Resurrecting design & technology, kids in drama and seeing God work

Some more blogs from youth reminiscing about P2P in July/August 2008

The week at Happy’s boarding school for disabled children in the Umlazi township was a great opportunity to uncover some skills last seen during year 9 Design and Technology! I wasn’t as bad at drilling as my mum might expect and the kids were furnished with 30 new clothes rails – a big step towards not having to live out of suitcases anymore.

We closed each day with a short bible lesson and some songs, which sone of the kids loved so much, they made me write out the words for them. I was particularly touched to be called their “song writer” by one of the girls crowding around me in wheelchairs. We were greeted positively due to fond and lasting memories of January’s P2P team at the school and if their love of the blond P2Pers this time is anything to go by, any team should have no difficulty in building on the back of our efforts!

Tom Ryder, UK

During P2P, I was part of a group that ran a holiday club at Lamontville. We were a little worried on the first morning as there were not many children, but after walking down the street and advertising to some of the local children, we soon had 25 and each day had a lot more. We ran some Sunday school lessons and played soccer with the older boys. The highlight of this week was the open day where all the children we had during the week attended, plus extra and about 8 parents. The younger children who had been doing the craft activities performed a play on the parable of the sower, which we had been practising during the week. The older children were very helpful, narrating the story both in English and Zulu.

After the play was finished, the children, without any prompting from us, spontaneously began to sing some of the songs we had been teaching them other the week, such as Father Abraham, Shine etc. We finished up the day with a great feeling! It was an awesome experience to build up relationships with the Lamontville youth and I aim to continue to do so during my time spent over here in South Africa.

Amy McClure, Australia

How God Works

We visited Dumisani's school in a rural area 45 minutes from Durban to see what work we could help out with at the school, and decided to try to build a jungle gym and some shelves in the classroom. Several weeks passed and we were a few days from heading out there to start our work, but had been so busy with P2P we hadn't had time to even think about the jungle gym, let alone sort out plans or buy anything for it. Leah was starting to remind me more and more about getting things together.

We had to drop something off at Craig and Nicky's early Wednesday morning and as we were coming out of their driveway we bumped into Mahen going to work. We stopped to chat through the car windows and the first thing he said was "I have a job for you! I have this jungle gym that the girls don't use any more - can you come and pull it down and give it to someone who needs it more than we do?"; he then took off up the road.

I just sat there and looked at Leah and we thought how amazing the timing God uses in our live is - so precise it is incredible and the results he creates are better than we could imagine!

Dan Egginton, Australia

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