Pumpkin Carving Party!

Early last week, our realtor, Dave Dalzell, dropped off 8 pumpkins with a note saying, "Have fun carving some pumpkins with the neighborhood kids." Thanks, Dave, for those words and those pumpkins! They sat on our patio for a few days, and every time we passed them, our dream for how to use them expanded. I guess the Lord really wanted us to do a pumpkin carving party, because a few days after receiving the pumpkins, we received a box full of food for the kiddos - party food like oatmeal cream pies and capri suns. Then Josh talked to Jim, a guy from his church who owns a farm down in Buffalo Gap, who invited us to bring the kids down to his farm. The Lord throws way better parties than we do, so when we saw him putting this one together, we got pretty excited.

The only thing left to get together was the guests. Our plan was to walk around the neighborhood with Kendrick and Denise the night before to tell kids about it, but dinner ran late, and it was dark before we got to it. I was pretty bummed about this, thinking that all the other stuff the Lord had prepared was going to go to waste and that the party would be a failure. So I went out to the park in the middle of our hood and just turned it over to the Lord. He showed me an image of us just standing outside our house watching a wall of kids coming towards us. So I felt at peace about it as I went to bed on Friday.

On Saturday morning, we went down to Kendrick's house at around 9 o'clock. We had told everyone who we had gotten a chance to talk to that we would meet at our house at 10am to carpool down to the farm, so we figured we would try to meet up with Kendrick a little before that to go around and tell some more kids. We knocked at his door repeatedly, but there was no answer. We just kind of stood there, not really knowing what to do. I was thinking of the comforting image from the Lord the night before, so when Josh said, "Man, let's just pray that the Lord brings some kids," I was definitely on board. So we stopped right where we were on the street near Allelon house and prayed. When we got back, Angel was at our house waiting for us! We told her about the party, and she went home to get her nine year old, Jerrod. That's one kid! A few minutes after that, we found Kendrick; and within 30 minutes we were piling 7 kids and several of us into a few cars to head down to the farm!

That day was filled with so much joy! The Lord put the whole thing together, from the pumpkins to the food to the farm to the kids. We just got to enjoy His spirit being poured out on all of us as we rested in His true life.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the outing:

I'm helping Jerrod and Allenia while Aaron and Kim help Bobby.

Stephanie, Allenia, and Poon pet Mr. Jim's baby donkey.

Bobby was hungry!

So were Stephanie and Tarneshia!

Stephanie looking precious.

A little ornithophobic. Luckily Candace was there!

Possibly my favorite photo ever. If you've never seen joy before, this is what it looks like.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!