I see that we have had lots of people looking at our blog. It's a shame we can't see who they are or where they all come from.  However, I'm pretty certain that some will be from Spain, so a big 'Hola' to Eva's family in Marin, whenever you have a chance to have a look here!


I am am really looking forward to meeting the animal costumes! Does anyone have another parrot costume we could have so there is a pair to go on the Ark?


We have a few more fund raising events still to come and all the money from these will be going to buy resources either here for us to take to Siyabuswa or to buy when we are there.
They are as follows:


Sunday 10th June:Cake stall at East Reading Festival in Palmer Park


Saturday 23rd June: Barn Dance at Park URC - tickets are available from any of the team members. If you are able to, please come and support us and have a great family evening out.


Saturday 7th July: Craft Stall at Chorlton Park Primary School, Manchester - this is where Eva works and where 3 of our Team A attended school before moving to Reading. The staff there have all been very supportive of our project and we are very grateful to them.


Sunday 15th July: Family Fun Afternoon at Park URC - more info to follow. Contact one of the team if you are interested.


Preparations for the Church Community Project are now in full swing. 
There is an enormous list of things we could do whilst we are in Siyabuswa.
Please pray for us whilst we decide which of these we can do to the best of our abilities and which will have the most positive and lasting impact.


God bless, Suzy x

Animal Costumes for Siyabuswa

I was wondering if any of the team or our supporters have any animal costumes, or suitable clothes for Bible stories they wish to donate? So far we have 4 sheep, a star and a parrot. Please let me know if you can donate?

The idea is that we might be able to take over costumes to help tell Bible stories such as the birth of Jesus, Noah's Ark, The Lost Sheep...

Thank you. 
Jocey

Hello again, 
time for some colour seeing as it's been very dull and grey outside these last few weeks!


During our Orientation Weekend, we sang 'Jesus, all for Jesus' (by Robin Mark) and I couldn't help thinking 'this is our song'.
Perhaps it was just my imagination, but our singing seemed to come together and we were really meaning it.   Then we sang it again this last Sunday at Park URC and I was reminded of that sense of deep prayerfulness, so I decided I would share it with you here.
The words in the second verse, are our prayer for this Church Community Project.


Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.


All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into Your hands.
All of my ambitions, hopes and plans
I surrender these into Your hands. 


For it's only in Your will that I am free,
Jesus, all for Jesus,
All I am and have and ever hope to be.


All our ambitions, hopes and plans we surrender into God's hands, so that as we go representing our communities here in Reading, Rugby and Manchester, we will be able to share God's love in the community of Siyabuswa.
May our God of Sun, Rain and Rainbows continue to bless us in our plans and preparations.


Suzy

Photos of Siyabuswa

We've been looking round online and Carrie found that there is a good selection photos on the website of a Basingstoke Primary School:

http://picasaweb.google.com/113155423295902179713?authkey=Gv1sRgCKyDirvn5ciwrQE

The link is that the teacher who took the photos is Neil and Hilary's son.

Rob

Saturday's Sermuncle

Great evening organised by Helen, a mix of Call My Bluff and Would I lie to you? and Balderdash  -  which introduced us to the world of words such as:
Sermuncle - A short sermon by a priest
Horgorble - To wander about aimlessly
Dunky - An alternatively sad and happy musical score
Baronduki - The Siberian squirrel (as featured on Ice Age, the movie).
I think Baronduki was my favourite, not just for the real definition but for Rod's description of the various cross breeds, which led eventually to the cross between a cow and a donkey (something to look out for in South Africa, maybe).

Anyway, the secret of a good sermuncle is to keep it short - so well done teams, well done audience - you were as baffled as us! And well done Helen and Tony and all the great cake bakers - I don't think we'll be hungry when we are away, not with such excellent cooks/chefs!

Reflections on the Orientation Weekend - from a B Team member!

We had an incredible weekend at Immanuel Church, and it was fantastic for the B Team to make so much progress with the thoughts and planning for what we will actually be doing in Siyabuswa. I'm sure we all felt God so close at hand guiding us in what we were saying, helping us to listen and contribute, leading us to insightful comments and ideas.
One thing that became clear to me was how much prayer support we are receiving, but also how much we will continue to need in our preparation, and for our actual time in South Africa. Many thanks to all who are supporting us prayerfully. Please can I be bold and ask you to continue to pray for us? 
Just wanted to add another vote of thanks to our resident photographers for their impressive photos! I really do think we should have a caption competition for photo 120 though!!!
God bless you all.

Well... after a packed few days we are back in Reading after the orientation weekend.  I thought that I would share some of the things that we have been up to during our time away together.

We split into our two groups, youth and adult or Team A and Team B if we want to be politically correct!  I am part of Team B and so will share everything we got up to!

On Friday, we all arrived at Immanuel Church in Bournemouth.  After a well earned cup of tea and dinner we sat down to team build.  You may think we all know each other, but you would be amazed at how much you can learn about people if you just take a little more time to listen!  We paired up with somebody and had some time to learn about them.  We then had to feed this back to the group. So many new things were discovered.  The moral of the exercise was learnt!  After more exercises and discussion the whole team came back together from their two different groups to share in worship and prayer time together.  Then it was off to a much needed bed (well for most of us!)

Saturday morning we were up and raring to go!  We began by sharing in some worship time together. Then we split again into our two groups.  Team B then were presented with bags of lego!  We had to build a specific model shown from different perspectives in several pictures.  However, each of us were only allowed to see one of the pictures and we were not allowed to talk to each other.  After struggling for a while the engineers in the group realised that we had the wrong blocks for the model so after that error was corrected we began again.  The no talking rule lasted for about 10 minutes and then we just couldn't help ourselves. Being able to talk things through meant we were finished in no time at all!

We had one member of our group, Josie, who had been missing up to this point who then arrived with her dad Ron.  It was lovely to meet her and her dad and hear their stories.  We shared the information we had learnt about each other the night before which was a good test of our long term memory, of which we all passed! During coffee break we had more time to talk to Josie which was lovely.

After break we settled into the discussion of itinerary for our Community Church Project.  We are all so blessed to have many skills and talents that we can use in South Africa and so we have to think about what we can achieve in the time that we are there.  Of course we would like to be able to do everything, but we eventually started to narrow down things that we thought would reach out and support the community. Some of our ideas include running an after school club as children are not given much provision for. We will also be able to support the local schools through the teachers that we are taking with us.  Weekends are going to be spent running family fun days where we hope to bring people together through fun activities whilst also sharing God's word and love.

After much talk and deliberation, we broke for lunch and took a walk down to the beach.  Some people decided to have a swim but were soon back out of the water looking rather blue!  The afternoon was spent in discussion about our work and what resources we provide.

Dinner was prepared by lots of willing hands whilst others took to the church to prepare worship for Sunday morning.  We all sat down to a cosy meal before spending the evening in more sessions and discussions.  Once again we met together to worship and collect our thoughts before bed.

Sunday morning we supported the worship at Immanuel Church.  We had a band that played brilliantly and our Team A delivered a great sketch all about God's love very clearly after very little preparation time.  Following lunch we all sat down to wrap up our time together.

This weekend has helped bring people closer together and time to share our thoughts and feelings ready for our Community Church Project.  We have prayed for our hopes and concerns and know that in all our final preparations leading up to our departure and whilst we are in South Africa, God is with us, guiding us in all that we do to ensure that his will is done.

 Frances