final newspaper articles from world cup

well we now know that the spanish football team won the FIFA world cup south africa 2010 but here in grabouw our newspaper thinks that there were a few others that made a real impact during the 2010 football world cup.

it is wonderful to be singled out but without the help of all of the team at the village of hope and especially the guys from YWAM harpenden we wouldn't have been as successful and received as much publicity as we/i did....thanks team, we really did win for grabouw.

see the front, 2nd and 5th pages from the elgin grabouwer.

feeding the five thousand

starting last monday we (VOH and YWAM) have been running the world cup sports outreach clubs and we have seen the numbers of children grow from around 30 on the first day to over 200 yesterday.

the clubs are held at two schools in town and we are not only running sports based activities every afternoon but we are providing the children with a hot meal as well....this is all funded by the village of hope and we praying for extra food to cover this outreach.

the photo shows yesterdays event at groenberg school, this was the first of two sittings! it is an amazing previlidge to serve these children, many, if not all, come from tin shack homes and have very little input from adults in their lives.

sports and snow at village of hope

last saturday we had our first world cup sports saturday, this was run with some other NPO's under the FIFA social development banner, the weather was clear if not a little windy. our YWAM team were there to help oversee the sports where around 400 children played soccer, netball and even had a try at golf, with real golf balls.

since saturday we have started our midweek afternoon outreach in two schools, yesterday we had snow in grabouw and the mountain tops are covered as i write this, please pray for better/clearer weather and that the children, many of whom live in tin shacks, will want to come and join us for fun each afternoon.

one day to go

well the world is watching, well at least millions of football fans, i visited cape town airport this morning and the place was heaving with international visitors. lets hope and pray that south africa can put on an event to be proud of and the world will hopefully see the plight of millions of our citizens living in appalling conditions and not just the glory boys running around in their shinny shorts earning more money than sense.

please pray for us as we seek to put on a holiday programme to bless the children of grabouw, which starts this coming saturday with the first of 5 sports saturdays, we are hoping for around 1000 children to turn up and enjoy the fun.

being 'good'

with just 20 days to go till the fifa world cup 2010 the population in south africa has been told to 'be good for just 4 weeks' by our president jacob zuma, a crazy statement in many ways but lets hope that the focus that the world cup will bring could kick start a change of hearts and minds, and i suppose that was the sentiment that mr zuma intended....have a read of that story here on the new24 web site.

happy new year

well christmas has come and gone but our phonelines are still down so our blog is stuttering along at the moment....we just wanted to wish all the wonderful people who support the work we are doing on the village of hope a very happy new year, we trust that 2010 will be all that you dream and desire.

2010 will be a busy time here in south africa, what with the 2010 world cup taking place in june and july, we will try to keep you informed of all the events that we are going to be arranging during the year, we wanted to let you know that arron will be returning to england for around 3 months at the end of january to complete a DTS (discipleship training course) with YWAM (youth with a mission) where he will join the team as they complete their training which will enable them to return to south africa as they run our soccer based outreach over the world cup period.