Celebrating Life!
Happy 4th of July to all of our friends and families in the United States of America!! We hope you are enjoying a wonderful day of celebration. The NCC team, HOH leaders and all of the children have just completed an epic Friday night party to celebrate the end of our week-long VBS.
One of the most beloved attributes of our Zimbabwean friends is that they love to celebrate and boy, do they do it well. Tonight, we opened the evening with the camp worship songs that the kids absolutely belt out at the top of their lungs. And then there is the dancing to go along with singing. It is spectacular to see their freedom of expression to let God they love Him and are having the best time of their lives. I can only imagine God’s great delight in receiving the worship of his precious children with such pure JOY! Check out one of their favorite songs, Everlasting Love. If you find yourself wanting to stand up and sing along – GO FOR IT!!
The party continued with a fashion show featuring the beautiful skirts and headbands created by the girls in the sewing program. Gari’s wife, Virginia, leads this part of the HOH ministry, housing young adult women for extended vocational training who then work with the girl campers throughout the week. They were so excited to model their new creations along with our bright orange camp t-shirts.
The girls learned how to sew at camp and modeled their new creations with the camp t-shirt.
All the girls at the end of the fashion show
Each of the camp teams had another opportunity to perform their chants and then we began with distribution of gifts to the children. We wish to thank New Community Church for Bibles that were given to each of the children. The NCC leaders wrote notes to the children with words of love and encouragement. The children then received a bright orange draw string back pack with all of the crafts they had created throughout the week as well as a framed photo to commemorate their time here. It felt like Christmas morning on this 4th of July in Zimbabwe!
The children enjoying their new Bibles from NCC along with a photo and draw string back pack reminding them to hide God’s word in their hearts.
Thank you NCC for the children’s Bibles!
Drawstring back packs with our camp logo designed by Kate Taylor-Keeling
The NCC team then offered tributes of thanks and more gifts for each of the HOH staff and young adult volunteer leaders. Under Gari’s leadership, these people are the heartbeat of the year-round HOH ministry with extraordinary dedication and deep Biblical knowledge, as they give of themselves. This is Hellen who herself grew up in HOH children’s home, was provided with an education, and is now on staff with HOH and is our primary camp leader. She exhibits extraordinary godly wisdom and is now also a loving mother to her own baby, Alexus who was with us at camp.
Connie with Hellen our camp leader on HOH staff
To close out the night, our beloved Lucy created the most beautiful and delicious chocolate, lemon, and carrot cakes to further celebrate our theme verse and orange camp color. She instructed each NCC leader to ensure that every child had a chance to enjoy a piece of each flavor of cake. What extravagant love she is modeling for all of us to bless the children.
Lucy and her mouth watering cakes to bless the children
The most important celebration of all is that many children made a first-time decision for Christ this week with many, many more expressing their desire to recommit their lives to Christ. We cannot even fathom how the angels are rejoicing!!