TOWANDA, Pa., (BRN) – On Saturday, July 9 and Sunday, July 10 Harvest House Community Fellowship (HHCF) hosted mini-Vacation Bible School (VBS) camps in community parks.

Mini VBS Outreach

On July 9, HHCF hosted a mini-VBS at Hornbrook Park and on July 10 at the 3rd Ward Park in downtown Towanda, Pennsylvania.

The week prior to the events, members of HHCF canvassed the two communities with flyers going door to door and inviting kids to the events. Each event was modeled after a day of our normal VBS template, lasting approximately 2.5 hours. We had songs, Bible teaching, gospel presentation, crafts, recreation and food art as well as hotdogs, chips and juice.

At the conclusion of each camp, we invited the kids and parents to our full VBS. We were able to share the gospel with a total of 30 kids and their parents. As a direct result of these outreach efforts, we had a daily average attendance of 25 kids during our week long VBS. This is double our attendance the previous year (HHCF has three organic VBS age kids). At our closing ceremony, we had 80 people in our sanctuary and the gospel was presented clearly and directly. We concluded with a picnic for everyone present at the closing assembly.

Riverfest

Each August, Towanda, Pennsylvania, hosts Riverfest. This is a three-day festival on the Merrill Parkway, along the river. This year we used BRN evangelism grant funds to provide water bottles, coffee, popcorn, baked goods, kids games w/prizes, face painting, gospel tracts and discipleship materials for Riverfest.Each water bottle had a custom label with our church name, service times and a QR code that takes folks to a gospel presentation landing page on our website. Every cup of coffee, popcorn bag and baked good had a sleeve with church branding and the same QR code.

We had a section of our booth that was dedicated to contact evangelism, using the Way of the Master materials. We had a section dedicated to long form tracts and discipleship materials. We also had a section with kids games and face painting. As kids played or had their faces painted, we would engage the parents in conversation. From Aug. 25-27 (Thursday-Saturday), we served over 400 people in various ways. Each person that interacted with our booth heard the gospel through a one-on-one conversation, received a gospel tract or received a gospel centered prayer from our team. As a direct result of this effort, we had eight guests at our worship service on Sunday, Aug. 28. In addition, we were able to interact with many more people in relational contact with HHCF during the event.