Wow! God is showing off today :) This is the first year our church has done this in Parma, so we made sure the elementary school knew what we were hoping to do....and they TOTALLY got on board with us....the principal added an announcement about our cookout/back to school bash to the school's auto calls and last night when our church was packing up all the backpacks for today someone stopped by the church with 27 more backpacks and said those were from the teachers at Parma Elementary.....
THIS. IS. AWESOME.
89 loaded backpacks to give away to bless the families in Parma...plus a bag of school supplies for every kid who came to the cookout
All these businesses came together to help with costs of food and inflatables...
The predicted thunderstorms held off so no bouncy castles blew away with kids in them....one of my anxious thoughts from last night...ha!
Tons of people turned out....about halfway through the event we had already met and registered 50 families for drawings.....that doesn't count all their family members.
These awesome businesses gave us giveaways to also bless a bunch of parents!
Friends reconnected and talked about who they have for teachers this year....
We offered popcorn, cotton candy, drinks and hotdogs thanks to generous donations of supplies and machines to do it!
Maybe you saw my blog last Saturday....some guys went over to help a man work on his siding....well, he showed up today. I thought maybe he wanted to sign up for some of the drawings so I started getting the tickets ready for him to sign, but he said, "No, put me to work!" Later, I heard he said when the guys were at his house helping him last weekend he realized how much he really needs a group of guys to be a part of and he is looking forward to joining those guys at our church....I ALMOST STARTED CRYING....kidding....I DID START CRYING :)
This young lady skinned her knee at the park, but a couple firemen where there because they heard what we were doing and wondered if we would like them to bring a fire engine over for the kids to look at.....so they bandaged her all up.....AWESOME!
This little girl won the Elsa/Anna backpack and posed for me....
This young lady came alone at the beginning of the event and sat with a group of our Village Hope ladies who were helping to pack up more school supplies as we ran low. She helped them a ton, so they were REALLY PULLING for her to win a backpack....when she did, high fives all around!
Vannah helped with face painting and Kenna and Kassi helped kids make SLIME....
It was a pretty incredible day! Even our General Dollar Store got on board and put up signs for people to donate money or school supplies this past week for the event and some of the workers from the store personally brought things over for us.....it is really hard to describe how wonderful it was to see this day unfold!
