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.

international soccer saturdays! (and daz out injured)

yesterday we held the second of the five sports saturdays taking place at pineview park in grabouw during the duration of the FIFA 2010 world cup. once again over 300 children enjoyed a fun packed morning which included a netball tournament, face painting, dance and music as well as a football competition which included 2 teams from ashfield school in northern ireland who are visiting south africa on a school trip.

it was great for our local township children to have some international opposition and to the irish boys credit they made it through to the under 15 final where they were beaten 3-0 by our rooidakkes team....see photo.

unfortunately during an after hours game played between the YWAM students and a mish mash of VOH volunteers daz suffered a leg injury which has left him on crutches, pls pray for a swift recovery for him.

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.

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.