Rewarding times

09.02.09 – 22.02.09

Time goes by fast when you are having fun. We decided to write the blog every second week because time simply goes too fast.

The snow went away and revealed the earth which is covered with leaves from the autumn last year. Now we almost have spring here. The birds are chirping and flowers are coming out. The wildlife awakens from its slumber and surrounds Cleeve House with beauty.

These past weeks CHYP has been doing three main projects:

•The first one is to restore Room 7, and that work is coming to an end now.

•The second is digging a trench in front of the house to avoid floods. It is taking a lot of time and effort, but it will save us energy since we won’t have to clear up after muddy, messy floods anymore. During that time, we all got the opportunity to use the digger, which was a new experience for us.

•Our third main focus has been to repaint the tearoom Counter. Francis Stacey, who has a lot of knowledge on wood graining, is our teacher throughout the team project. To repaint furniture, one has to go through a process in order to reach the final look. We started by sanding it down, and then painted a couple of undercoats plus painting another color on top of that. You have to do it several times if you want to have it done “properly”, as Francis would say. The finishing wood graining stage will be done by Francis. But that too has to be done in stages.

Apart from those projects, there has been a great deal of other activities going on;

Cleeve House is having a Wedding Fayre soon, so Anna called a bunch of companies and did some advertising to prepare for that.

Philip and Petra Hill came over to give an inspiring and informative testimony about their experiences with the Spirit World. Their talk became the topic of CHYPs conversations for the rest of the week.

On the weekend, Cleeve House hosted a game night for the regional bc brothers. Daniel Johnson and CHYP arranged the activity. The younger brothers seemed to enjoy their time together. If time allows, we plan to make it into an ongoing thing to unite the youthful bcs of this region.

CHYP also had the privilege of having Zack’s twin brother, Zeke, come over from New Jersey for a week. Two days earlier the Pobanz brothers both turned 18 years old, and can now officially be called “Men”. Zeke came here to see what CHYP is all about, as he is considering joining later this year. Zeke also helped us out with the three main projects, and did a personal project of making wood framed signs to go around the house.

Last but not least, CHYP had an outing day in London. Jonathan van Der Stok took us Sightseeing and drove them around to places such as China Town, Covet Garden and a Science Museum. We also drove past Big Ben, The London Eye, Trafalgar Square and Stonehenge. It was truly and overwhelming and exciting experience for us (Sam, Zack, Zeke and Anna.) As we were driven home, and had said goodbye to Zeke in Lancaster Gate, we couldn’t help but sleep. It had been two intensive weeks, and we are looking forward to the next ones ahead.