July 21, 2026
Red, White, and Family Fun
Getting to know each other in a Mercy Street courtyard
With a full cohort of youth in place, the real work has started. Not the paperwork or the planning, but the slow work of getting comfortable with one another. Our Friends and youth see each other every week. The families don't. Our staff doesn't get much time with caregivers outside of a weekly routine. That's what our monthly events are for. To build a community that holds up over the next 12+ years. So this month, Mercy Street Dallas handed us their courtyard for an afternoon, and we're grateful they did.
It wasn't a formal thing. We brought plenty of food. There was a bounce house and lawn games. Parents found shade and talked. Kids drifted between the bubble station, ring toss, and corn hole, and someone got a sack race going. Stedman started a basketball game with some of the boys. That's usually where you'll find him.
We also invited an officer from the Dallas Police Department to spend the afternoon with us. He showed the kids what he keeps in his truck and let them climb in and look around, and he handed out stickers to anyone who wanted one. He answered a lot of questions. We wanted our youth to meet an officer this way, in a courtyard on a Saturday, with time to be curious and no reason to be anywhere else. Those first impressions stay with a kid.
Our Friends work with each youth one on one, but a kid doesn't grow up in isolation. Neither do we. Every family who spends an afternoon like this becomes a little more familiar to us, and to each other. That familiarity is what makes the next 12+ years possible.
