South Africa 2012 - Day Nine

Day 9 - Sandboarding: God’s provision to parents

Another active day was planned and once again there were a few who decided to take the less strenuous option and either

stayed at the Lodge or dropped off people at sandboarding and then took off for shopping at the beach. Barbara and I, being the athletic ones out of the adults stayed with those who were sandboarding. Once again the training was about 5 minutes long which consisted of how to put the board on and how to point the board downhill.

Everyone did have to sign the indemnity form which I think said that if they died during the event they would bury them in the dunes.

Barbara and I were the photographers for the day and soon realized that this sandboarding

was just like a skateboard park and was God’s provision to parents as we just sat and watched kids wiping out time and time again. I even climbed up the slope and tried to find more difficult and dangerous slopes for them to wipe out on. By the end of the day we had even built a ramp that made the wipe outs even more impressive. Now Barbara and I had to try and show the youngsters up and grabbed a board and went up to the top of the hill. We obviously came down sitting on the board but there were no wipe outs although Barbara did go backwards for a while.

By noon it was getting pretty hot and so finishing at 12:30 was just about perfect. Mark, Janine, Julian and Alex returned from their shopping trip and we all headed back to the Lodge.

Saturday evening was going to be Pop Pop’s birthday celebration. The plans seemed to keep changing and instead of the guests arriving at 7 p.m. people started turning up at 3 p.m. The evening consisted of a lamb roast, a gospel choir and a marvelous rendition of a Julie Andrews song from the 4 Britton brothers. Mark then went into an im

promptu speech that was so uplifting as he talked about people dying and funerals. Not sure Dad was uplifted by the speech. Mark ended up in tears as did Julian, Guy got 5 words out before he broke down. Luckily I was the level-headed one and was able to get my speech out without tears. All in all it was a great evening and nice to meet all of Dad’s friends in South Africa.

Somehow I was volunteered to run the children’s Sunday School at church and so I had to put together some ideas before going to bed. Hence the late blog for Day 9.

1 John 2:15 - “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him”