Christmas packages

I am part of the Operation Christmas Child team in Bosnia and for the 2025-2026 season, we decided it was the best plan for all of Bosnia Herzegovina to take a one year break from receiving packages. So, I only had myself to blame for not having our normal quota of "shoebox packages" to give out while performing our Christmas Plays for our sponsored children...

But praise the Lord, we had a mix of donations from all over - from other organisations, local donors, and even a special collection at our little church. So all of our 80 sponsored families received a package of food and hygiene items, a bag of new clothing in different sizes and one huge bag of sweets for the kids. 

It was a bit harder to organise how we would be able to give it all out, but just seeing the smile on the children's faces makes it all worth it!

 

Drama Club and Christmas Plays

This year was the 10th time I have run a "Drama Club" (above, starting the process reading our parts out loud for the first time) and rehearsed for our Christmas plays with children/teens from our sponsorship project. The 4th time with this group. They are all becoming such good actors, but I pushed them this year as we had the fewest amount of rehearsals ever... 

{We started later than ever due to my travel schedule and then I had to cancel one rehearsal because a LOT of snow fell through the night before... and as I have to go collect 5 of the kids from the top of a very high hill with very steep roads that do not get cleaned quickly... I decided that it was not the wisest move trying to get up there! (I did it last winter once and discovered what traction control is! So wasn't keen on repeating that experience!)}

The story is one I wrote back in 2018 for my other group of kids, and so I just took that script and rewrote it for this group. And despite the lack of rehearsals, they still did amazing and I am so proud of them!!

Indian Christmas Eve

In December 2024, we decided to hold a special Christmas Eve celebration for our International students (mostly Indians). They are in Banja Luka studying Medicine in a special program in English just for them. And 55 International students came along despite heavy snowfall the day of the party. It was complete chaos as we had two teams cooking in the church, and of course it became a competition! And we didn't get the smell of the spices out of the church until February! 

In 2025, we decided to do it again! We learnt our lesson and just had one group of students cooking at their own home, with my wonderful colleague, Graham, making sure they kept to time. And Carolyn and Kate made flatbread to make the food go further!

After last time, we weren't scared of the amount of students who might come. And that was a good thing, because this time we had almost 70 students join us!

There was food aplenty - the dish they eat at holidays: chicken biryani. And even though they told me it was "not spicy" it was certainly too spicy for me :) 

We also had a bit of a Christmas program where we sang some carols (below) and Ljilja shared a message about whose birthday we were celebrating (and I translated into English). 

These students really lack places they can have community, and so it was great to be able to provide that, as well as share why we celebrate Christmas! 

Volunteer Christmas party

Each year we have a party for our volunteers to celebrate Christmas together. It is an opportunity to celebrate them and all the things they have done during the year with us, and we always have a wonderful time together!! This year we had chilli and baked potatoes, and it was yummy! 

We all had a great time catching up with the goings on at our tables! 

And after out volunteers asking for a long while for t-shirts they can use while volunteering, this was the year we finally got it together to get them made... they are all very happy! 

We really are blessed with wonderful committed volunteers!

In 2025 there were 30 volunteers who gave 1091 volunteer hours. I have to keep track of their hours and it is always so encouraging to see how many hours they have given! Mainly through our projects with children and teens, but also in preparation for events or a twice a year "craft making party" to sort all our supplies and get all the "examples" made for our children's crafts. 

Children's Home "trip around the world"

We have just finished up our an autumn series of "Reading Club" workshops at the Children's Home. We are going "around the world" and learning about different countries each week. Each child has a "passport" to which another country gets added each week - and then the craft is connected to this country.

This was the week we did Finland, and made reindeers, but we also went to Peru and made Llamas and Egypt and become Pharoahs! It has been a fun time! (with a little bit of educational input as well!) 

So, a little aside story - I make the "inserts" for the passports (like for Finland above) and we use an A3 size of blue paper that I have a LOT of from a donation maybe 15 years ago from somewhere. We fold it up and then use it as a little blue notebook to stick our "country inserts" into. We had a meeting for volunteers to give input into our program and they gave us feedback that maybe it would be good to use other colours other than blue as some of the kids didn't want blue.

Well, I searched high and low in Banja Luka and the only A3 paper they had was in white. There was NO coloured A3 paper in the city. I could order it online, but I didn't have the time... But I just think it is so amazing that we actually started doing these passports and notebooks out of the blue paper because it was something I already had - and it seems as if we will have to plan ahead if we want to continue using this same method in the future (when the blue paper runs out!) 

I always put a fun quote on the "name page". In February/March it was "Books are like a garden which you carry in your pocket" - Chinese proverb

And for their "trip around the world" it is Dr Suess: "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go." 

Teenager Workshop run by volunteers!

We are so blessed to have wonderful local volunteers who want to help us with all of our activities. Each semester we have had a group of them run a different workshop. This semester, 3 of them ran a wonderful workshop for our teens, which was a mixture of sketches with discussion afterwards and then some fun educational activities. 

Volunteer Outing

 A little over a year ago, we asked our volunteers for suggestions of things that they would like to do. Suggestions included more fun activities like game nights and movie nights and also outings. We finally got it together to have an outing to Jajce in mid-November. It was such a fun day: 

We enjoyed each other's company (and choice of music) in each of the 3 cars, and then stopped along the way to take pics. Above on the overlook of the town with the fortress on the hill and below in from of the waterfall.

In Jajce, we enjoyed the traditional Bosnian food: Čevapi - skinless sausages with traditional bread. And then after getting a good shot at the tower (below) some wandered around the Old Town, while others enjoyed coffee!

I jokingly said that we took more time taking group shots than actually enjoying the sights, but that was also part of the fun! 

Children's Home visits in Summer and Children's Week

Over the summer, we do ministry a bit differently. Instead of running more educational type workshops, we have fun "Day Camps". This looks like going outside and hanging out - giving children different options: Below left: Lego Below right: football for those more active ones!

We always have to make a rainy day plan to move things inside... this is our group pic after a lovely afternoon despite the thunderstorms outside!

Now that they are back in school we had a fun workshop for Children's Week. The theme was "It is important to be a child, carefree and happy". We had activities and games all around the room and one of them was to write down what makes them happy or something they enjoy. And out of that we made the poster "Happiness tree". So fun! 

Soon we will start our weekly "Reading Club" visits. Once again we will travel "around the world" with the children - "visiting" a different country on a different continent each week. 

Mom's visit

Mom hasn't visited me since 2019, which is a long time - but I feel really blessed because many parents don't visit their overseas family at all! It was lovely having Mom in my part of the world again. She had already been to my brother in Canada and to my sister in Oxford twice. She has in the past only been here for up to 10 days, so it was wonderful to have her for 3 weeks! 

We had quite a "guesty" beginning to our autumn - Sina was staying with us for the last week of August and on the day she left, Ljilja's mom and sister came to stay. As Mom's flight was getting in quite late in the day we had to stay over at least one night anyway... and when I found a really good option for a few more nights, we decided to hang out in Zagreb for a couple of days... And our adventures were just to the shops: Enjoying the middle aisle in LIDL: 

And found some bargains in the IKEA: 

 And tricked some of our friends and family that we had made it to the seaside... 

But alas, those kinds of beaches are very far away from Croatia and we just took that photo in the lobby of the Decathlon sports shop. Here we are in the shop itself 😉

Once back in Banja Luka, it was mostly "bring your mom to work day" most times I would go somewhere and everyone loved getting to meet her. I don't have any good photos of those situations. She also got to join us when we went to visit a friend in their new home. I think getting to see the house (as an ex-estate agent) was more interesting than any of the conversation we had! 

As she is half Polish (my grandad was from Poland), when I heard from my friends Nada about a meeting of the Polish society while she was here, we had to go! It was learning how to make pierogies - and it was great fun! 

Besides the pierogies, there were lots of other lovely Polish treats! 

And even a bit of Polish vodka to enjoy with some old and new friends! 

One of the fun things we did do was go to the Cyrillic park and check out all the letters: 

Above is NOT actually a B it is a V!! ("false friends" are a real problem!) 

This is an L for Lav (Lion) 

A D for "Dvorac" or castle: 

Ž for Žirafa (you can guess what that means!)

Besides making a cover for one of my chairs, she also managed to make muffins or crunchies almost every day while she was here... It was such a lovely visit that it was really hard to say goodbye when it was time for her to go again 😭 But I am looking forward to seeing her in January in South Africa!

Fun Visit: Nils and Keren

My good friends, Nils and Keren, finally made it to see me as Keren and her family were doing a Croatian cruise for her 50th and so they came afterwards to see me... And we had a fantastic time together! 

Firstly, I showed the sights of Banja Luka: Fortress Kastel: 

Gospodska Ulica (Gentlemen's street): spot the fancy decorations!

And also the rest of Banja Luka... We did go out for love gelato after that tour, but sadly I don't have a pic. However, we also finished the next day's tour with the best ice cream in Banja Luka: it is just vanilla with toppings, but it is yummy: 

This year has seen me hosting 3 different times so far - check out the posts on the other two here: Angela and Greg. 

I love to show my guests all the wonders of this area, but this year, I realised that I am my father's daughter!! He had a route he had worked out around Cape Town and would so enjoy showing people around that same route. And I realised that I also have out a route around this area and so took Nils and Keren around it as well! The first two times this year were snowy and/or cold, so it was interesting doing it in the heat! First stop Krupa na Vrbasu: 

Next stop in Jajce. There is a lovely waterfall there too, but I didn't get pics. Old town on the hill:

Jajce city wall: 

And then it was time for the 3rd river and waterfalls, the Pliva - I am debating about calling this tour the Three Rivers tour: Krupa, Vrbas and Pliva: 

One of the fun things was the fact that they had some "vouchers" which I give out as prizes at my Bosnian Evenings back in South Africa. One of them was for a "home cooked meal". And even though I was planning on ordering a meal, I said, "The only homecooked meal I could do is french toast as we have eggs and bread." and they decided that was enough. With all the toppings, including fresh berries it did turn into a feast! Here they are showing off their voucher and the meal! 

After that, as it was a Friday night (which is traditionally game night between them and other friends, which I join in when I go to SA), we ended up playing a game of Port Royal (aka the pirate game) which I introduced to them last time I was in SA...

 

They also got to enjoy some work stuff on the day they left. We had visitors from a Medical Organisation that works with Christian doctors and medical students around the world. Ljilja had reached out to them because of our International Medical Students (most of them are from India, but also Bangladesh and Turkey). So it was fun to introduce fellow Dr. Keren to them. We also shared with them all what our ministry here in Banja Luka looks like so they can see what we do. Then we had a chance to hang out with them (and some of the Christian medical students from India) at lunch: 

And then it was time to say a fare farewell. It was so fun having them visit and get a snapshot of my world here in Banja Luka. They have been saying for years that they want to visit, so it is great that it finally happened!!