Our Fund Raising Dinner

Last Sunday was our big dinner at church to raise funding for our missionary journey to Romania. We prepared a traditional Romanian meal, which was a lot of work. We spent most of the day Saturday chopping up veggies and grilling chicken. Then we cooked the rest of the food on Sunday a few hours before the dinner was supposed to start. It was a real whirlwind but it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures so I had to find pictures on the Internet that look similar to what we made. Here is the menu we had:

We started with European hearth style bread that we bought at a bakery in Allendale, The Great Bread Company. It was delicious. Bread is one of the main parts of all Romanian meals, and it is called Paine.

Next we had soup with dumplings, our favorite soup that we had at summer camp. Soup is an everyday meal in Romania. This one is called Supa De Galuste.

Next we had Sarmale, which are basically meatballs wrapped in a cabbage leaves with saur kraut and tomato sauce on top. They are one of our favorite dishes from Romania.

The last part of the meal was build your own Shawarma, basically a chicken wrap. They are unique because they have french fries inside, along with pickles, cabbage, mayo and catsup.

To wash everything down we had ice cream, coffee, and juice.

The meal came together nicely, especially since we were planning on at least 100 people and we've never cooked for that many before. Thankfully we had help from some of our family and some friends who went to Romania with us on previous trips.

During the meal we showed pictures from our previous trips, and then Mark explained a little of what we had done there and what some of the pictures were about. Then he told the story of Elena, the girl at camp who had the greatest impact on us. You can read more abut her here: Elena. We then showed a video that tells about Heart 2 Heart and their ministry to the orphans. That video is linked in the sidebar of our blog so if you haven't seen it you should check it out. It is a powerful and emotional video that really pulls on your heart strings. After the video Rebecca told about how we came to this point in our lives where we are taking a leap of faith and following God's call. Maybe we'll write more on that one sometime. At the end Mark talked about the needs we have financially and asked people to prayerfully consider supporting us monthly, something that we ask you to do as well. If you feel lead to do so you can download the forms here, and indicate on the card that you would like to make a monthly commitment. These commitments are what we really need before we can go and start our ministry. They will sustain us while we are there and enable us to be used by God to do his work in these orphan's lives. Before people left we answered some questions and tried to clarify what we'll be doing the best that we could.

Everyone who came to the dinner seemed very interested and supportive. Around 65 people showed up, including some of our family. We had planned on at least 100 so we had tons of food left. We were initially disappointed that more people didn't come but we figured that we just have to trust that God knows what he's doing. He can make great things happen with very few people. We are praying that God used this to work in people's hearts and ignite some passion for our ministry. We are also praying that those who were there will decide to support us monthly and tell others about our ministry also.

Ultimately we are very thankful to God for helping us pull this off, and we are very thankful for everyone who helped and everyone who came. We know this is all part of His plan and he will provide for all of our needs.