Monday 29 September | Sharing the Load and Sharing Food
Monday was all about transforming the rec centre into an ocean adventure, port in a storm and ancient Ninevah. We finished the day with a fantastic feast at the oval with many families from the town.
From Seanna D’s perspective:
Today we woke up and Mr Spencer led a devotion about serving and loving one another. After he led that, we went to a place called Gwalia which was only about 15 minutes away. It was a mining town which was abandoned overnight. We visited the biggest hole in WA where we got to go to a museum to learn about the culture of Leonora and the history of it. After, we went to a ghost town where we went into abandoned houses and walked through them. We got to see how they lived back in those times with mining. Some of the houses are still occupied to this day so we couldn’t go into those. But the ones were allowed to go into was very interesting because we got to see all the preserved items that they kept.
After we left the ghost town, we went back to the rec centre where we decorated and rehearsed for the program. We finished the crafts and did whatever needed to be done before the program started. We then went back to our accommodation “the sports club” to get ready for the community dinner. After we set up chairs and sports equipment, kids started coming and we got to learn about them and their names. We went on the bus to pick up some kids from around town to see if they wanted to come. All the kids were friendly and were happy to interact. Some of them were shy but most kids were happy to play sports with us and eat dinner. Most of them were happy to talk and to have a conversation which was unexpected. We got to learn about the personality of most of the kids who are going to come to the program which is nice to know.
After all the kids left, we packed up and went back to the rec centre where we went over the basic instructions and run down for tomorrow, Day 1. We then prayed in groups and went back to the accommodation where the shower flooded and we got ready for bed.
Tuesday 30 September | The Greatest Treasure!
From Amma’s Perspective (the morning program):
We hit today off by waking up at 6am, showering and getting ready. Mr Thomson led a devotion about Jesus being the greatest treasure and that everything in our life pales in comparison to Him. Our lives should have Jesus at the centre and in everything we do, we should be loving like Jesus and we read about “The Parables of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl” in the book of Matthew.
After devotions, the bus pick up crew and breakfast club prepared the food while the bus crew picked up the kids and brought them to the breakfast club. The kids arrived and were served at the breakfast club and made their way to the rec centre to start the day’s activities.
This year’s theme focused on the story of Jonah and the Whale. The kids got registered and were given their own name tags and were split into 3 different groups. Kindy to year 2 were the jellyfish (yellow group), Year 3 to Year 5 were the sharks (blue group) and the Year 6 and up were stingrays (red group). Everyone got to meet their team leaders and did things like drawing, colouring playing with playdough, and other games.
After, Mr Taylor brought everyone together and we got to say hi to his parrot, Crispy. Then, the drama group performed a skit about 3 sailors who were tired of searching for Treasure Island for so long and finally thy came to another place and learnt about a place called Promise Island, they decided that they would give it a try.
Then, the 3 groups split into different activities which were arts and craft (painting boats), Bible small group (fun activities and a puppet show) and morning tea (all-in games). Afterwards, we had lunch and then split off into two groups, sports group and the rec centre group. The rec centre group did face painting, beading, playing with toy farm animals and chill games with the younger kids while the sports group played volleyball, soccer and football with the older kids. Later, we dropped off the kids at the rec centre to go home and get ready for the night activity.
