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! 

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. 

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!!

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. 

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.

(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!

Teenagers

 This year we started a once-a-month program with the teenagers in our sponsorship project. In April, we were joined by students from all over the north part of Bosnia who get bursaries through the Jericho Foundation. These students were able to share with the teenagers about how they overcame their similarly hard living situations to study, and encourage them to do the same.

What have I been up to!?

Here is a little video which shows more of my ministry in Banja Luka, Bosnia Herzegovina and beyond... Enjoy! 

 

Drama Club: "Uncle John"

 From October to December, we held a weekly Drama Club for some of the children from our Sponsorship Project. We were preparing the Christmas play for our shoebox package distributions. Last year we only had 3 speaking parts, but this year everyone got a chance to speak. We learned a bit about how to perform on stage, and practiced the play many times each week.

We also practiced our singing!

Bojan reprised his role as "Čika Jovan" ("Uncle John"), which he first did in 2016. I wrote the play for a different group of kids back then, so just adapted it for this group. And I was so happy to be able to include Alisa (in yellow below) who has a speech impediment - even giving her a speaking part!! She was so happy!

We practised on the stage, but also in other places in the church, as we would be performing it not just at the church, but also in different places around Banja Luka and Celinac. By the end they could do it in their sleep!!