray them with the hose but they just jumped in front of the hose and started dancing and playing in the spray! They were having so much fun and were so eager to get wet that we didn't even start any structured game. So much fun! 

Sunday was pretty epic, no Sunday School due to it being our AGM. It was the last Sunday of the month which meant it was a "praise and worship" Sunday too. A lot of the Aphiwe youth join us for these Sundays so our "new" hall was choc-a-block full. I was quite thankful to be in the mother's room, where Zante was delighted at being able to hold little 3-month-old Tariro for ever such a long time! I then held and rocked him to sleep which I haven't ever done for a child not my own! It was great! The praise session was fantastically uplifting and the AGM nothing unusual. I managed to miss almost an hour (and apparently all the excitement)  by having to put Lexi down for her nap. 

Homework Club ran more smoothly this week - mostly due to it being a "computers" week. However I also set up a waterpaint activity for Cherish, Mikayla and my girls. Cherish and Mikayla painted numbers 1 - 10 with corresponding amounts of objects underneath and Zante and Lexi just painted for fun. It is interesting that Zante paints an entire picture all in one color while Lexi uses many different colors. Later the four of them played on the jungle gym and I realized that Cherish, now a pre-grader, was only as old as Lexi when we first met her! No wonder these kids are so dear to us!

Wednesday dawned cold and rainy and we should have known better but my mom convinced us to still take the girls along to sister's class, as the sister whose home it was at has a heated pool. Bad idea. The girls were not able to keep themselves occupied, even though I took snacks and activities along. So I heard none of the class, and spent tea-time chasing after Lexi who was chasing after their pet rabbit, all around said pool. It had also started to rain so we ended up not even swimming. 

On Thursday Michael was away all day going to fetch Happy from the boarding school, and I went shopping for clothes for the girls with his mom. This was a first but the day ended up being quite enjoyable, even the girls were on their best behavior despite the many stops and even a half-hour wait while a salesman tried to convince her to buy beauty products. When I dropped her off the girls were desperate to visit a while (they get to watch tv there) so I left them there and enjoyed a blissfully silent three hours home alone. It's incredible how much one gets done without two toddlers around! I discovered a really useful if sometimes slightly doctrinally "off" website for sunday school, or in our case Bible Club, lessons, namely Jesus Without Language. We will be following her "Bible Heroes" series and see how it goes! 

As I write this we are on our way to Bible Class at the Aphiwe Center. My mom has been kind enough to watch the girls so that Michael and I can both attend!

Sat 17 Jan 2015 - Fri 23 Jan 2015

A lot of our projects started up again this week - Saturday Bible Club, Sunday school, Homework Club - amidst a sudden flurry of maintenance work. We decided to try and include the girls in as many of our projects as possible this year (last year they were babysat a lot) as Lexi is almost two and a lot more capable and independent. 

Bible Club went okay with them both, they love singing with the kids and fortunately we had a volunteer (Eloise) with us to help with the activity (a craft on this Saturday) while I helped my girls. I can see that we will have to adapt our way of working if we don't have extra hands available though. Perhaps even plan for two activities - one much simpler than the other for the preschoolers and our two. I feel like that could work because there are about 15 under 6's that attend and their siblings have to help them with the activities. 

It was wonderful seeing all the Kingdom Kids at Sunday School on Sunday again. All of our regular kids as well as two sisters that hadn't been attending for most of last year were there, and one of the youths brought along his younger brother and sister which boosted our preschool class to 6 even though there were 3 others absent. I taught the story of Moses being hidden in the basket, and we "sewed" paper plate halves together using pipe cleaners to create a basket for the baby Moses which they colored. For the rest of the week Zante has been calling all of her baby dolls "Moses" and hiding them in various places. 

Homework Club was perhaps the hardest when it came to including the girls. We first made up 40 food parcels which was an activity that they could be a part of and really enjoyed, but after that we played a board game for which there were already too many players, all very energetic, loud, preteen boys. Again we were very fortunate to have Eloise assist with regulating the game, which requires full time vigilance as they are forever forgetting whose turn it is or accusing each other of cheating, or just being silly in general. Even so they absolutely love playing and board games are really good for teaching social skills as well as developing their critical thinking and planning skills. However during this time Zante and Lexi needed to be entertained too. Zante I could occupy with the many puzzles and matching games we have on hand but eventually I did take Lexi over to my sister Liezl's as she was not enjoying herself at all. Here again we need to change up the way we run Homework Club and include more toddler friendly activities if we want to include both girls on a regular basis. 

Since the Creche Courses haven't yet started for this year we had Thursday available and the team decided to use the day to both revamp our church meeting room as well as sort the knitted squares we receive from the States into piles of 30 - which is the amount necessary to make up one blanket. The elderly ladies (Gogos) that attend sister's classes join the squares together and then donate the blankets to children that need them. We had several huge bags full of these squares which we eventually just dumped out onto a carpet and then first made piles of similar stitch type, then sorted those into piles of similar sizes, and then made packs of 30 mostly complimentary colors. The girls loved this mountain of softness! After six hours of sorting we managed to have only one big bag of squares left over, but just couldn't any more. That night I saw different stitch patterns every time I tried to close my eyes! 

While us ladies were tackling this mammoth task the men did a fantastic job repainting the church meeting room, with an accentuating golden strip along the walls which really livens up the room. They also fixed the sliding door and put skirting along the wall, and Liezl plans to paint a bible verse along the golden strip. Of course Lexi managed to walk through the paint at least once, and Zante insisted on helping her dad fill up the holes in the wall and then complained bitterly because the polyfilla didn't come off her hands very easily!