Hallelujah

Unfortunately, even in Canada, October 31st is "Halloween". Our church had a family night, which we call our "Hallelujah" party. We had such a wonderful time. Since old and young come out and play together, we really do feel like one big happy family. It's amazing to see an older bachelor playing ping-pong with a girl of 10, and teen-agers playing foosball with their parents. It seems such a healthy way to spend the evening. I played pin the tail on the donkey, and fishing pond with the younger kids. Adults played UNO, Dominos, Scrabble, etc. I'm not sure, but the main sport just might have been chewing the "fat" or maybe eating cupcakes and guacamole (what an awful combination).
The real hit of the night was our jail. For $1 you could put someone in jail (a locked room) for 10 minutes. They could bribe the jailer to get out, paying a double fee. One woman paid for all the men and that set off a real war. I was the sherrif, so I had quite a workout chasing people around the room. Toward the end of the evening, they took up a collection, stole my keys and put me in JAIL. I was glad for the rest, actually. With our little game, we raised $73 for our Christmas missions project, which is for the Samatha Child Labourer School in Tuni, India.
We did fill goodie bags for the children (up to age 16!), who left very satsified with their haul. The adults looked very longingly at the bags and I think some children will be forced to "share". To satisfy the adult's sweet tooth, we had a "candy bar" walk (just like a cake walk), but it was funny because mostly the teen-agers won the kit-kat bars!
Isn't it great to have such a good time in our community? I've been thinking so much about that lately. Last week, our women took food, everyday, to a woman in our church who has been ill. In addition, one single gentlemen has been unable to do his laundry and a couple in our church went by and picked it up and washed a month's worth of laundry and took it back to him. Saturday the folks turned out to do a fall cleaning of the church - right down to scrubbing the oven and fridge. It all made me feel very warm and good about being those who Jesus said would be known by their love. Pray that we may continue in that love.