It finally happened - last week was our church's enourmous week-long community event; Mal-FUNction. We had an event everyday, to reach out to the community. It was lots of fun... but completely exhausting and i've hardly had a minute to spare for over a week - hence why i've not been around the blogosphere much lately.
After the official launch on sunday, monday saw the first event. It was a community prayer night. I wasn't expecting it, but the community responded amazingly well. Everyone seemed happy to contribute prayer suggestions when people door-knocked and asked for requests. That kind of response from people in the neighbournood was really heartening. It makes me feel like people actually care about things other than themselves after all.
Tuesday night was a community dinner; come along and bring a friend. This dinner was for the older members of the church, so a bunch of youth group-ers came along to serve. After a day of work, i was exhausted, but suprisingly, it was lots of fun! I served the chicken (ahem... i may have got a little competitive with the girl serving the lamb - but i won; i ran out of chicken first!), and did most of the dishes. We had a great system. I washed, another girl rinsed, a few people dried and others put away. By the time we'd washed three courses worth of dishes and glasses for 100 people, my fingers were super pruney, but it had been fun mucking round in the kitchen with the others.
Wednesday, i changed into my pretty, pretty new Melbourne dress. Then it was time for the second community dinner, for the younger set this time. Bri came along (true definition of an excellent friend) and we had an awesome meal. We'd forgotten about wine, so we snuck in some malibu - not that we needed it, i was already on a massive high. It's the dress; it was awesome. The speaker was inspriational, the music was cool and hanging out with English and Bri was a hoot.
On Thursday, a few of us headed down to Coles and spent the next three hours giving away free muffins and bottles of water to shoppers. Again, it was well recieved. A bunch of people asked us 'what's the catch?', but once we explained that we didn't really have ulterior motives, most people were pretty happy to chat to us. Some looked at their feet and walked straight past, but lots were smiley and thankful. Two young boys hung around for over half an hour, eating muffins and yelling out to passerbys 'hey, these are awesome! eat some! really!!'. That was pretty cool. I was dubbed the Pied Piper, as children like these tend to flock to me... they said they'd be at friday and saturday's events! A few other people were extra keen, and lots said they'd already heard about the events and were coming. It was a great response - we gave away hundreds of bottles of water!!
On Friday, we set a world record for the most people doing hopscotch at once! You had to have four people on a court and two observers on every court; so we had 66 hoppers and 33 observers. Almost 100 people over all! Nobody had set this record before, so we were pretty much definately going to win. Why did we pick hopscotch? Well, we wanted to raise awareness for child slavery - and hopscotch is a game which child slaves wouldn't have a chance to play. World Vision came along to support the cause. We were really pleased with the turnout; lots of people from the community were there - and so were the two boys from the night before, with one of their mates! Afterwards, we showed three movies on different big screens, with free popcorn and other yummy treats.
Saturday was the big day - our street party!!!! We blocked off the entire street, had police escorts, bands, choirs, kids singers, face painters, a giant giraffe costume (woot!), kids programs, a rock climbing wall, a bouncy castle, games, free fairy floss, community canvases, a free market (yes, FREE, not flea!!)... and all of that was free!! There was some delicious food and other treats too, at super cheap prices. A bunch of people in the community had stalls selling cool wares. Plus, Compliments of Gus came all of the way from Melbourne to play for a few hours; they're an awesome band! Love them. I spent most of the arvo running around like mad doing this and that, and then i sat around waiting - unsuccesfully - for people to come to our kids club activities. I finally got some free time before i had to rush home for dad's party. It was so much fun! I ate fairy floss and rainbow paddlepops, WOO! There were hundreds of people there! Dr.B thought there were about 1000 people through in total, which is amazing. We were all so stoked.
Over the week, so many people had put in an amazing amount of effort. Seeing both the church community and the wider community pull together to create such amazing events. It was fantastic. So much fun - made the tiredness worth it. Thankfully, we're not doing it every year... but in two years time, we'll be excited to do it all again, hopefully with even better results. Yay team!
After the official launch on sunday, monday saw the first event. It was a community prayer night. I wasn't expecting it, but the community responded amazingly well. Everyone seemed happy to contribute prayer suggestions when people door-knocked and asked for requests. That kind of response from people in the neighbournood was really heartening. It makes me feel like people actually care about things other than themselves after all.
Tuesday night was a community dinner; come along and bring a friend. This dinner was for the older members of the church, so a bunch of youth group-ers came along to serve. After a day of work, i was exhausted, but suprisingly, it was lots of fun! I served the chicken (ahem... i may have got a little competitive with the girl serving the lamb - but i won; i ran out of chicken first!), and did most of the dishes. We had a great system. I washed, another girl rinsed, a few people dried and others put away. By the time we'd washed three courses worth of dishes and glasses for 100 people, my fingers were super pruney, but it had been fun mucking round in the kitchen with the others.
Wednesday, i changed into my pretty, pretty new Melbourne dress. Then it was time for the second community dinner, for the younger set this time. Bri came along (true definition of an excellent friend) and we had an awesome meal. We'd forgotten about wine, so we snuck in some malibu - not that we needed it, i was already on a massive high. It's the dress; it was awesome. The speaker was inspriational, the music was cool and hanging out with English and Bri was a hoot.
On Thursday, a few of us headed down to Coles and spent the next three hours giving away free muffins and bottles of water to shoppers. Again, it was well recieved. A bunch of people asked us 'what's the catch?', but once we explained that we didn't really have ulterior motives, most people were pretty happy to chat to us. Some looked at their feet and walked straight past, but lots were smiley and thankful. Two young boys hung around for over half an hour, eating muffins and yelling out to passerbys 'hey, these are awesome! eat some! really!!'. That was pretty cool. I was dubbed the Pied Piper, as children like these tend to flock to me... they said they'd be at friday and saturday's events! A few other people were extra keen, and lots said they'd already heard about the events and were coming. It was a great response - we gave away hundreds of bottles of water!!
On Friday, we set a world record for the most people doing hopscotch at once! You had to have four people on a court and two observers on every court; so we had 66 hoppers and 33 observers. Almost 100 people over all! Nobody had set this record before, so we were pretty much definately going to win. Why did we pick hopscotch? Well, we wanted to raise awareness for child slavery - and hopscotch is a game which child slaves wouldn't have a chance to play. World Vision came along to support the cause. We were really pleased with the turnout; lots of people from the community were there - and so were the two boys from the night before, with one of their mates! Afterwards, we showed three movies on different big screens, with free popcorn and other yummy treats.
Saturday was the big day - our street party!!!! We blocked off the entire street, had police escorts, bands, choirs, kids singers, face painters, a giant giraffe costume (woot!), kids programs, a rock climbing wall, a bouncy castle, games, free fairy floss, community canvases, a free market (yes, FREE, not flea!!)... and all of that was free!! There was some delicious food and other treats too, at super cheap prices. A bunch of people in the community had stalls selling cool wares. Plus, Compliments of Gus came all of the way from Melbourne to play for a few hours; they're an awesome band! Love them. I spent most of the arvo running around like mad doing this and that, and then i sat around waiting - unsuccesfully - for people to come to our kids club activities. I finally got some free time before i had to rush home for dad's party. It was so much fun! I ate fairy floss and rainbow paddlepops, WOO! There were hundreds of people there! Dr.B thought there were about 1000 people through in total, which is amazing. We were all so stoked.
Over the week, so many people had put in an amazing amount of effort. Seeing both the church community and the wider community pull together to create such amazing events. It was fantastic. So much fun - made the tiredness worth it. Thankfully, we're not doing it every year... but in two years time, we'll be excited to do it all again, hopefully with even better results. Yay team!
No comments:
Post a Comment