Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Did you ever hear of a window-painting contest?

Will this work for an outreach?
I thought maybe we could serve hot cider at the village 'Ragamuffin parade', but the Recreation supervisor felt that it's already hard to keep the kids' attention on lining up, and that it would be counter-productive to introduce any new distractions. So I (boldly for me) asked if there were any other upcoming events, and he mentioned the window painting contest. Apparently they have the kids paint (on paper, not directly on the windows) and then post the paintings on the store windows in town. So maybe we can have a beverage table.

I'm already thinking of potential problems:
-What if it rains?
-What if a child is allergic to apple juice?
-What if there's no graceful way to indicate that we're serving just to show the love of God? Kids receive so well that maybe they'll just take it for granted.
-What if we don't have enough apple juice?
-What if we have way too much apple juice?
-What if all the stores are sold out and we can't buy apple juice?
-what if a kid gets burned on the hot chocolate?
-What if ...

OK, let's think of solutions:
- Ask the supervisor if we can move the beverage table to the rec center, in case of rain. Or if not, switch the outreach to a "supermarket umbrella escort" (which I think would actually be a pretty good outreach, but you can't really plan for rain).
- These kids are 4th through 8th grade. They should either know what they are allergic to, or should have a parent with them.
- There will probably be parents around with whom we can communicate our intent to show the love of God. I think the parents will really like that we are doing something for their kids, as long as they don't think we are proselytizing.
- We'll serve until we use up the apple juice or until noon. Then we'll leave. If there is lot's of juice left over, we can give it to the food pantry, or the sunday school.
- If there is a nationwide shortage of apple juice, we'll serve lemonade instead
- Serve only cold beverages

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