Thursday 31 July 2008

Tanzanian Travels - Lazy Lagoon

This one is a bit out of sync due to me deleting it by mistake. Anyway J and Z having their morning Chai (tea)


The view of the beach outside our banda on Lazy Lagoon




Simon and Zara on the boat ride to Lazy Lagoon


Pam and Joshua on the same boat :)




Our "home" for the five nights. The loft area was where J and Z slept. They thought it was pretty exciting.



We set the kids a challenge to make the biggest sandcastle. Of course the Mums and Dads were involved too. This one we made outside our banda so we could watch the tide come in and dismantle it. Even on the day we left the sandcastle still stood with only some battering from the ocean.





Gives you some perspective on how big the sandcastle was :)



At 7am we had Chai (tea) delivered to our Banda. J and Z got really into. Very milky tea with sugar in it. Even now they still ask for some. I don't tell them that at home they only get warm milk with a little sugar...cuts out the caffeine :)



Zara loved looking for starfish in the many pools when the tide was out. Trying to carry them all was not quite so easy.




The nets were soon abandoned when they were told the starfish wouldn't do them any harm



J and Z with Rahel. The managed to carry 12 starfish between them colouring from red to green to grey.





Z drawing pictures in the sand.



A morning of kayaking with our friends. Zara wanted to be as big as the other kids and use a paddle



Joshua and I senting off on an adventure against the tide. He talked the whole way....if he had used his paddle as much goodness knows where we would have ended up :)



Monday 28 July 2008

Tanzanian Travels - White Sands

On our flight with Air Uganda from Entebbe to Dar Es Salaam we made a quick stop in Kilimanjaro to pick up more passengers. This is a view of Mount Kiliminjaro from the plane. (its the furtherest away mountain in the photo)


Our early rise of 4am took its toll as you can see. This is J and Z finally giving in to tiredness on the taxi ride from Dar Es Salaam airport to White Sands Hotel.

A windy afternoon on the beach at White Sands


Waterworld next to our hotel. The kids loved all the slides.




Me on one of the slides at waterworld...felt like a kid again :)




Joshua our little fish....



and Zara our second little fish...



Simon and Zara enjoying the waves of the Indian Ocean


The Wunderli blog has been quiet for the past couple of weeks or so and the reason for this is that we were in Tanzania. We were able to take some time off and go to Tanzania for 10 days. It truly was a blessing from the Lord!!! The first 5 days we stayed in a hotel on the beach called White Sands just north of Dar es Salaam. The second 5 days we headed further north to a place called Lazy Lagoon (just what we needed...to be lazy!!!). There are 10 bandas (little round houses) on a penisula that you travel to by boat. It was like being on a tropical island and so quiet. The kids loved it. We were able to meet up with some friends of ours from the MAF Tanzania programme. They have three children so Joshua and Zara had a blast. The photos above will do more justice than I can put into words so enjoy them.
The Lazy Lagoon photos will follow in time. It took me two hours just to put these on due to a slow internet connection :(

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Holiday Club

Sorry the photos are not in any order....but enjoy!!!



Zara successfully guiding her balloon sheep to the rest of the flock

It is not easy trying to be a shepherd and guiding the sheep towards the rest of the flock. They can be a bit unruly and stubborn....I think there might be a lesson there :)


Luan helping the kids in making their paper sheep which we hid round the garden. The kids then had to go and find their sheep. The story behind this game was that God cares about each one of His sheep and doesn't want any of them to be lost.




All the paper sheep and two of the balloon sheep happily flocked together.



Sheryl reading to the kids at story time. They were very attentive!!


Joshua and Zara are on holiday from school now. Since the holidays are fairly lengthy (return to school the end of August) we decided to do a holiday club for some of the MAF kids. I took on the first two weeks, then two other families will take on the following weeks. The kids have really enjoyed the time. We meet on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A MAF colleague, Sheryl Strietzel has been doing a story time with them. On Monday we did the Good Samaritan and today we did the Lost Sheep. Luan, a friend from Far Reaching Ministries, did the craft today. The children had a great time learning about how God cares for each of His sheep and each made their own hand crafted sheep that they needed to take care of throughout the morning. On Friday I plan on doing Jonah and the big fish....pictures to follow.