With the closing of the Parkway Weekday Preschool, we have been faced with an exciting, yet daunting challenge. It is exciting that we can now look at creative ways to best use the additional space and daunting with the amount of furniture and toys that have to be sorted and dealt with. With an eye on possible future needs, we have moved and saved a lot of the furniture and supplies. You were invited to come in and take any other items that you, your children or grandchildren could use. Many items were donated to teachers and other preschools. This still left us with many items left over.
Parkway has always been a “Missions Minded” church. An impromptu conversation with one of our Parkway parents has led us to look at two organizations for our children to partner with now and in the future. Kim Cassidy works in one of the Intensive Care Units at Children’s Healthcare at Scottish Rite. She told me that in her unit, parents are allowed to select books to read to their children. Because of the risk of infection, these books go home with the children and must constantly be replaced. What better place for the books we do not need here at Parkway! My hope is that this will lead to a yearly project for our children to collect books to fill the baskets at Children’s Healthcare.
Kim also shared that her children choose a charity to support rather than receive gifts on their birthdays. Will, who is one of our Level Up students, chose to collect art supplies for an organization that works with homeless children in downtown Atlanta. Since we have ample art supplies left from the Weekday Preschool, we will gladly join Will in supporting this organization.
I can’t wait to invite you in to see the improvements we are working on in the Children’s Ministry of Parkway. I hope that you will be as excited as we are with the plans we have for the additional space. I also hope that you will be pleased with how we have distributed the resources you helped supply for the Parkway Preschool to our members and to other organizations.