Topic: God things
On overload and overwelmed by all the recent activity at home and church, I took a little unplanned break from blogging. All is well though, no worries.
One of the activities we were all involved in was our annual block party on halloween night at church. A few years ago, the church had a block party that hosted around 400 people. Last year they had 800 people and this year it may have been that many again. (I haven't heard the official count yet) Hats OFF to Ann, our block party coordinator! She does a fabulous job and works on it all year long. She was working this year with major pain (literally) and thankfully, she was training an assistant.....smart lady!
My only job I was able to contribute was to man the popcorn machine for a few hours that morning, making a small dent in the 800+ bags of popcorn needed for the night! As I went to sleep that night, I kept smelling the strong scent of popcorn on my hair. Along with the popcorn, we had people cooking and serving up hot dogs, canned soda, bowls of scooped frozen yogurt (it takes serious arm muscles to scoop frozen yogurt for 800 people!) and brewing up gourmet coffee and hot cocoa. There were also multitudes of cupcakes!! All for free to our block partiers. In the worship center, where the food court was, we had a video of our past year's children and youth events and also of the pastor, children's pastor, and youth pastor all speaking about the church. It was very exciting! People were listening.....their eyes looked hungry for more than hot dogs.
We had regular fun game booths and inflatable jumping games (3 huge ones) and this year they rented a 'rock wall' that you could climb with harnesses and everything! IT was very cool! Very comical was the little 5 year old Spiderman who could not get a good grip and climb the rock wall. The thought of it still makes me giggle! There were all manner of princesses, fairies, and ballerinas found airborn most of the evening in the inflatable bouncing booths. There were superheroes with orange frosting stained cheeks, ladybugs with hot cocoa mustaches, and even a few doggies becostumed for the evening.
Sooooooo many people from all around our neighborhood. They were dressed in all kinds of costumes, including one very scary looking guy in a satan costume, wearing a mask with a long realistic looking tongue hanging down and split at the end. He never took it off either....weird! A pastor friend of mine said Satan often shows up at his church too, but he is usually disguised as a gossipy, bitter woman or controlling committee member, etc. Makes ya think, doesn't it?
We got lots of thanks and people confused as to why we'd put this wonderful event on for free! So it gave us an opportunity to tell them we care about the families in the community and want people to feel welcome at our church. Most of these people likely do not have a church or much faith or hope in life. Our wonderful church members used a holiday that a lot of Christians shun these days (understandably) and used it to bring a neighborhood of searching people to our church to be loved on by our members.....by Jesus.
Pray with me that God will draw these people back to our church for services and children and youth activities, where they can hear more about this Jesus (and this Church), who loves them.
We call the event Rock the Block....and I hope it shook up some things!
