2012
This year our camp was held in Gongyi at the 1st location of the Home of Hope orphanages. We separated the children into 3 teams hoping to teach them team work, how to depend on each other, that each child is very important to the team and that each should try their best not only for their own good but for the good of their team. Below you can see the different teams.
Each year we have been very blessed by the older Gongyi children who work very hard as being team captains (see picture above) and counselors. This year we were even more blessed to have a lot of volunteers come and give a helping hand. (See below)
(Back Row left to right) Tony-our translator, Brian- an older Gongyi alumni, John- an older Gongyi college student, Walker- one of our volunteers, Javier- one of our volunteers. (Front row left to right) Shirley- an older Gongyi college student, Tresa- one of our volunteers, Mary- one of our teachers,Janis- one of our Chinese volunteers, Gail- an older Gongyi college student, June- our cook and a Gongyi Alumni, Rena- an older Gongyi college student.
We have been very blessed by The Shirt Shack Inc., they have made and donated all the t-shirts for our camps for the past 5 years!
Every year to go to camp, we rent a bus. Last year we rented a 22 seated bus. This year we needed to use 31 seats. Unfortunately, the bus company did not have anything we could use besides a huge touring bus made to seat 50 people. We all had a very nice ride to and from Gongyi.
Our first day we usually don’t plan anything besides traveling to whichever location the camp is at, separating the kids into teams, but mostly reconnecting with old friends or making new friends.
(left to right)Michelle and I(Ben) administrate the Pingyu Home of Hope and host the summer camps. Middle is Nathan Bell who is the administrator to the Gongyi Home of Hope and president/founder of the Next Towns Foundation and the Home of Hope orphanages. Bob and Cindy administrate the Xuzhou Home of Hope.
(Pictured left)Sarah (left) and Lily from Gongyi hanging out. (Picture on the right) Michelle(top left), Kelly (top right)and Cindy getting together. Kelly is the Xuzhou translator.
Our middle son Eli and his best friend Gail from Gongyi.
As we said above we separate everyone into 3 teams. The 1st day we do a lot of activities trying to teach team work and to get the members of each team relying on each other. The pictures below show some of the activities:
This contest one person stands in front of his partner with his hands behind his back. His partner has his eyes closed and tries to make the sandwich and feeds it to his partner standing in front of him as you can see on the above left picture Nathan (Xuzhou Home of Hope) feeding Jaxin (our eldest son). On the right, Tyler (our youngest son) tries to feed me (Ben) but struggles because his arms are just a little too short:)
Lester (left) and Zoey (right) try shooting a ping pong ball into a bucket placed 10 yards away. Each person on all 3 teams were given one chance to make one shot. If they made it, they would have earned 20 points for their team. If the ball got within 1.5 yards of the bucket they would earn 5 points.
(Left) Ron (Gongyi Home of Hope) and Judah (Xuzhou) were trying to get as many ping pong balls out of the tissue box in 20 seconds time. Each ball out was worth 10 points for their team!
The teams sit in a line and grab the ball with their feet and pass the ball over their head to the person behind them…who also has to grab it with their feet. If they used their hands (10 year old and younger children could use their hands) or if the ball touched the ground, they had to start all over:)
We ended the 1st and 2nd nights with watching a movie using our awesome projector that one of our volunteers donated last year.
Our Water Day has been a “MUST” since the first year we held our camp. There is pretty much one rule for the entire day…to get as wet as possible and if you see anyone dry…get them wet too:)
We started the day off with a balloon toss. The winners were Wayne and Matthew who are pictured in the above picture in the bottom right corner. There prize was points for their team and a water balloon popped over their heads!
Musical chairs is a very simple game. The children walked around chairs while Bob Sayre sang…he even blessed us with some Chinese opera. Once he stopped, everyone sat down…whoever did not get a seat, got a balloon popped over their head.
Gail popped a balloon over Aaron’s (Xuzhou) head.
Joe (Xuzhou) was the last one to get a seat. He won points for his team…and Michelle popped a water balloon over his head:)
This game was very simple. There were 2 buckets before each team; one with water and one empty. The first team to fill the empty bucket with water won, but they had to use a cup with several holes in it to transport the water:)
Left is Eli (our middle son) getting quite soaked while on the right Anna is dumping her cup.
Left is Lester getting soaked, while on the right Wayne(Gongyi) holds the cup for Jacob(Gongyi).
The winning team captains got the bucket of water dumped on their heads.
All three teams lined up in three lines and passed water balloons down the line to see how many balloons could get popped over Bob (Xuzhou), Nathan (Gongyi) and my(Ben) head. The first go ahead was a tie…so they had to do it a second time;(
Again this was a race…and oh yeah, the winning team got the remaining water in the big red buckets dumped on their captains head!
That afternoon we went to the public swimming pool!
Our third day we tried something new; having a Carnival Day. We gave each child one ticket per station. We told them that they could try one of everything, or they could use all of their tickets at one place. You can see in the pictures below the different activities the children were able to play:
Left-Javier(volunteer) see’s how many kids can pick up marbles using chopsticks in 30 seconds. Right- Janis(volunteer) is a very talented artist, so we put her in charge of the Face Painting station!
Left John (Gongyi) was in charge of bowling, while on the right Walker(volunteer) waits for someone to shoot a basket.
Left-Gail (Gongyi) was working the bucket toss. The kids tried tossing a ping pong ball into 6 buckets. Mary (Yuling/ one of our housemothers) worked the Clown toss station. The kids tried throwing 3 balls into a clowns mouth.
Left Tresa(volunteer) helped fix up hair while on the right Rena (Gongyi) was waiting to capture some silly pictures!
Left-Mary (our teacher) worked the drop a chopstick into a bottle. Right-Shirley(Gongyi) worked the ring toss station.
Michelle and I were very blessed this year with so much extra help, that we were able to just walk around and watch the pure joy of all the children. Everyone was laughing, smiling and have such a great time. On several occasions we saw children skipping with joy going from station to station.
At the end of the third day we had a huge cook out. The kids ate hot dogs, chips, fruit, mixed vegetables and got to wash it all down with a soda. We also had a talent show with singing and dancing. It was a fantastic time. If you are interested in making a donation to help cover some of the camp costs, please click here. If you might be interested in helping volunteer at next years camp, please email me at ben@homeofhope.org
We thank you very much for taking the time to read about our children. We apologies for the length of this update but it was filled with such joy and excitement we just could not express it in words.
Bless you