African Paradis

Shortly after we returned from the South Coast trip we reloaded up the vans this time with 34 people and made ready to depart for Durban which is a city on the East coast of South Africa (about 6 hrs away from Johannesburg where I live) We were going there to help run 2 separate Holiday Bible Clubs (HBC) aka Vacation Bible School (VBS) as well as teach the youth of those churches the importance of evangelism and reading the Bible everyday. We spent the first night at a local church were we helped with the youth group and had a huge bonfire were students shared about how previous SMASH trips had impacted their lives. This was after the fire had been burning for quite a while My team went to a Zulu speaking church called Egukanyeni and we had nearly 200 kids each day of HBC. I worked with one of the youths from the church at running the games. In the afternoons we played soccer for a bit then had training sessions with them to teach them how to study God's Word and how imp...

South Africa has a holiday called "Youth Day" and a pastor on the southern coast of South Africa (about 9hrs from my residence) decided to run a camp during this long weekend and needed our help. We happily agreed and had a van of 12 people trekking across the highways towards the south coast. The challenging part of this trip for me was that we went to a rural area where English is not as widely spoken. Also we were ministering to a area where camp mean many meetings and no games. Whereas camp means to WOL people many games. Spin your head on the bat relay race Many in South Africa tell me that flannel is for wearing to bed; not for wearing in public. Yet when they are cold the are willing to compromise!  So inorder to not scare anyone away we only played about 2 hours worth of games (plus a soccer tournament), had many meetings, and brought along quite a few Zulu speakers. The woman in the center insisted that she was my mom.  We...

One of the best and worst things about being a missionary intern (at least in South Africa) is the waves. Now I am not speaking about literal waves in the ocean but rather the waves of work and ministry. Some weeks we are literally gone everyday from 6am-3:30pm and have preparations for the next days after that. Other weeks we are on trips and are actually never home because we are  teaching screaming children, playing soccer in ankle deep muddy clay, sitting in a van for 9 hours, or swatting mosquitoes that could be carrying malaria .  Those are the best times. Other weeks we sometimes do work in the office, and spend time yearning for something more exciting to do. Those days/weeks make me want to pull out my eyelashes. And yet this time is necessary as we rest from the intense trips and take care of the administrative side of things as well as assist in the local church ministries that we have. We had about a month of this peaceful " rest" before the storm of ...

This May we had our 2nd annual Oasis Camp for young adults. Often churches plan many events for kids, teens and families but neglect the young adult age group. So last year we had our first camp for them and it was a hit. The whole group We wanted to make a camp that appealed to young adults instead of teens so rather than pack the the schedule full of games and meetings we had lots of free time and a few loosely organized activities. On a hill for a Quiet Time hike   Soccer The fellowship and chill time was great. We look forward to this September when we will have another young adults camp where we will be tent camping!

As you may have gathered from my previous posts one of my main jobs here in South Africa is to think of and run games at our many camps that we have around the year. However many times kids that come to a camp in March also come to another camp is July so occasional they have to play the same games over and over. That is boring Camps should not be boring so I strive to come up with as many new games as I can, but it is not enough. I would like your help. If you have any games that you think are super and you play them with Kids Your Youth Group Friends Teens Camp Or wherever! Please let me know by commenting or sending me a message on Facebook. It does not matter if you need certain supplies, if it is for only 5 people to play or if you need over 100 people. We need all types of games and if you have any ideas at all please don't be greedy! Share them with me!

This past Monday-Wednesday we had a short but intensified camp called "Battlezone" there was about 70 campers there. The purpose of Battlezone is to train the kids who are regular church goers to deepen their relationship with Christ so that they can become better leaders in their youth groups and to help them to stay faithful to what they have learned from the Bible.  The first day that we were there we had our first Born Again to a Living Hope  performance! The performance went well and although no one accepted Christ as their savior that we know of it was good to actually have an audience and to figure out where our weak points are so that we can improve on them before we preform in schools. The teaching was targeting relationships and included topics such as dealing with unsaved friends, Christian friends, and dating. It was taught by Word of Life Missionaries Brad and Mike.  Discussing the lesson Discussion time after a seminar My primary ta...

For the final day at camp we finished off with a skit called "Jesus and Me" which reminded the kids that they need to have God in every part of their lives and that they cannot just follow Him when it is convient for them.  We then had a final contest where the teams went around eating from a tart that did not set properly. After the winning team had been revealed (The Blue Mambas) we said good bye to the campers and helped them load away. mmmmmmm The whole group of campers and staff We played Apples to Apples as we waited for their transport Although the campers were gone, our staff was still around and we enjoyed some quiet fellowship on the beach for a day and a half before we also left.  Before we had our staff meeting there were mice to be killed in one of the houses  The mosquitoes preferred certain people over others All of those dot looking things are crabs The infamous Blue Bottle jellyfish We stopped at a market on the...