Last week, April 27—28, Canopy Life had the opportunity to hang out with a bunch of new friends at the Orange Conference (OC) in Atlanta. Orange Conference is an annual gathering of family ministries leaders focused on helping churches partner with the parents and families in their communities. This year, OC was at its biggest ever with 8,000 attendees. Our team had the opportunity to meet people from all over the world: from London to South Africa, Sweden to Canada, and Seattle to Texas.
As people stopped by our display, we got to share how “Your Kids + Our Kids = Awesome Sauce.” Folks were excited about the opportunity for a cross-cultural connection between our students and their children’s ministries to engage in worship experiences and real-time interactions through tools like Skype and FaceTime.
We also used the opportunity to inspire attendees to create and make their world more colorful. On one side of our contact cards we included a coloring sheet. We provided people with crayons and colored pencils, and were surprised to discover how many people already had some packed in their bags! These were truly our kind of people. The men took a little more encouragement to jump in on the coloring, so we started a campaign that Real Men Color.
At our table, we had a large image to which our new friends helped us begin to add life, and it has already made its way to Kenya for the kids at Canopy Life to complete. Our students are freshly back from their first term break and were eager to jump in. We’re going to hang the collaborative artwork on the wall in the school as a reminder of our friends from all over the world who join us in their love of families, innovation, and creativity.
Thanks to OC for hosting us last week and for bringing together such incredible people from all over the globe. Check out below for pictures from the event and to see the step-by-step progress of our now-completed coloring sheet.
Canopy Life also hosted a dinner on Thursday evening (April 28) at Bistro VG in Roswell, Georgia. Our guest list was comprised of friends who are actively engaged with Canopy Life, and we spent time talking together about how God has used their year-end gifts at Canopy Life and about our vision for the future. It was a beautiful evening, full of authentic community and laughter. Thank you to everyone who joined us.
