Neighborhood Block Party

We hosted another neighborhood block party on Friday night. This time we hosted with 7 other families in our neighborhood as part of an outreach event through our church. I'll tell more about the outreach part in another email, but I wanted to share some of the party logistics, in case you want to host a similar event in your neighborhood.

• Eight families got together over a Mexican Fiesta potluck to talk about the vision and plan for our party.
  
• We printed invitations and knocked on every door in our neighborhood, inviting them to the party. Knocking on their doors offered so many opportunities for conversations about life, dreams, sickness, needs, church... It was really cool!
  
• We borrowed chairs from a neighbor and set them up in circles around the yard. We also borrowed a camping canopy to shield some of the sun.
  
• We had a welcome table, to give out nametags and invite people to sign up for the neighborhood email list. Host team members worked together to personally greet each guest and start conversations with them.
  
• The church provided hamburgers, hotdogs and chips for the party. We invited neighbors to bring their favorite homemade dessert for a Neighborhood Dessert Bake-Off. Volunteers from our team set-up the food and made sure everything stayed stocked.
  
• For the kids, we set up 2 bounce-arounds in the backyard, tubs of bubbles, a cornhole game, and tubs of sidewalk chalk. The kids played dodgeball inside the bounce-around, which was so funny! The teenagers from our host teams were great - they made it their mission to make sure all the kids were safe doing the activities.
• We were too busy hosting to get a headcount, but we think we had about 130-150 folks from all sections in our neighborhood - from age 9months to 69! We were so pleased and so blessed!