Apple juice and pretzels

We did an outreach on Saturday -- serving apple juice and pretzels to the kids who were doing the village window painting contest. Mike, my fellow student, was so much fun to work with. He is patient and encouraging with the fact that I find outreaches hard. And the big bonus was that he is great at pouring! In fact, he was so good at the apple juice that they called him over to the paint table, to pour paint, too. Talk about a hidden talent that came into play in service.

The funniest thing happened when the Recreation specialist commandeered us to help judge the contest. I was freaking out, but Mike encouraged me to stretch myself. And it was actually fun. We were seriously discussing which awards to give to the motorcycle painting-- "have a hardcore Halloween", and the baseball painting -- "the 2003 world scaries".

I was surprised by how well behaved the kids all were. Those who took multiple servings always explained that they were fetching extra for their painting partners. We went through about 200 servings of pretzels, but only 120 servings of apple juice. I think this was because it was an unseasonable cold day, and gray and windy to boot, and the kids were all freezing. For some unaccountable reason some of them were wearing shorts! I was wearing jeans with a turtleneck and a T-shirt over it, and a fleece jacket and a wind-breaker shell, and I was chilly. If we were to do this again next year, I'd allow for 200 servings of each. That's enough to serve the kids and the parents.

My real stroke of brilliance was in remembering to bring a big garbage bag and tape, so we could tape it along the end of the table. That's worth remembering for next year!

There were no overt opportunities to evangelize, but it contributed to building relationship between the church and the village. Also, some of the adults were clearly surprised at the fact that the church would give away something for free. And we seem to be building a reputation as the church who feeds people -- or at least serves beverages!