Fundraising SUCCESS!!

Here's a little update to our fundraising efforts :) And by little, I mean AMAZING!!  I have been planning an Ethiopian Dinner Fundraiser at our church for a few months, and two weeks ago, it culminated in one of the greatest outpouring of love on my family I've ever experienced.  My mom and dad, along with our home group host, acted as cooks for the evening .  I was super nervous and frantically flitted around the kitchen.  All of a sudden, I was seven years old again, asking my mommy if she thought it would be okay if I ran to the bathroom to pee. But if I peed, I'd have to wash my hands, and what if I cross-contaminated the faucet? I could wash in the bathroom, of course, but what if I touched the door by accident and the last person who touched it hadn't washed? Oh yeah, I went there.  To summarize, I was a wreck.  But, my sous chefs worked it out.  The call came in from one of my precious high schoolers for coffee, to which I responded, "Venti Iced Half-Vanilla Non-Fat Latte.  Oh, and don't you DARE bring me decaf!!" My home group host, Brett, looked at me, and very lovingly suggested that the best thing I could do was have his daughter bring me decaf.  I ignored him.  20 minutes later, not only am I nervously pacing the kitchen, tasting the same dish eight hundred times, I'm now all jacked up on Mountain Dew. Okay, latte, but there isn't any cool movie quote about lattes, with the exception of "Java, java, java" from George of the Jungle.  Then my girls showed up, escorted by my amazing little sister, who babysat for us and brought the girls, clean, dressed, and brushed to the dinner at the appropriate time.  That being, of course, five minutes before I burst into tears because I was so ridiculously stressed, and missed my babies on top of it. Long story short, (yeah, right!) the food was awesome, and we were expecting around 60 people.  After we seated, wait for it, over ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE, Jeremy, Madelyn, Hazel, and I went in front of our supporters and very humbly thanked them for coming.  More importantly, we thanked God for providing the idea, the help, and the resources for this to even be possible. Then there was the dessert auction.  A fabulous little idea provided by a friend of ours, Bre, and bait for those who were scared to death of Ethiopian food.  I didn't tell you? My mistake.  We served (mostly) authentic Ethiopian food at the fundraiser. Basically awesome. We had four Ethiopians in our midst for the dinner, and the comments were very positive!  One said the Doro Wat, or chicken stew, needed more onions, which I knew, but I just couldn't do that to our American palates. Another commented that nothing was spicy enough. Again, very aware, but I couldn't do this to children's palates.   Anyway, the idea of the dessert auction was that tables pooled their resources and bought dessert for their whole table. Translation: No dessert was provided, and if you wanted it, you had to anty up. We had so many desserts donated, and I had the pleasure of making three on my own.  Both of my sisters made cupcakes, which my parents bought, and two out of three desserts I made were purchased by Jeremy's family (thanks, guys!).  The third went to, you guessed it, my parents.  That's how our families roll.  And our friends! Holy cow! Some of the desserts were being bid on like they were Monets!  After the dinner was over, I noticed my amazing home group and family descend on the kitchen, and basically I turned around, and everything was clean.  I cannot believe how much help and financial support was poured out on us by the Body of Christ.  And for those who aren't yet full-fledged members, my prayer is that God will honor their support of His Will by making himself known to them.