Valentine Cookie Outreach

My friend Selena had this great idea. Last year she did it and said it went really well, so she recruited some friends to get in on the action this year. The idea was to reach out to our neighbors somehow and spread God's love. So we and another friend of ours baked a bunch of cookies, got together and decorated them, and exchanged cookies so we'd all have a big variety, packaged them up in cute little treat bags, and put tags on the handles of the bags with a note that says "Happy Valentine's Day from the LaMarche family, David, Maria, Violet and Calvin" with our address on it. The back side of the note card has the verse John 3:16 on it arranged in such a way that the word "VALENTINE" is vertical in the verse. When I type it out in the box where I type the post, the spaces are there so it looks like the word Valentine is vertical, but when I hit post it deletes the spaces...so this is not exactly what it looks like but you get the idea. The letters that are supposed to be vertical are capitalized and really, it just looks much better printed on the card surrounded with hearts. :) “For God so loVed the world, that He gAve His onLy begottEn soN, thaT whosoever believes In Him shall Not perish, but have Everlasting life.” I packaged up 13 treat bags with all the cookies I had Selena got these really cute heart treat bags and ribbon. All our treat bags were assembled Monday night after an effort decorating all the cookies we made. So after Dave got done with work today, we bundled up the kids, packed up all the cookie treat bags in a carrying sack and handed them out to our neighbors. Violet was really, really excited to hand out cookies to everybody. She insisted on carrying each individual bag of cookies to the door and ringing the doorbell. She got really shy though, at the moment when someone would open the door. She was supposed to say "Happy Valentine's Day!" but got stage fright each time. Instead she handed them the bag and let mommy do all the talking. Dave and Calvin were with me at the door but Dave was holding Calvin the whole time (he isn't the best walker in the snow). Everybody seemed to be really shocked that we were actually OUTSIDE in the middle of this snowy winter night, and most people were really grateful and thankful for us doing such a sweet thing. We handed out 13 bags, and only came across one house where nobody answered, so we made 12 personal contacts. Our neighbors to the north, Nate and Deb Beving, invited us in. Initially we planned on not accepting any offers to come inside, but they insisted we stop in for a second. We caught up with them a little, found out their girls both had recent birthdays and turned 13 and 10 yrs old (I'm thinking: babysitters!). Calvin loved petting their little dog. It was a nice conversation. They thanked us for the cookies, and off we went. The 12th house we stopped at was a house across the street and few houses south of ours. They opened the door, and happily greeted us. We said we were their neighbors from across the street and they said "which house?" and wondered because they hadn't seen us before. We pointed out our house, and noted the fact that our name and address were on the card attached to the cookies. They asked when we moved in and they felt ashamed that they hadn't met us yet. We told them no problem, we hadn't really met any of our neighbors yet! They were insistent on inviting us in and insisted over and over that we take off our boots and coats and sit down for a chat. I was anxious to get going since it was already 8 pm and we hadn't had supper yet, but I pushed those feelings aside and agreed to go inside to talk for a little while. We settled into their living room for about 10-15 minutes, and these two people (Jeff and Kathy) were just so excited and thankful that we stopped over and were SO excited to meet us. Upon leaving they gave us great big bear hugs and said they'd love to have us over for dinner some time. Wow! Dave said he had never met such inviting people in his life! They asked us how we both ended up in Cedar Falls since I was from Mason City and he was from Chicago, and we mentioned that it was our connection through church, and they asked us about that, found out where we went around here, and they were excited to tell us that they loved going to Heartland Vineyard right across the street, which I know is a solid Christian church that preaches the truth. Good to know! So, we may have met some Christians on our block. Both kids were pretty much melting down and tired so that is how the visit got cut short. They were so tired that they were laying flat on their backs side by side waiting to leave by their front door. I promised Violet mac and cheese if she could hand out the last bag of cookies to the next house and that got her feet moving pretty quick. Overall I think it was a success, we got to know and meet our neighbors, even some new ones that have moved in since we did. And with the scripture reference, we marked ourselves as Christians to the neighbors, I hope to make more contacts in the future!