YWAM Paris Team

The Backpackers Discipleship Training School from YWAM Paris joined us for 3 weeks on their trip around the Balkans. While they were in Banja Luka, they helped us run a fun sports day for our sponsorship children: 

And had a "Cultural Night" - with Mexico, Canada and Norway represented: 

They helped a lot practically as well - including doing the dreaded "sharpening" of all of our pencil crayons (coloured pencils) for our children's workshops!!

They were a really fun (and young!) team, and we were sad to see them go: 

Team from YWAM Lausanne

 We were privileged to host this fantastic team of 13 people (and a baby) from 8 different nations over the course of a month. Here they are about to go on their scavenger hunt - to find out more about Banja Luka:

While I took all their passports to get them registered! They really were from 8 different countries! 

The first week they were here was the week before we held the Nick Vujicic event. So they helped a LOT with the advertising of the event: handing out flyers and getting posters up - here we are about to go around campus:

And here they are afterwards - it isn't all work and no play!! 

They also helped a lot for the set up for the event - here they are after helping to unload the books that were given away at the event (almost 2000 of them!)

 We also spent time praying for Banja Luka and the event from our favourite lookout spot over Banja Luka - joined by some of the people who came for the weekend of the event, Tormod and Margritt:

 And then on the actual day of the event they were among the many volunteers who helped make it go sooooo smoothly!! Here they all are with Nick! 

The rest of the time they were here they helped us with English classes, humanitarian aid clothing distributions, and a wonderful cultural night amongst other things. They also went twice to help out in Prijedor with their children's programs. So they kept busy!

They also helped us with a couple fun evenings with the kids at the children's home. Here is one of the fun nights - where instead of everyone doing one thing, we had tables of different activities - from games to crafts to face painting... everyone had a phenomenal time:

They also helped us organise a fun evening for the volunteers who helped at the Nick Vujicic event as a thank-you:

 All through their time here, one of the team was helping one of our young people to learn the guitar. Before they left he had made so much progress that they wanted to bless him with his own guitar. He had some money saved and the team contributed the rest. As a thank-you, his parents had them all over for lunch!! The below picture is all of us (with the guitar) before leaving...

And then it was time for the goodbye party... 

And even though we look happy on the photo, we were all very sad to see them go... :(

Teams and "Easter" Packages

At the end of March, we had two wonderful teams come and serve us in Banja Luka. First, a team of 17 youth from different churches from Austria came to spend 4 days with us before moving on to Tuzla:

While they were still with us, a team of 16 young people also from different churches came from Norway to spend a week with us. 

Both teams helped us give out "Easter" packages (which were actually shoe-box Christmas packages) both at the church and at schools in our surrounding villages. It was a jam-packed week, but the joy of the Easter message was shared to many children! 

We did two big distributions in the church. One with just the Austrians: (here sharing about Austria)

 Before having crafts about Easter and fun games:

At the end we gave out the packages, to everyone's delight :)

 We also gave out Children's Bibles which were a great hit:

The second day we did the same thing, but were joined at the end by the Norwegians (they were supposed to arrive earlier but were delayed at the border as they didn't have the right papers for their bus. In the end they were fetched from the border and we managed to -by God's grace and Ljilja's charms- to get the bus in the next day!) 

They added some songs:

And a couple of dances to the mix: 

During both programs, the parents were upstairs having their own program about Easter:

We also took both teams separately to the Children's Home to have a program there: The Austrians shared about Austria:

Before each child was given the chance to decorate a photo frame: And the team even had a photo printer, so they could have a photo in the frame:

Along with some funny glasses, so as to make it even more special:

As you can see, the kids really enjoyed this!

The Norwegians went later on in the week, and had a great program, including songs and dance, and even a magician (me translating for him below):

 And the kids really enjoyed the singing and dancing!

During one of the overlap days, we had a joint cultural evening where we learnt the different ways that Easter is celebrated. At the end, the locals shared their tradition of "egg-hitting" where you hit each other's eggs and the one whose egg survives gets to take the other's egg.

Here is a battle between a Norwegian and an Austrian... they really enjoyed learning about this local Easter tradition!

The rest of the week, while the Austrians went to Tuzla and carried on their outreach there, the Norwegian team went to small village schools to give out "Easter" packages. And everyone had a great time:

It was a busy, but fun week for us, and we look forward to when both teams can come back!

Northern Ireland Team

A team from YWAM Rostrevor came for 12 days, and it was great having them. They were from all over: Canada, Syria, Hawaii, Germany and Northern Ireland and we managed to get a lot packed into their short visit! We hit the ground running with our last Christmas package distribution at the Children's Home: Our child/teenage actors finished off well:

And the team sang a song to complete the program:

Then it was time to hand out the packages (we can't show the faces of the children for child protection reasons, but you can imagine the joy on them for yourselves :) )

All of the team either sing of play a musical instrument (and usually more than one!) so we decided to do a music workshop with our sponsorship kids: 

Here they are making a fruit choir: each of the parts is singing a fruit name: Mango or Banana or Kiwi. And the great thing is that they are the same in Bosnian, English and German (where the song came from!)

 While we were downstairs, Ljilja had a business workshop upstairs with the moms:

We had one full day of practical work around our building, cleaning up and sorting out stuff... such a great help! And then we prepared for the Christmas party for my volunteers. It was postponed from December as I was not well enough to do it then, and it was so great that they could help out and also hang out with the volunteers:

We had prepared a program of more Christmassy songs with the team, but we were also giving the treat of a new local band... They had started practicing together for the first time in our building, so we asked them to come and play a couple of crowd-pleasing songs:

 For having just got together, they did a great job!

 And they got even everyone on their feet and dancing, so I think it was a success!

 After that, we had more hanging out:

 And enjoying the food:

Two of the girls on the team and I spent ALL afternoon baking, but from the expression on these two volunteer's faces I think it was worth it: all unusual cakes for here: brownies, pumpkin pie, cinnamon rolls, and other specialities!

We did end off the program with some more "Holy" music and a good message about Christmas:

During the week we went again to the Children's Home and the team did a great cultural program for the kids there, including Syrian dancing and a Hawaii shout which went down really well. But then it was time for the

 The team sang some songs to get things rolling...

And then the locals joined in...

 Including sharing the Uzicko Kolo (a traditional circle dance)

I even got involved in the fun by the end of the night... It was a great evening and everyone enjoyed themselves!! (and thanks to Ljilja for the funky photos!)

Before they left they had fun hanging out not just with the volunteers, but also with our teenage actors from our Christmas plays, and also ran another children's workshop with our sponsorship kids. As I said, we packed in a lot in their short visit!

It was with sad hearts that we said goodbye to them and sent them on their way to Sarajevo...