GongYi Home of Hope

Summer Fun – 2008

Summer is a great time at the Home of Hope. We have our annual Youth Camp the later part of July which is when the children from our XuZhou facility come to GongYi for a week of fun, games and special teaching. Each year Ben and Michelle Godard take charge of the Youth Camp and it’s quite a busy undertaking since we have ALL the Home of Hope children together in one place plus several specially invited children from the outside. (Ben and Michelle Godard are interning at the Gongyi Home of Hope preparing to be the manager of our Home of Hope number three when it opens. They have started a web site for the soon to open number three and you can see the Home of Hope as well as China from their perspective at http://godard.homeofhope.org/)

As soon as the children start getting out of school for the summer, we not only do chores together but we play together as well. Some of the things we do are preliminary trials of some of the activities at the youth camp.

David (on the left) has the part time job of being pond/pool guard when the children nine and under are enjoying the water. We have various scheduled times when the children ten and over can swim… nine and under can swim and certain times are set aside for the nursery children and their house nannies.

David does not need to be on guard while the ten and above children are swimming since the pool/pond is only two and a half feet deep in the deepest part so during those times he continues to work on other maintenance items at the Home of Hope although part of his pool/pond guard duties include keeping the water “skimmed”, checking the chlorination and PH balance three times a day and keeping the bottom vacuumed.

Of course like children the world over, the Home of Hope children love playing in the water. Above two pictures show Jaxin and Eli Godard, Moses and Isaac in the water while the older boys (not their turn) look on.

Sack Races, Human Wheel Barrow Races,Tug-of-war, Watermelon Eating Contest and Spin around the Stick

Most of the following pictures are self explanatory showing the activities we had one afternoon to celebrate the children being out of school for the summer. (Sack races… no sacks… just one foot of each person tied to the other person’s foot)

Adam and Mathew………………………………….Zak and Bruce

Mosie and Jaxin……………………………………….Ruthie and Joy

Isaac, Autumn, Mosie and Jaxin…………………Mosie and Jaxin

Autumn and Rose, Isaac and Grace…………..Michael and Tony

Mathew and Adam…………………………………..Lily and Rena

Heidi and Shirley………………………………………Shirley and Autumn

Mosie and Jaxin (Tony in back)…………………Vincent and Joseph

Adam with the ball…………………………………..Whole group watching a “swisher”!

The following pictures show a new game we had not played before at the Home of Hope. It was introduced by Christopher Green (shown in the pictures), a short term volunteer. The children really bonded with him.

The game is a lot of fun in that the child has to put his nose on the end of the stick as shown and then walk round and round the stick. It seems the object of the game is to walk until one falls down from dizziness… however, we think there was some type competition involved… we just could not figure out what it was.

Gracie‘s turn……………………………………………Isaac’s turn