One of the volunteers, Judy, arrived on Monday & helped make up stationery packs from the donations left by ODFL. On Tuesday she joined us shopping for hygiene pack items and for a visit to the bird park in Boksburg. There was a beautiful mottled peacock, and we found one of the two geocaches hidden there. The STACK Class resumed in the afternoon, with about 18 kids attending. We did literacy exercises with the older group, and played a game where you have to try stack cylinders on top of the flat side of a crescent shaped block. Armetta continued to experiment with stacking the cylinders - using various different arrangements of the sizes to see which worked better - long after the others had tired of the game. The other four volunteers, Deb, Jeanne, Adam & William arrived Tuesday evening, just in time for Bible Class at the Adieu Center.
The group split up on Wednesday, with the women going to the sister's class at Birgit's home and the men visiting Thembi Nkosi special needs school, where they played chess with the students. Jeanne led the sister's class, connecting the Jewish feasts to the different stages of pregnancy. I had the girls with me. Zanté managed to occupy herself beautifully with Dieter's train set, but Lexi has solidly entered the terrible two phase. She eventually got fed up with my attempts at entertaining her quietly, took my iPad and hid behind a chair. Win! The afternoon passed in a frenzy of preparation for Bible lessons to be presented at preschools the next day, as well as for Deb's workshop on Brain Buttons. Leona also took the P2P'ers on a tour of Tembisa. Zanté and I made up resource packs for the preschool teachers, which turned out to be a great math lesson. Firstly I set out the same number of chairs as we needed packs. Then she was tasked with placing a certain number of each item on each chair, e.g. Two sets of chalk, or 5 red pens, or 10 pencils, and so on. She was confident up to number 5. She also really impressed me by being able to appreciate how pretty the pencils were (and they really were!) without wanting them for herself. I am grateful that our work has encouraged my children to be generous.
I assisted Deb during her workshop at the Aphiwe Good News Centre on Thursday, which was well attended and very interactive. Michael chauffeured the others to and from the various preschools where they had a grand time presenting the bible lessons and delivering the resource packs. In the afternoon the men went to pick up a furniture donation, and the sisters helped make up the hygiene packs for the KINOS group. Zanté helped by placing the soap in the packets. The rest of the afternoon was spent preparing for the Women at the Well retreat. In fact I was still completing my gifts for the sisters while the girls were taking their bath that evening!
We spent most of Friday morning waiting on sisters who arrived over an hour late before leaving for the Drakensberg. The first half of the trip was a nightmare - I was fighting a monstrous wind which did its best to rip the steering wheel from my hands and shove the car off the road. We also took a detour which made the trip much longer. I was very relieved when we stopped at a rest stop for lunch. A God moment happened when we got back on the road - my prayers were answered and the wind died down completely, which made my first time traversing that mountain pass a breeze. There was another nerve-racking stretch of dirt road with the sun blinding us from the front, but by God's grace we arrived without incident.
The Women's ReTREAT was an incredibly uplifting experience, with thought provoking studies, fulfilling fellowship and lots of late-night laughter! On the Saturday we took a mini-roadtrip into the Central Berg, which many of the sisters attending had never seen before. They were blown away by the majesty of the mountain peaks. I was once again struck by the peace that those steadfast peaks instilled in me in even such a short time. While chatting to the owner of the B&B I learned that there is in fact a Montessori school in Winterton, and also that houses are few and expensive due to a shortage of developable land. So much for that idea! We returned both exhausted and yet somehow incredibly energized on Sunday evening. The group met for a short meeting where we discussed the schedule for the week ahead.
On Monday we undertook an upgrade of "World of Saints" preschool. The GPS took us on a bit of a detour but once we found it we quickly got stuck in, starting with painting a dark bottom border in the toddler classroom and a new base coat on the perimeter wall. We also repainted the preschool classroom. The toddler class then got murals - flowers and insects created from geometric shapes - that can be used to teach shapes, colours, numbers, position, size and emotions. On the back of the door we painted a boy holding 12 balloons which can be used as a birthday chart. Michael put up a few shelves and fixed the shelves they already had. Adam designed an African scene for the outside wall which had a lion lying in the grass underneath the school name. It turned out very well and now the first impression of the preschool is much more exciting! We left at sunset after receiving a lovely handmade thank you card from the principal. At the very last minute we fortunately remembered to give her the bag of resources we had collected for her too!
The group once again split up to present bible lessons at preschools on Tuesday morning while Jeanne visited with a local clinic and got roped into examining pregnant ladies right away! In the afternoon the STACK PROJECT Class was focused on "construction". The older group received a set of instructions on folding paper planes, which unfortunately turned out to be much too complex and the folds much too intricate for them to successfully fold. They then went back to folding more basic planes from memory and had a grand time competing against each other with regards to their planes flight capabilities. The younger group learned about the "tower of Babel" and built various towers by stacking plastic cups in different ways. They then each made a double pinwheel and ran and spun around to make the pinwheel turn! We all enjoyed dinner at Mickey and Karen Scheepers' home before having Bible Class in the dark thanks to loadshedding. This didn't darken the mood though, with everyone chatting until past 10! The girls each fell asleep on a parents' lap and were no trouble at all.
The group spent Wednesday at the Aphiwe Good News Center, leading a women's bible class as well as GOGO GYM. They also sorted out all of the cupboards at the center and the BEC. In the evening they visited us for supper. Michael had prepared a roast leg of lamb, delicious!
On Thursday Jeanne taught a workshop on ante-natal care and the development of the child in the first year of life while the rest joined us at the preschool where we were scheduled to perform a puppet show. The show was about Joshua and the walls of Jericho, after which the p2p'ers reinforced the story by having each child make a "trumpet" by covering a toilet paper tube with tin foil, and then reenacting the marching around Jericho and walls falling down part with them. They all had great fun, and I don't think the poor teacher enjoyed much silence for the rest of the day!
In the afternoon we visited Lory Park Zoo, which we had all to ourselves since it was a weekday! The p2p'ers enjoyed playing with baby hyenas and lion cubs, and Michael played with a young caracal, which is one of his favorite cats! The zoo attendant then gave us a special treat by bringing out a white-faced owl, which is tiny, for the girls to stroke and even have perch on their arms. They loved it and even the adults enjoyed the interaction with the beautiful bird. As usual the rest of the animals were a delight to see too. The P2P group treated us to a dinner at Mimmo's that night.
Lucas and Leona took the P2P group on a safari to the Pilanesberg Nature Reserve on Friday. They had an incredibly blessed day with amazing sightings - they even had a leopard cross the road for them! The rest of us were busy prepping for the Youth Gathering, buying all the food and so on.
We were all up early on Saturday, travel arrangements were somewhat complex with us having youth from all over Gauteng needing us to transport them to the camp venue. Thankfully, and prayerfully, we managed not to forget any of them, but did manage to forget a whole lot of other things! Fortunately the venue was close enough for one of us to quickly return and collect said items.
The Youth Gathering itself was a really blessed time away from worldly cares. I felt quite spoilt to have two spiritual weekends in row, even though I spent most of the Youth Gathering caring for and entertaining my daughters. I did manage to partake in every praise session which was wonderfully uplifting! The feedback from the youth regarding their study sessions (themed "Agents for Christ") was that it was inspiring and life-changing, and everyone was very sad when we had to say our good-byes. We kept them busy with plenty of outdoor and indoor games throughout the three days, the most fun was when we played several of the "Minute to Win It" game show games. Definitely recommend them for group activities! We handed out the hygiene packs we had made the previous week as we loaded youth into cars, but as we didn't have any for the youth from other ecclesias we tried not to make it too big of a deal. Those that received were very grateful and excited about them, even though Junior insists that he will never need a razor!
During the weekend we discovered that Jeanne had booked her flight for the wrong date - a whole week later. She and Deb then accompanied Michael to the airport when he dropped off Judy, to try and convince the airline to let Jeanne be on the same flight as Deb. They had to jump through some hoops and weren't assured of the fact until the very last moment, but in the end she did manage to get the same flight.
When we returned home Monday evening, exhausted from having almost no sleep the entire weekend, Lexi tripped while walking backward and hurt her arm. At first we simply put tiger balm and a bandage on it, but as the evening progressed and I did some research we decided it would be best to take her for x-rays. Knowing that we were in for a lengthy process at the hospital we dropped Zanté off at my parents. Several hours, rands, and lots of tears (hers and mine) later we discovered that she had a greenstick fracture on her radius, near her wrist. We returned home after midnight with her fast asleep and her arm in a little cast.
On their last day here, Tuesday, the men visited the school for mentally handicapped children once again, while Deb and Jeanne were asked to observe two children at one of the preschools, as the principal suspected they had autism. One of them does in fact fall on the autism spectrum, although he is not a severe case. The other is simply not responding well to the principals method of discipline, and they discussed other methods with her. They then visited a local flea market to pick up some curios to take back home.
Adam was staying on one day longer and he volunteered to lead the older group of students at the STACK CLASS in the afternoon. He taught them about different types of angles and the theory of Pythagoras. He managed to make it very practical and had them hanging onto his every word. Due to the drama with Lexi I was too exhausted to think of something fun to do with the younger group, and so I grabbed a box of what looked like construction toys that the ODFL group had donated and tipped it out. Turned out to be a construction set involving cogs, which ended up being a fantastic activity, with lots of learning possibilities. Definitely a God Moment!
The next morning Michael and Adam went to the recycling center to deliver the bread tags the group had collected and collect the first 4 wheelchairs! A fittingly exciting end to a fantastic two weeks!
