The Salvation Army opened the Patvērums Childrens Day Centre in March 2002 to provide a safe environment for underprivileged children from the local community in Riga.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Happy 5th Birthday Patverums
On Friday we celebrated Patverums 5th birthday. Inese, Vineta, Natalija, Irena and I spent a lot of the week planning, shopping and preparing for the big day.
So Friday came...
Unfortunately it was the Friday that Natalija had to go to university so we were short staffed, although she was able to come in for a couple of hours before her afternoon lectures started. This meant that the 4 of us were a little stretched but we were finished just in time. I was putting cucumber sticks onto the plates as our guests were walking up the stairs!!
The afternoon and evening went really well. We had 69 people attend. This was made up by most of our regular children and teenagers that attend the centre, some of their families, some 'past' children, current staff and some 'past' staff and volunteers. Also Sarah from Riga 1 came, Evie from the Training centre and a number of people from Headquarters and PABA joined us. We were also privileged to have Commissioner Ros Poke (Sweden and Latvia Territory) with us while she visited the Region.
We started with the 'official' bit! Chris (our assistant Regional Commander) spoke, saying thanks and goodbye to Graeme and I. It was one of the parts of the day I was least looking forward to but it went well. Then she welcomed Inese as the new leader which was great to witness. Ilga (director of social work and one of our first members of staff) said a few words and then it was left to me to finish up! As always there were lots of flowers and a few presents too :-)
With that done it was time for food!!
As part of our celebrations we invited a guy called Stuart from Riga 1 corps to 'entertain' the children. He is involved in evangelistic programs and is especially good at entertaining and presenting the Gospel to families and young people. He did a great job and as you will see from future pictures everyone really enjoyed the 'show'!
After this we moved from the cafe area into Riga 1's main hall where we had a bouncy castle for the rest of the day. It was a hit!! This isn't the first time we've hired one but as it's been a while for most of our children it was a first at Patverums. Alongside this we had various games and quizzes such as 'count the number of sweets in the jar', 'apple bobbing', & 'the '5' quiz'.
Of course we had birthday cake, in fact we had 2, and we all spent the rest of the evening playing and talking together. By 7.15pm everyone was gone, leaving Inese, Vineta, Inga (former member of staff) and myself to clean up. By 8pm we were done and ready to go home!
It was a really special day and one I wont ever forget! God blessed us once again with a wonderful day and I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did!!
posted by Patverums Childrens Day Centre @ 5:54 pm
