what we did on thursday!

this is a kayak, it's your friend!

i hope those that read this blog on a regular basis, or even stumble upon it via an internet search, will see the heart of the stories that we share here are to encourage you that the support (be that financial, physical or prayerful) that is shown towards the village of hope and or the wider thembalitsha foundation is being utilised with as much diligence as we can. we are mindful that we are in a privilege position to be on the coal face when many of our friends and families have their nose to the grindstone and don't have the opportunity to see God move in the lives of the people that we have been called to serve, whether that be in the work we do with the children infected by HIV who live with us at the village of hope or via the sports outreach that we do in our community each and every term time afternoon (weather permitting!). we value your support, we thank God for you and hope that you will be encouraged by what you see and here God doing through us.

today i want to share a most amazing experience that we had last thursday afternoon when we took the 7 young men who help us to run the sports outreach in the community, we call them our 'sports mentors', out to a local dam, actually part of the palmiet river, to spend some time 'team building' by taking to the water in sit on kayaks.

the stretch of the palmiet on which we
enjoyed our first paddle!

the boys were unaware of this stretch of river which is only 15 minutes drive from the centre of grabouw, and hardly any of them had ever got onto a kayak, however after a lengthy briefing about water safety, life jackets and the art of paddling, from our good friend rikus from true north (a wonderful guy who runs outward bound type events) we were ready of our first venture onto the water for a two hour paddle up and down the beautiful valley.

the boys really enjoyed their time, the weather was fantastic and as we sent them out in pairs it was good to see them work together, to first go in the right direction and then with some momentum which meant that they were really motoring by the end.

we hope to do another team building event sometime this week, although the weather doesn't look to promising, however we are sure that this is truly something that the boys won't ever forget and we hope that some of the skills that they learnt, like talking to each other when putting the paddles into the water!, will help them as we seek to provide a professional sports outreach to the children that we have on our programme.