When Robert Gentry and his family visited Mimi’s Shaved Ice and Lemonade Stand in Montgomery City earlier this year, they sat on a table that had a broken seat.

So the new lead pastor from High Hill Christian Church worked out a deal with the store’s owner, Michelle Portell.

“I said to her, ‘Would you like it if we donated some picnic tables?’ ” Gentry said. “She said, ‘Yeah, we would love that.’ That’s kind of where we made the connection.”

Then, Gentry and his church got a big invitation from Portell to come out to the store’s Customer Appreciation Day on Oct. 1. That gave Gentry the idea to have his church start its nine-day Love Week at Mimi’s, located at 602 North Sturgeon.

“We have inflatables, we’ll come out and hand out candy and have a good time,” Gentry said. “It happened with an opportunity. We saw a need, which was a broken picnic table.”

Love Week began on Oct. 1 with numerous children from the area playing at a bounce house near Mimi’s, which has been open for business since July 13. The next day, members from High Hill Christian Church built picnic tables so they can be donated to Mimi’s.

Love Week is in its third year. It started in 2018, when Gentry joined the church’s staff.

“We started Love Week with the idea that we wanted to love our community,” Gentry said. “When we started Love Out Loud, which is our outreach ministry, our whole idea was how can we love our community well. So we decided to challenge our people to Love Week. So three years ago, we started Love Week. We gave all of the people in attendance at our church $5 and go love people well. This year, we extended it to nine days instead of a normal week because we had so many community partnerships who wanted us to help them.”

Love Week held a blood drive at High Hill Christian Church on Oct. 6. Gentry said the church has at least three blood drives a year.

“We try to do it as frequently as they would allow us,” Gentry said. “We usually average about 20 units of blood every time. In a year, we do about 80 units of blood through the blood drive.”

At 4 p.m. on Oct. 7, the church will hold a dinner for the Montgomery County High School football players and cheerleaders.

“We fed the football team in previous years,” Gentry said. “They called us and said, ‘Hey, are you interested in doing it again this year?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ Oct. 7 is in the middle of our Love Week, so that would be perfect to do. The person who is organizing it for our church had all of her kids play football for Montgomery County.”

Love Week ends on Oct. 9 with church members cleaning up a park in High Hill.

Gentry was scheduled to serve his first day as lead pastor at High Hill Christian Church on Oct. 3. Three years ago, he was hired to work in the family ministry.

“Eight months into it, the elders asked me to transition to the executive role, so I’ve been doing that ever since,” said Gentry, who was hired as lead pastor in June. “Our lead pastor left last December. We started a search. The elders went through a six-month process looking at different candidates. They approached me this summer and asked me if I was willing to be the lead pastor. So I said, ‘Yes.’”