PingYu Home of Hope

This year we held the 2nd Annual Home of Hope Summer Camp. This is the one time a year when  both Home of Hope’s children can come together. The whole week is  full of many activities ranging from crafts, snacks,games and too many other activities to mention here.  The whole week was paid for by Grace and the WME,  so we want to give a big thank you for making this week possible! This year we did do something different, we had the 11 college age children act as counselors and captains. By doing this, we felt the camp ran a lot smoother under their leadership.  However, this meant they didn’t get to just “play”, so the week before the camp, we took the college kids on a weekend retreat to the Green Dragon Mountains  (you can read more about this on the Gongyi home of Hope  website www.gongyi.homeofhope.org).

To start the week off, Bob Sayre, who runs the Xuzhou Home of Hope, and all the children under his care, arrived to a warm welcoming from the Gongyi HOH kids. They were all very excited to see each other again after a whole year being apart.  The GongYi children even made placards like when you are picked up at the airport so they could show their brothers and sisters from Xuzhou where they would be staying. It was very sweet.

Xuzhou kids arriving in GongYi for the HOH Summer Camp

On Sunday after the Xuzhou group arrived we separated all the children into three teams.
Team L.I.O.N. Team W.O.L.F. and Team T.I.G.E.R.
Then we passed out t-shirts that were donated by Eddie and Sheralin Greene from Harlan Kentucky.
On Monday we had all the kids design the shirts and to make flags to represent each team. We also had the teams gather together so that all of the children could introduce themselves and start to get to know each other.

Julie holding her t-shirt , Sam leading his team in what design to use

2 of the 3 groups circling up for their morning meeting, Brian was the captain for team WOLF

Joey was the captain for team LION, Jim was the captain for team TIGER

Kids lining up to get their shirts judged, All the kids circling up for a birthday party

Monday through Friday we had each team competing against each other with the different activities. Each team had 20 children per team including councilors and captains. They had to learn to work together as one family to earn the points for their teams. The theme of the camp was unity. Each day we had 4-5 games per day which involved everyone participating in the game. It was so nice to see all the children getting really into cheering on their own team throughout the week, but at the same time cheering on all of the other teams too. We told them that cheering on their own team was great but to remember that we are all a part of one big team, the Home of Hope, and that we need to cheer everyone on. Here are several pictures showing the many different activities throughout the week.

Tony and James playing, Anna and Jenny posing for a picture

Dennis and David reading their English verse, Lydia,Rachel and Grace watching a volleyball match

This is the children playing the Snow Day game, the point is to get as much crumpled paper on the other teams side. Whoever has the least amount of paper on their side wins the game.

The kids made seat sacks so they would not have to sit on the ground. Eve (left) Sam (right)

Kids trying to eat a donut hanging from a tree, first one done wins but they could not use their hands

from left to right Jacob,Martin,Joe,Johnny,Mary,Abby,Caleb, Ron

Titus and Shirley, Judah,Joshua,Isaac and Adam

Hank leading his team, Esther leading her team

Tuesday was David’s birthday and Wednesday was Julie’s. Hank wanted to throw a party for them so he gathered all the kids and we canceled the activity that night and had one big birthday party. Even the little ones came down for some cake.

Jacob, Beau

Abby, Dawn

On Wednesday we had a physical activity day. There were ten different things that the kids did, long jump, hula hoop, chin ups, standing on one leg, shooting a soccer ball, throwing a football (American) through a circle, basketball, bowling, and to juggle a soccer ball and a hackie sack (small clothe ball filled with little beads). Every person on each team needed to participate to help get their team score higher. Here we really pushed our theme of the camp of team unity.

Left:John going the distance, Right: Joshua hula hooping

Left:John doing chin ups, Right:Naomi standing strong and balanced

Left:Sam helping Ron shoot the soccer ball, Right:Linda trying to show a football

Left:Naomi knocking down the bowling pins, Right:David getting ready to make a shot

We had planned on having a water day and Thursday it just so happened to be drizzling off and on all day so we decided it time for everyone to cool off and get a little wet. We have asked the kids what was their favorite activity or day and almost all of them answered with a big smile that it was the water day

Left:Peter bobbing for apples, Right:Zak diving right in

Left: Linda after picking her apple, Right: Esther not afraid to get a little wet

Water balloon toss

Left: Joey dropping his balloon, Right:Dennis and John were the champion balloon throwers

The object of this game is to fill your cup up with water and take it to the other end of the court to fill one big bucket, but there is one problem…your cup has holes drilled in the bottom of it!

Left:Michael trying to stay dry

The winning team is announced by dumping the bucket on their captain

The best part was the fact that the picture on the right is of last year during the summer camp Brian’s team won the water race then and we did the same thing to him, maybe we are starting a tradition.

On Friday night we had a huge party with all the kids and workers. It was so big we had to eat out on the basketball court. We gave money to all three teams and told the councilors and captains that they were in charge of preparing a specific food item, for example one team bought vegetables, another bought fruit and the last bought dessert. We provided the chips, sodas and hot dogs.

Left:David and Holly taking charge of the grill, Right: The table of goodies

After dinner we had a talent show prepared for our entertainment, the children are very talented. The talents ranged from singing, to bicycle tricks.

Left:The girls prepared a fantastic fan dance, Right:Older boys performed a play

Left:Autumn and Rose singing twinkle twinkle little star, Right:Timothy telling a story

While Lily, Logan and Julie(from left to right) sang a song, Yan Ming’s (house mother) daughter danced

Left:Zak spinning seat sacks, Right:Jaxin doing his bike tricks

After the talent show we announced that the winning team was team TIGER. All the kids got together for one big picture to show again the camp theme of unity. That we are all in one big happy Home of Hope family.

Thank you very much for spending the time and looking through all the pictures. We know there are many pictures but we really wanted to share some of the joy we get to have with these children with you.