Intersection's Fall Festival

Last Saturday, I had the privilege of serving at a Fall Festival in Bloomington, hosted by the ministry Intersection (a division of Spread Truth). We set up hot chocolate, popcorn, games and an inflatable slide for the kids at the Orlando Northbrook Estates. Orlando is a low income government sponsored housing complex in Bloomington where we have done service projects before. Volunteers went door-to-door with pumpkins to invite kids of all ages to come out and join us for games and pumpkin decorating. Tons of kids and their families came out to enjoy our fall festival on that beautiful fall day...all set up and ready for fun

We used this time to promote a free babysitting program that we are doing at Orlando starting this week. One of the problems we found in the past working at Orlando is that people leave their children home alone while they go and run errands or something. And the way we discovered this was going door-to-door to invite the kids to come out and join us for our activities, and found these small children home alone opening the door to us (strangers) - not ok. So, seeing this need, I have worked with Intersection to organize a group of volunteers to spend Saturday afternoons babysitting the kids of this neighborhood for free. Our hope is that families will choose this time each week to get their errands done and not leave the kids home alone during other times.
It was such a joy to celebrate fall with these families and see their smiles match their pumpkin's... Happy Fall!