We ended up with right at forty people in and out for our Halloween party last night. Some of the kids from Seaside Christian Academy came by to start us off. Then Seasiders of all ages began to arrive. Lora came dressed as Sydney. Daniel was a G.I. Joe. Brennan was a cow. MeeMaw and Anne were witches. Peter Pan was among us. Cory found a flat light bulb among his Mom's paraphernalia, taped it to his chest, and became the poor man's Iron Man. I had my Superman cape, of course.
We ordered lots of pizza from Poppa John's. Good stuff. Cathy made a great cake. I'm pretty sure some of the candy never made it to the distribution bucket. Some of the folks stayed inside the whole time talking and eating. Others hung out on the front porch so we could see and interact with the kids. The onslaught of kids began even before dusk and didn't stop until well after we turned off the porch light.
I was still wavering on what costume to give the grand prize to. I kind of leaned toward staying Sesame Street traditional and going with the first costume that began with the letter B. Then I tried to think of one that would be more unusual, yet still have a good chance of showing up. I finally settled back on fire fighter. I let the distributers know that I wanted to be contacted immediately if a fireman ever showed up. And he did. Just one the whole night. It was a little boy about four years old. He had an amazing costume, too. Reflective tape, cool hat and all. I was inside at the time, but the word came in time for me to rush madly outside. I whooped it up just a bit to make sure he knew he was something special. Then I grabbed as much candy as I hold and stuffed it into his little pumpkin basket. It pretty much filled it up. The little kid was quite a trooper through the whole thing. I don't think he had any idea what was happening. His parents were a bit taken aback as well. But it was fun. Well worth the effort. Oh, I also had my picture taken with one tiny Superman. His Dad made the request. I suppose he wanted to show the little guy what he was going to look like in a hundred years or so.
I have no idea how many kids came by. We gave away two hundred and seven New Testaments along with the candy. We had two hundred and eight, but Rita forgot to give away the one she was entrusted with. She'll have to take care of that this week sometime. When we ran out of Bibles we continued on with tracts until we ran out of those, too. I'm sure there were three or four hundred at least. The kids were so excited to get "a book." It was so unexpected. They would run to their parents and show it to them. We heard several parents say things like, "I'll read it to you when we get home." And then there was the one boy who showed it to his Dad. Dad asked him if he was going to read it. The kid thought for a minute. He looked at his bag of candy in one hand and the book in the other. He looked at his Dad, obviously in a dilemma. And he tossed the book to the ground. To his credit, Dad made him pick it up and reproved him for "treating the book that way." What an amazing opportunity this was to get the Word into the hands of people without ever leaving our front porch.
Proverbs 30:24-28 says, "Four things on earth are small, yet they are extremely wise: Ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer; coneys are creatures of little power, yet they make their home in the crags; locusts have no king, yet they advance together in ranks; a lizard can be caught with the hand, yet it is found in kings' palaces."
Father, thank you for all those special little creatures of yours we had a chance to see last night. Use your word to touch even one of them. Amen.
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