Wreck of a Summer
September, 2008

    The end of this summer marks the one year anniversary of The Wreck Center being open… and we’d like to share with you about two special events that took place this summer.

Each summer, our local community sets aside three days to have a town festival called “Houtzdale Days.” This year, our team setup multiple booths with activities for school students, food and beverages, games and a great big bouncy gym for the little ones! We were almost unprepared for the response we had, and if it weren’t for the help from our local board of advisors for the youth center, we would have been quite understaffed. During the annual Houtzdale Days Parade through town, our team organized a “Bike Decoration” contest (winners seen below), with 30 grade school students participating. The parade route goes right by the youth center, and the contest brought positive exposure to our ministry, offering parents more opportunity to get to know us and our desire to serve our community in the name of Jesus.

Just two weeks before school reopened for the fall, we organized another event for the community called the “Back To School Zone.” This was a great night where we saw over 70 families come out to the youth center, bringing their children to receive free book bags, school supplies, hair cuts, snacks, games and activities! It was just amazing to see over a dozen local businesses get behind this event, and support it through financial and material donations, and freely giving of their time to participate, especially the hair stylists who each cut over 20 heads of hair in less than 3 hours! One of the highlights for us was to see how many people were putting prayer requests into our prayer request box, and being able to pray and provide for the practical needs of so many families.

This fall and winter we are already planning several big outreach events at The Wreck Center. Please be in prayer for the families and students God is bringing through our doors, and please come alongside us in trusting that God will provide all the resources and finances to continue to keep our doors open.