School Supply Event, August 2009

School Supply Outreach Exceeds Belief
When we started planning a summer outreach back in June, no one had any idea what we were getting ourselves into. While we all had a heart for local community mission work, we never dreamed that the pieces would fall together so well and we would be so successful our first year.

As we began to organize an outreach, we all desired a name that we could brand ourselves with. We needed something for recognition. It was mentioned one day that we were reaching out instead of out-reaching. Reaching out was a kingdom-minded principle that we could all get behind. From that, Frisco Reach Out was formed.

At our first planning meeting, we decided that we wanted to serve the people of the community a pancake breakfast. We also figured that we could provide school supplies for the neighborhood children. The planning continued and several donations rolled in.
It was a dream of ours to also provide medical care and immunizations. This seemed like such a large task to undertake our first year, but it didn’t take long to remind us that nothing is impossible with God. Within a few weeks of deciding our purpose, we were able to contact a local clinic that specializes in pediatric acute care for uninsured children. They pledged their staff, volunteers and location for our outreach. They planned to provide one doctor and a full clinic of nurses to help the people we were targeting.

Opening up to medical care turned out to be one of the best decisions we could’ve made. After signing up with the pediatric clinic, a local practitioner, Dr. Mitra Canales, also offered her services for our outreach, enabling us to see and help adult patients as well. We feel very blessed to have these talented doctors and nurses associated
with our work!

Day of the Event
Early that Saturday morning, all the organizers and coordinators showed up at the church around 6am. We had advertised breakfast, school supplies and medical care for those in need. Originally, we were supposed to begin the outreach at 8:30, but people began to arrive at 6:45am!

By 7:30, for crowd control and because of the hot weather, we began to check people in and allow them to come and sit in the fellowship hall. We know that our tables and chairs seated over 85, but they were all full long before 8am. Since the clinic’s staff would not be fully prepared until after 9am, we decided to go ahead and allow the people to get breakfast and school supplies. Each line, one for pancakes and one for supplies, filled the fellowship hall (they were over 40 feet long!).

What we anticipated to take over 4 hours turned into an event that was over by 11am. Even the neighbors of the church came to help out, some translating for us and others giving more donations and school supplies.

Breakdown
The need we saw on August 15th made us more aware of the people around us and how much we really could do to help our neighbors and community.

As a side note, Mayor Maso attended our event! He talked with the volunteers and the families. He even took a group to the clinic to see the doctor. Before he left, he realized that we were going to run out of school supplies before we helped all the people. He called one of our local Wal-Mart stores and asked them to donate several boxes for a follow-up event we planned the next Thursday.

Be sure to check out our photos, using the Photo Gallery link in the menu bar above.

We know that these details barely scratch the surface of what we experienced at our first reach out. It only makes us more determined and encouraged as we begin to plan our winter event, The Joy of Christmas.