Maryborough

This week, Honzablog comes to you from the little town of Maryborough, in the Golden Triangle area of Victoria. As part of a More than Gold Commonwealth Games outreach program, I am here with several guys from the Salvo Youth Leadership School in NSW, and some YWAM guys from Adelaide to help the local churches run a Kids Games event.
The More than Gold thing started last Monday with two days of training and networking in Melbourne. Then when the Commonwealth games spectacular began, we hit the streets with balloon animals, face paint and some slickly produced sports related christian literature. All of us found the people we met, especially those on the trams and trains, were keen to chat and were interested in our large name tags and cool(!) purple T-shirts (start wearin' purple...)
On Sunday we went to Werribee to take part with the local Salvos in a big parade and street festival. Some Sudanese guys marched with us, then sang and played drums at the end of the march. I found a muppet type creature, and had a lot of fun interacting with kids along the parade route. After the parade, the Werribee Salvos band played, and the puppets sang, and kids danced and had fun, while the team painted more faces and made balloon Animals. Carrington, from Zimbabwe, painted me to look like Spiderman. I wore this face all the way on our long drive to Maryborough.
The town looks very dry, as it is in the grip of a drought, very little green around. But the people are really friendly, and this kids, well kids just want to have fun. The weather has been perfect for games, bright and sunny, but probably not so good for the town's lawns, or the prosperity of the farming Community.
Today was the second day of Kids Games, and teething troubles seemed to be getting ironed out. But the local people have done a fantastic job of organising things in a short time, and the kids seem to be having a great time. They are divided up into 9 teams and wear team bandanas. Points are scored for each game. Kids can also pick up points for their good behaviour, whether they help each other, encouragement etc.
In this town, there is little for kids to do, so we are very popular at the moment. Hopefully, the outcome of it is, a bit of the Christian message will rub off, and this little fun event will resonate through eternity.