Everything went real smooth! It was so fun to watch the kids playing the games and having a blast. My favorite to watch was Shadows Cattle Roundup! The only trouble we had with any of the games was with Skye's Treetop Takeoff, most of our birds bit the dust before the evening ended. We had one left that died 10 minutes before our event ended! We even added a few things to our event to make it even more fun. We had a cake walk, which was a huge hit for the children and adults. We had face painting, another hit. We also had a fire outside where the kids could roast marshmallows (instead of Smore's Central). We served nachos and cheese and tea and lemonade free of charge to guests and that was a huge success as well.

Group has made everything so easy to carry out, so I want to personally thank you for helping us with our ministry! You think up the ideas and make it so easy for us to do!

We give the praise to Jesus, because this was all about Him! I will end this story with the same way I started it! Until next time...Wah-Hoo we're through!!

Misty

We had a great Wild West Fall Fest.  We have been trying for a few years to figure out how to change from our Trick or Trunk to a Fall Festival.  The costumes at the Trick or Trunk were getting more and more bloody and violent and we wanted to have a less secular,  more celebratory time with the kids.  Wild West Fall Fest was the ticket.  We sent out invites to all of our VBS families.  We had it the Sunday before Halloween.  We started out with registration where each parent got a map of the setup and a note explaining the evening.  The kids got a Trail Guide where they got a stamp in each area/game they went to.  We had a family photo shoot with a western theme (cowboy hats and bandanas available to dress up in) and let the families be silly or serious in their photo.  We then had a simple meal of hot dogs, beans, mac n cheese, chips, and drink.  The families then went to the game area where there were 8 games, S'mores central, and a craft area.  Our pastor did the Pecos Pete part so it was called Pecos Patti's Punkin' Patch since she is a female.  We had 2 show times for her.  We did include the candy part from Trick or Trunk but we called it Trunkin'.  It ended the evening.

Overall, it was a HUGE success.  We have had nothing but complements from parents and kids.  In fact, some of the kids didn't want to go home with their parents.  They wanted to stay and play longer.  We were exhausted in the end but it was so worth it to be able to offer a Christian fun time for families in the area.  We ended up with about 40 kids/21 families and 14 Trunkers.  We know that we will have more next year because this year was so much fun. 

I am so glad to see that Group is doing a Fall Fest 2008!  It can only get better from here if we keep our eyes on GOD.

Thanks for everything!!

In CHRIST's love,

Lisa

WHAT A NIGHT AT WILD WEST FALL FEST

This was our fourth annual carnival on Halloween for our community.  We rent a community hall so that the event is not in our church building.  We want to be somewhere neutral for the community.  Most of the younger children go to the businesses in the local mall after school, where parents know it is safe for their children.  Now this particular hall is next door to that mall.  This is perfect because we send our youth kids over to the mall with invitations, for the children who are trick or treatn’ there, before our event starts.  This draws more families over to our event.  It seems that children in our community are not going door to door so much anymore so we have been known as the “other thing in town” to explain the lower number of children going Trick or Treatn’.  Praise the Lord.

We had some unique families show up this year.  We had the king, queen and their little princess show up.  One father come dressed up as a member of the band “KISS”.  It was very authentic looking complete with black body suit, exposed bare chest, face make-up, 4” platform shoes and fluffy black wig.  Our young pre-teen girl volunteers found this a little intimidating (he stood about 6’ 5”).  I’m 5’ 11” and he made me feel short.  One of their mother’s told them to “suck it up” and they did after all it is all in fun and we pray that these characters from our community show up.

Our Pecos Pete got challenged to tell a “scary story” because the pumpkin skit wasn’t doing it for these particular pre-teens.  So he told them that Jesus taught about a place called Hell.  It is here that people will go if they don’t know Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  He said that this is scary and then he shared the gospel message with them.  The girls really appreciated his explanation of the Truth.  It gave them something to think about.

I want to thank Group for providing Bible themes and support materials to go along with our outreach nights.  The first two years were simply called carnivals.  We handed out Bibles and music CD’s, advertised our summer VBS and collected potential names to send invitations to prior to the VBS.  HEROES was our program in the third year and that was awesome as it totally transformed how we approached this special outreach on Halloween.  WWFF was just as awesome as we were able to use so many of our props that we had created for AR.  We had fences, saddles, ropes etc. all over the place.  It was so great that we didn’t have to build so much stuff this year which made the whole planning of this event even easier.  The one really great thing was putting up the Bible Buddy posters that say “God is real”, “God is with us”, “God is Strong”, “God is Awesome”, and “God is in charge”.  What great statements of faith to have displayed for the community to see.  Families from the community now look forward to this carnival every year and there are those who ask my assistant if it is on because they love bringing their kids to it.  Thanks to Group’s ideas, we’ve made our outreach event even better.  I’m hoping that your program next year will tie into the VBS theme again.  I’d love to see games that are based on experiments and other cool science stuff.  

Way to go Group!

Cheryl