Last Friday a tradition returned to GRACE!
Past sessions of “Family Game Night”—a collaboration featuring the First Baptist Church of Grapevine, the Grapevine Police Department Community Outreach Center, and GRACE was a massive celebration of fun, food, and fellowship.
Huge checkerboards hosted fierce competitions with plate-sized checkers and knee-high chess pieces. Toddler-sized inflatable bowling pins tumbled to beachball-sized bowling balls.
Picnic table-after-picnic table sat moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, aunts and uncles, extended families, and kids, kids, kids. Well, the kids rarely sat.
Many times GRACE was the venue, but Family Game Night traveled to the Mustang Drive location of the Community Outreach Center, and the old GRACE Main at the foot of Scribner Street at Shady Brook so the families in the neighboring areas could enjoy the evening.
Moms and dads got to know the representatives of the organizers a bit better, and the assistance available with each.
At the same time, the families could voice the issues affecting them and their neighborhoods. Add “communication” and “understanding” to the “food, fun, and fellowship”.
The COVID-19 put an end to this type of face-to-face interaction. And the suffering caused by the pandemic was made even worse for it.
Last Friday 15 families visited the Community Rooms of the GRACE Main offices on East Walnut Street. Community Outreach Manager Haydee Young joined GRACE’s Stacy Pacholick and GRACE Client Services staff members to rekindle the valuable outreach program.
Great thanks go to Gabriel Nunes of the First Baptist Church of Grapevine, Anna—all the wonderful “chefs”—and all the other volunteers who kept the evening lively, the games exciting, and the refreshments flowing. Many thanks to First Baptist Church of Grapevine and the Grapevine Community Outreach Center for restarting this wonderful tradition.
