Kids club

When we first arrived in the church, we were dismayed to find that the work men were there, drilling & putting in a new door for the handicapped  (behind the large piece of wood on the left)
We know the work has to be done, but we had hoped that the men had been told not to come on this particular day...

Inspite of this, God was very gracious to us, & we had a great time. The access to the loo was a bit of a struggle, squeezing through this gap, climbing over the wires, but hey, we did it.

It also meant that we couldn't use the room downstairs for the craft, but we put a table on the stage, & everyone stayed in the same room..It worked well!

As you can see, we did silly things like get the kids to be "mummies" which they found very amusing. (Egypt) Played silly games with bananas & coconuts!  & Hannah taught them the song "heads, shoulders knees & toes" which they all sang manfully in English!! Well done Hannah

For craft they started to make little sacks that go on sticks to carry over your shoulders..they aren't finished..they are very enthusiastic with paint, & so aren't dry yet! (the theme is voyage..ahh, now it makes sense!!)
I think we felt it was rather too long..we started about 14h & went on til 17h! (we'd previously been told that 1 1/2 hours is too short, wouldn't mind that, but those who said it, didn't come!!)
It takes me an hour to get home, Hannah had a bible study to go to at 18.30, & of course parents never turn up on time!

I'm going to suggest that we cut it by half an hour, even though it's already written on the invitations. No one actually looks at them cos they always ask " what time shall we come back for them?" Also I was so tired, I was in bed by 20.30! slept til 6 to say good bye to the kids & went back to sleep til 9ish! Not as young as I was..

Another problem with having it during school time, is that there is no one to help..apart from Hannah, Harreitte & me..(this week was exceptional cos we had two friends of Harriettes, who are going back to Holland on Friday so won't be here next week) everyone else is busy, working etc..Though we now have all the dates up to Christmas, we"ll have to honour those, but once a month is enough rather that twice!  Beginning & end, to give us enough time to recover & sort stuff out for the next time.

We are in a bit of a pickle even now, as I thought we were doing Joshua..we have lots of cardboard cartons at the bible book shop, to build jericho..but now it seems we're doing Jonah? So we have only two days (we're meeting on Sunday) to sort out stuff..hmm! not ideal!!

Sadly the last half an hour was marred by two kids coming in & being particularly horrible! They were taken into the hangar to play, but instead managed to damage the tent that the kids use for Lampadaire, climbed all over the stuff that's there, as they were told they had to find the snooker balls that they had thrown around, so in their eyes they had great fun, but actually ruined it for us..that's the impression I came away with, which is very sad, as actually, here you see on the kids faces that they had a great time!

I just don't know how to reach out to kids like that..sometimes you just can't .. but God sees these children & knows everthing about them & they need to know His forgiveness & salvation as much as anyone... their parents have been told not to send them again, they are banned from coming as their behaviour was intolerable.
. We really could do with a bloke just to give it a bit of authority..a fellah's presence in things like this makes all the difference.. Please pray for us, that we would have wisdom & grace, that though we the team would work well together, & that God would supply our needs!