father christmas arrives early in grabouw

yesterday afternoon the children in our local community were surprised to see father christmas riding on the back of our sleigh. this was the second year that we converted our trailer into a sleigh and the response was no less joyful from the children who saw us.

last year we had trondor our Norwegian volunteer, play the star role of father christmas, see last years post, this year my dad (roger) had the staring role which i think he enjoyed. he was joined in the sleigh by our 'elves', mel, katie, fran and jess who gave out sweets, bars of soap and mens aftershave from the back of the sleigh.

it was so wonderful to bless the kids in this way, and to see their smiling faces as they saw santa coming past their homes was a real pleasure.

emily house took a lot of video which she is hoping to upload to youtube and as soon as it is available we will post a link.

spreading christmas cheer

the christmas period has continued to be a busy time for the team at the village of hope, and we have also been so overwhelmed by the presents and parties that our 9 children have been blessed with during this time. it was however somewhat of a problem giving our children hundereds of gifts whilst the large majority of the children that we also work with in the community receive nothing, therefore we decided to not only bless some local creches, in elgin timbers and iraq with some of the toys that we had received but also thought that it would be nice for all the children in our town to see and experience father christmas paying them a visit.

therefore with the wonderful arty skills of emily house we converted our trailer into a sleigh which we drove around the townships and squatter camps, complete with a 'real norwegian' santa claus (our wonderful volunter trondor, who had an amazing time on the sleigh)....see newspaper article (right) for an image.

christmas was and is indeed a time of giving, it was wonderful to be able to bring some light into what is a very poor and needy town.