this afternoon myself and arron started our soccer outreach to one of the poorest areas in grabouw, this settlement or squatter camp is called iraq, and with no electricity and only a handful of stand pipes which provide water to this community it's not hard to understand why this is the place is in such need.
at 2.45pm we picked up a couple of local xhosa speaking guys from thembacare who had kindly said that they would interpret for us, our local schools worker, sandra, also joined us as we made our first venture to work with the young people of this area.
by 3pm we had made contact with a guy, called anderson, who i had met a couple of years before when visiting his wife who had been discharged from thembacare...funny how the first person i met was someone we knew!...he was interested in what we were doing in his community as he runs the 'adults' soccer in iraq and what with him, the other two xhosa speakers and a granny venturing into the settlement with a megaphone we really pulled in the kids for this first session!
as is the norm we spoke about the programme we are rolling out, with a focus on soccer as a lead into providing lifeskills to the local boys, our commitment to them, the importance of listening to the coach (that's me), and having fun.
the session started with a light warm up, today as a little cloudy in grabouw so that was needed even more than normal, then we split into 4 teams of 4 players for a simple game of soccer to see what the talent was like....and man could some of these boys play.....they all listened well, took on the importance of working as a team and we all had fun.
we are looking to develop this into two weekly sessions, tuesdays and thursdays and we are already looking forward to this coming thursday where we have asked the guys to spread the word throughout their community and we will once again share the love of Jesus with these children who society has destined to a life of poverty...
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