Tuesday, November 3, 2009 Little Tykes Trick or Treat: A Huge Success!

This last Friday, October 30, we partnered with walking mall businesses for the Little Tykes Trick or Treat event held in Downtown Helena.

Like our involvement with Downtown Helena's recent Kid's Fall Fest, serving parents and their kids is a great way to develop relationships and engage our community by impacting peoples' lives in a positive way.

SERVING BUSINESS OWNERS

First, we offered to help business owners decorate their store fronts. Decorating for Halloween can be difficult for business owners in the midst of all their other responsibilities. Shown here is the display for Lasso the Moon.

SERVING PARENTS & KIDS

Second, we created a decorated area in the walking mall (hay bales, scarecrow, etc) as a free photo opportunity for parents. Parents love to have photos of their little tykes dressed up for Halloween. But for parents who did not bring a camera, we partnered with local professional photographer Anthony Harden of Harden Photo-Graphics which is located in Helena, Montana. Visit his blog at blog.hardenphoto.com.

The photo opportunity was a huge hit! We had lines of 5-15 people throughout the day, snapping nearly 300 photos for 107 families. One photo every two minutes during the three hour event. Now we are in the process of delivering these full-resolution photos via email. No small task!

Since the event, we have been receiving emails thanking us for the great photos of their little ones, as well as thanking us for creating the opportunity in the first place. We are grateful to the Placer Management for sharing the need and partnering with us in this, and we want to thank Anthony Harden for all the time and effort he donated to this event.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

We see this as just another way to be a church FOR Helena, not just a church IN Helena. We are eager to serve because it is another way to share God's love in a tangible way by "being the change." We invite you to Be The Change in Helena and join us in our next project at Encounter Church.

NOTE TO PARENTS: We have successfully delivered nearly 80% of the photos in two emails sends. If your child's photo was taken and you still have not received your photo, we suspect that our email has been 'blocked' or filed as 'junk/spam' by your email provider. We need you to contact us with 1) a verification of your email address, 2) a possible alternate address, and 3) a note that you have not received your photo.