Wow what a week it has been.

Day 5 saw 122 kids once again waiting at the station to ride the Loco to the Little Valley Railway. Unlike Tuesday when 122 seemed like a huge number of kids, the rest of the week 100+ seemed like a manageable number. Just goes to show what an awesome team we have. After one crazy day the next 3 seemed not so crazy.

We had new kids today and we had over 70 kids who came every single day this week (although that number may include the young team too).

Today, (despite lagging energy levels in the team to start with) was full of enthusiasm and lots of jumping around and generally going Loco.

We are so grateful for everything that has been done to make this holiday program our most successful yet. The buzz this has generated out in the community and the feedback we have received has been overwhelming. Last night’s Family Fun Night was also the biggest it has ever been and great fun was had by all.

The team are having a well deserved break (for a day) but we are really looking forward to sharing with you all on Sunday just what we have been up to this week.

God has been so faithful this week. He has blessed us all in too many ways to count and we have really enjoyed a wonderful sense of community within our church family.

Roll on Anchor Kids for Term 3! We are looking forward to seeing all our new friends again.

We had approx. 104 kids for yesterday’s session in the morning. And then we had well over 200 people here last night for an AWESOME Family Fun Night! We had Jeremy the Magic Man, Dan and Ryan playing Jazz guitars in the foyer, face painting, sausages, sausages and more sausages! We had messy games, more messy games, songs, dances….. basically you name it we had it!!!

And here we are all set up and ready for the last morning session of Loco 2011!!!!!

God is great and we praise him for his mercies which truly are new every morning. We look forward to sharing with you on Sunday morning.

“Do do the Loco, chugging down the track with you…… Woohoo! Woohoo!

Well 122 kids yesterday and 116 today!

Today was another great hive of activity, with slightly less ordered chaos and slightly more chaotic order!

The kids all had a fabulous day, making trains out of noodle boxes, playing all kinds of crazy games, and enjoying chatting and snacking on the awesome home baking!

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU for all your baking, cleaning, apples, newspapers, socks and PRAYERS. We have appreciated them all (and please keep the prayers coming).

We are well into our stride now and things are (mostly) flowing very smoothly. You cannot run a programme for 120 odd kids without a few “exciting” little things happening each day.

We are so excited about tomorrow’s Family Fun Night. We are looking forward to sharing with you all what has been going on this week.

Please continue to pray for health; a few of us are struggling but hanging on by a thread. So we covet your prayers to get us bouncing through the rest of the week.

More updates tomorrow………… until then

With grateful thanks and joyful hearts,

The Loco Team.

Yep you read that right…………………….. 120+ kids on day 2 of Loco.

The team were awesome and took everything in their stride, but we were certainly kept extra busy making lots of new name badges and printing extra snack and chat booklets. We ran out of baking and the kitchen staff (buffet car) were almost stretched to breaking point keeping up with all the kids food as well as keeping the team fed and watered. 2 and ½ hours simply flew by today!

The kids were amazing today, we were jammed into the chapel like sardines, and some of the small groups are not so small anymore. It is a real privilege and very humbling to be standing on the stage looking out into the sea of grinning faces as we “Did the Loco” and “Jumped Up”.

Nipper and Princess (our resident steam engines are enjoying seeing all the smiling faces each day) and we’ve started the Letters and Jokes boxes today (which are already full).

Don’t forget Family Fun night on Thursday………………..It’s going to be FUN, FUN, FUN!!!

How many more can we fit in tomorrow?  We are having an absolute blast – give thanks to God for how things have gone so far and pray for peace, patience and calm as we face some very frenetic activity in the next few days.  If Jesus can make a few fish and loaves feed 5000 then I am sure he can make room for 150 kids in the church buildings!!!

The station was packed and a lot of fun was had by all. The kids LOVED the live rap by our very own Emcee Medic Brad “Be Rad” de Villiers. We had a chapel full of little rappers and then we taught them all to “Do the Loco!”

After chugging down the track for 2 ½ hours they all went home tired, happy and with engineers caps that they made as today’s craft.

Thanks for your prayers – today was AWESOME! We know that we have at least 10 new kids coming tomorrow, so we may well break the 100 mark. We’d like 120 so keep praying for the kids of Whitby.

Thanks for the socks, we had them in action today and the kids had a ball firing socks at one another. If you have more newspaper we could do with that and if you still have socks we’d never say no! J

If you happen to be around in the mornings this week, please come on in and ride the crazy Loco train, we’d love to see you!

Don’t forget Family Fun Night on Thursday. There already seems to be a lot of interest in that, so come and enjoy meeting new people and see what we have been doing all week.

Right, we’re off to give our boilers a rest for the afternoon. Look for tomorrow’s update……………. Tomorrow of course

The name of the program is Loco, and although you might think it, we’re not going crazy (well maybe a little).  This year, the holiday program is all about trains.  We’ll be visiting Little Valley Railway Line and getting to know a couple of engines called Princess and Nipper.  We’ll also be learning all about a pair of brothers from the Bible called Esau and Jacob. 

We would love to see you at the Anchor Church on Monday 18th July and through to Friday 22nd July.  Doors open at 9:45am sharp.  If you want any more information contact Christine Leadbeater on (04) 234 8448 or email kids@theanchorchurch.org.nz.

Anchor Kids

starts up again this Sunday 6th Feb 2011.

We hope that you can come along and join us!

We will have a fun start this Sunday with lots of songs, dances, games and a craft activity.   Then we will be looking at the life of Paul this term.

Paul is an exciting character from the New Testament of the Bible and he had a lot of exciting and scary things happen to him during his lifetime. Paul is our example of radical conversion.  He gave everything to Jesus.  This was no lukewarm conversion!

This series is designed to see children not just knowing about Jesus but radically living for him, unafraid to talk about what they believe.  This is the radical Christianity inspired by the Son of God who died a radical death: it is a very real conversion, a very real life lived for Jesus, a very real life lived in the service of a very real God.

The themes we will cover will include:

• Paul repents - Turning Away From the Bad Things

• Paul Begins to Preach – Telling others even when its hard
• Paul Persecuted – Learning to keep going no matter what
• Paul Protected - God looks after us
• Paul Revealing – Its the hard times which show what we are really like
• Paul Dying - To live is Christ, to die is gain

We would love to see you at AnchorKids.

Remember drop off is anytime from 9:45am with the program starting at 10am and finishing at 11:30am.