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!