Thirty excited children, owl ornaments, teenagers, adults, Uno, tag, basketball - what do all these things have to do with one another? Parents’ Day Out!

For the last 2 years we have sponsored an event for the families and friends of Grace Community Church called Parents’ Day Out. It began with wanting to serve our GCC families and friends during the busy holiday season. Our hope was that parents would be able to have some free time to shop or wrap (or really do anything that they wanted to!) without their children. We also wanted to serve their friends who didn’t belong to a church or don’t have family close by or really anyone who wanted some childfree time.  That’s how it began, but it has become so much more!

Last year, we had about 20 kids that came to play and hang out, playing games with Pastor Don outside and doing crafts or playing board games with adults. They also watched a movie and ate delicious snacks.

This year, our crowd increased to 30 children who participated in addition to the 15 youth that helped, and with several adults, our crowd swelled to over 50! Our GCC youth director, Stacey, made this an event for the youth to help with, and the younger children loved it! It was a gift for the younger kids to be able to play with the teens and have them help with crafts or just have some conversation about sports and movies or really anything.

We also were able to include a nursery this year. This allowed a few more families to be able to participate. The adults that helped were wonderful and just sat and held babies and watched them play together in the nursery.

It has been a gift to our staff and, this year, to several non-GCC attending families to be able to have a place to let their kids play and enjoy some time with others. It was a blessing for the staff to get to be with so many kids and see them enjoy each other and gave us a chance to get to know children and youth a little bit better.

We were thankful to have so many willing volunteers and excited to have so many families participate. We hope to grow our numbers next year so that even more parents can have the day out!

In Him,

Cara