August fun workshops

During the month of August we try to have some fun days with the children in our sponsorship project and at the Children's Home. One of my favourite days is always with the sponsored children from the next town over, Čelinac. They are all super sweet and we love getting to hang out with them. 

This time we were in the Elementary School main hall, and we started off by making butterflies (which will be sent to their sponsors). Here we all are about to make the butterflies: 

And two of the cutest kids with their butterflies: 

(they did get to make more if they wanted to take some home as well!!) 

Then it was time for the real fun to begin - I try to organise fun activities/crafts/games etc that they can toggle between. We really had something for everyone: 

The lego station: 

The playdough station:

The making cups that turn into rockets station! Elastic bands and a second cup needed... so simple and so fun! 

The football station: playing football with straws? 

There were two stations that were delibrately more "educational" - the health game: 

And the brushing your teeth station - essentially brushing off the whiteboard marker with a toothbrush. It is actually much quicker to get rid of the marker by brushing in circles - which is also the dentist-recommended way of brushing your teeth! 

Somehow we didn't get a picture of the most popular station - which was the throw bean bags at cups station. My colleague Graham was in charge of it, and after a while he asked if it would be ok to add some spice to the action by getting the kids to go upstairs and throw from up there... Luckily I said yes as it was so.much.fun for the kids... We did lose one of the bean bags by a mis-throw into a ceiling area  above the door (wish I could be there when the person who finds it there tries to figure out what the heck it is doing there!). After a while, I did have to pull the plug as we had most of the kids upstairs and none downstairs at the other stations! But there was definitely enough for them to do without it...  

Afterwards we had to wait for some of the kids to come be picked up by their parents and already had to be outside because the man with the key needed to leave... and that is when I realised that sometimes the best moments come from things you don't plan meticulously. Besides the upstairs bean bag game improvisation, I also brought along our hula-hoops - and we ended up having the best time outside while waiting, playing the pass the hula-hoop along your team while holding hands game... 

As you can see we had a really fun day with our friends in Čelinac, and the same can be said of the kids in Banja Luka and at the Children's Home! 

Book Club at the Children's Home

During the school term, Thursday nights are Book Club nights at the Children's Home. And the kids can hardly wait for us to come! This semester we watched short movies of our weekly story and then coloured in the page that went with it, before doing a fun craft to go along with the story. Above is after we had done the story of the Ugly Duckling (can you spot the handprint swans we did as our craft?)

It can be quite chaotic, but we try to have enough volunteers so that we can have enough attention given to each of the children during the activities:

For our "Rapunzel" craft, we made our own tower and hair to be lowered down - it really was a fun activity: 

(On an aside: I wanted to get the triangles at the top to be as big as they could on an A4, so I asked chatgpt and Claude how they would do it to maximise the triangles. And both of their solutions weren't as good as mine. They both told me so when I uploaded it to them to compare... so I was quite chuffed at having outdone not one but 2 AI models!)

I made us each our own little booklets for each of the stories we did: (Klub Citalaca = Club of Readers)

And in the end this is what it looked like inside: See if you can guess the stories!!!*

After having a really fun 4 weeks of working hard it was time to have a bit of a break and have their favourite format - different stations around the room with all sorts of different activities! They really wish we could do it that way every week, but it is definitely more fun when it is done less often! 

(*Rapunzel, Little Mermaid, Cinderella and The Ugly Duckling)

Easter workshops

Every year we have special workshops for our sponsored children in Banja Luka and Celinac to help celebrate Easter. Each year we try to come up with fun ways to remind them of the Easter story and what Jesus did for them. This year I came across what looked like a fun craft, but it was all behind a pay wall. Luckily I managed to make it myself for free!! 

First step is to colour it: 

Then cut it all out and paste it together. 

And here is what it looks like when you spin it: 

It really was a fun activity for everyone!! Happy Easter everyone! Here we are in Celinac saying "Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!" in the local language. 

Video: looking back at 2025

 

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!

 

Fida Sponsorship Project

 We continue to work with children who are sponsored from Finland, through the organisation Fida International. We regularly have workshops for children, teens and also the mothers. For International Women's day in March, we had a lovely workshop for the children aged 6-12, where we made cards for their mothers or sisters or grannies:

And one of our workshops for teens 13-18 focused on emotions and strategies to help them to deal with them. Our teens and the volunteers who mentor them: 

We also have to do regular reporting to Fida and it is always so encouraging to see how we are doing. The project cycle is 4 years and 2025 is the last year of this cycle. In 2021, we wrote goals that we wanted to achieve: amount of workshops run and amount of people present, and the amazing thing is that in 2024, we managed to achieve all of the goals we thought we would only do in 2025!


We are also in the process of writing new project plans and it is exciting to dream with God what we want to put into practice in the next 4 years...

In March, we had a day together with the others who are also running Fida projects in Prijedor and Tuzla to try and work on our project plans together - to make sure our inputs and outputs and outcomes with their "indicators" all made sense. We have come a long way in our project writing!! 

At the end of last year, we had to do a project report, and at the end, we summarise our report - this is what the Fida management team read:

(The project report is for us and Prijedor, so we didn't do all of these things! But hopefully it will encourage you as much as it encouraged us!)

In 2024, the Child Sponsorship Project in Banja Luka and Prijedor continued to grow, providing vital support in education, healthy families and volunteer engagement. We held over 50 educational, health, creative, and life skills workshops, alongside over 150 tutoring sessions, and over 30 reading clubs, biblical workshops and drama clubs. For our parents we organised 9 seminars and our volunteers enjoyed over 30 seminars or debriefings just for them. More than 690 direct beneficiaries participated, with an indirect impact reaching over 1,000 people. 

Volunteer involvement was a key area of growth in 2024, with 42 local and 73 foreign volunteers contributing nearly 1,500 volunteer hours overall. We saw a core group of dedicated volunteers taking greater ownership, starting to organize workshops, and actively helping to shape the project. Networking expanded through new partnerships with other organizations, while continuing old cooperations, all allowing us to offer more meaningful activities to all our beneficiaries. 

One of the most encouraging developments was seeing our long-term investment bear fruit—whether in the lives of children making progress in school, parents engaging more in their children’s education, or volunteers growing in confidence and leadership. Despite challenges such as new government regulations affecting NGOs, we remain committed to adapting, growing, and making a lasting impact in the communities we serve.

InterVarsity Athletes and Center Church Teams

Two years ago, we had a visit from some of the leaders of the InterVarsity Surf and Turf region (they cover campuses in central California and southern Nevada).  During that time we dreamed about having a group of InterVarsity Athletes come and help us run Sports Camps for kids. Last year a team failed to come together, but this year we had a group of athletes wanting to come. At the same time we were asked if a small group could come from another church and we decided to combine the two teams, and it was a great combination! 

We ran 3 camps which were "Day camps" just coming together each day, and the kids had a blast learning new sports and playing games they had never played before! We also had many new volunteers joining us to help translate (always a blessing) and join in the fun themselves! Below is a pic of our last camp, with kids from our sponsorship project, local volunteers and the American teams: 

One of the camps was at the Children's Home and that was so much fun! At first the kids were reluctant to even start playing and making all sorts of excuses, but in the end they didn't want to stop playing when it was time for us to go! We aren't allowed to show the faces of the Children's Home kids online, but you at least get the idea: (and many of the kids didn't want to be in the photo which is their choice!)

The kids got to enjoy flag football which was totally new to them... and so fun! 

Even for the smallest kids who joined us at the home, so cute: 

The teams also held a fun "Cultural night" for students with a quiz on flags... no prizes for guessing this flag! 

The Center Church team left before we got a group pic, but the Athletes took us out for a thank-you dinner at the same restaurant where the "dreaming" started - a full circle moment! 

As usual, it was very hard to say goodbye to these wonderful teams, but I look forward to the day when we will meet again - if not in this life, then in the next! 

(Orthodox) Easter Workshops for kids

 As Orthodox Easter was on the 5th of May, I was able to celebrate one Easter in South Africa and then be here to help with our Easter Programs as well! 

We ran more-or-less the same program 3 times: At the Children's Home and with our sponsored children in Banja Luka and in Čelinac (a town about 20 minutes from Banja Luka).

We had a sort of "Easter Fun Day" with different stalls - crafts, games, "tattooing" with facepaints, photobooth etc and the children could choose what they would do. With our sponsored children we also watched the Easter episode of the "Superbook" series beforehand. And after all that fun, we also handed out "Christmas" packages from Samaritan's Purse! The kids had a ball!

At the Children's Home: 

In Banja Luka:

In Čelinac, where we use the main hall of the high school:

Our main craft was "The Easter Story" (Vaskršnja Priča). I got the idea from a couple of things I saw online... The whole story of Easter is told in 3 words: LOVE (Ljubav), FAITH (Vjera) and PEACE (Mir):

Love was shown on Good Friday when Jesus died on the cross. We are like the two thieves on the crosses beside Jesus, we deserve to die, but Jesus died in our place. We just need to have faith - faith that the stone was rolled away and He was resurrected. And if we have faith in Him then we have His peace!