Olympic Games theme celebrates kids

29 October 2024

Our own Txai Anglin, one of Australia's top junior 400m runners and multiple iinternational junior championshops medalist, lit the cauldron as part of the "opening ceremony" to our Children's Ministry Sunday Family Service.

By Darryl Whitecross

This year's Children's Ministries Celebration Weekend continued the Olympic Games theme following on from the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris mid-year.

The weekend began with three countries, Australia, Mexico, Tonga and France, competing in various events on the Saturday. The points tally from those events carried over into the Sunday where the entire congregation joined the teams from one of those countries to compete for a place on the dais.

The Sunday morning family service began with a torch relay made up of peope from The Salvation Army Stafford congregation, Clarrie was began the relay. He played representative basketball in Taree in the 1950s. Clarrie was followed by Bev who played state representative school sport as a runner in the 1950s then Graham who also ran for his school in the State Secondary Schools Association in the late 50s and early 60s. Husband and wife team, Darryl and Nerylie, took the torch from Graham. Darryl played representative football for the South Queensland Australian Football Association in 1981 and Nerylie represented The Salvation Army South Queensand Division in a then Eastern Territory netball carnival. Andrew then took the torch. He represented Queensland in touch rugby between 2011 and 2013. He passed the torch to Lincoln who took part of the Zone Laser Tag Australasian Championships in 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023. Elizabeth, Khaleaha and Amelia were the next torch bearers. The three girls represented their schools at state representative school sport districts level in athletics. Txai took the torch on the final leg of its journey before lighting the cauldron. Txai is a highly decorated junior runner, having represented competed for Australia at the Under 20 European Championships and the U20 world junior championships having competed in five countries.

Commentators for the morning were Stephen and Susan.

Events included boxing (folding boxes and making a tower), Bean Bag Tossing, Cotton Ball Shot Put and Bible Books Marathon.

The Games ended with a report from Tracey, Carlee and Sandra on what had happened during the year in Children's Ministries and a graduation ceremony.

France headed the leader board at the end of the two-day Games followed by Mexico, Tonga and Australia.