The Dinner (12.10.09. from 5 p.m.-10 p.m.)
About three weeks ago, I was hanging out with four friends of mine and we were just talking about life and catching up. As destiny would have it for college students, we started talking about school. Talking about classes what we were taking and stuff like that, and then inevitably we started talking about finals. Somehow we came up with this crazy idea to make dinner for some of our friends. We decided that we were going to make dinner for our friends right in the middle of finals. We thought it would be a good way of just serving them, especially since we all know that college students during finals: don't eat healthy, consume an unnatural amount of caffeine, and stress out way to much.
So the more we started talking about this "dinner", we all got a little bit more excited about it. We started tossing around when we wanted to do this, who all we thought would benefit from this dinner and what we wanted to make. We initially thought we were going to invite some of our friends that we knew would benefit, but then we just wanted to open up the doors to all of our friends. Then we started talking about food (of course). And then in the midst of us talking about food this verse just landed on me:
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Matthew 25.35.
And this initial thought came to my head, if you were going to feed Jesus what would you feed Him? Would you feed Him $5 Little Caesar's Pizza? What would you feed Jesus, the King, the Great I Am, the one more worthy of praise than your lips could ever speak? So we all started talking about this and we basically concluded this: "We're going all out for this dinner. We're inviting all of our friends and it's going to be completely free (meaning no strings attached). We aren't holding anything back for this. We're feeding Jesus."
So obviously the next question is: What are you going to make?
Steak
Grilled Chicken
Velveeta Shells and Cheese
Cheese Mashed Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole
Sister Schubert Rolls
Let's Get this Food:
So then we started talking about the practicality of how much we prepare for and stuff like that. We decided that we were going to plan for around 200 people. I know what you're thinking, "200 people, that's a little ambitious isn't it? I mean seriously, 200 people?" We really had no idea how many people would actually show up, but we decided to voice on the side to have to much than to little.(And we planned that if there was extra we would go give it to the homeless) I know, it's crazy. You might say that we were being a little naive, maybe stupid, but for the most part we all felt comfortable with that number.
So this past Tuesday, we went shopping. Sam's Club to be specific (free shout out to ya'll Sam's Club, yall can pay me later when I make it big). We thought we had a pretty good figure (but weren't really to sure) how much we were going to need to buy for this, regardless, like a family, we went into Sam's Club. Quick story about Sam's Club: We had heard of a couple of stories of how the Sam's Club people didn't allow for people to come in groups (true or untrue, that's what we heard... don't judge us, or call us stupid, that's just what we heard) because each person had to be a member of Sam's Club to enter. So we were truly unsure if we were going to be able to go in at all. A couple of our other possible store contacts had fallen through and so really it was either going to be Sam's Club or expensive Kroger to get all this food. So needless to say, as we entered into Sam's Club it was like all the employees were eyeing us, saying to themselves, "Here they come... let's get 'em!!" But they didn't, so that was a relief...
We first went over to the meat section because we're men, and that's where we go first. After looking at the chicken prices and stuff we went over to the steak section. We saw some meat that we liked but realized that there were really only 8 of those steaks sitting out. So one of our friends buzzed the meat man and he came out to give us some consultation minutes about meat. We told him what we were thinking about doing, what steaks we wanted and that we wanted about 100 steaks. He said, "Ya we can do that, it typically takes about a week for us to do but we can totally do that". We replied, "Well we kind of need it in about 2 days..." and he said "I'll be right back..." To be honest I was a little unsure about getting these steaks, but of course he came back and said, "Ya, we can cut you 100 pieces of FRESH STEAK by Thursday morning, does that work?" And we said absolutely sounds great. So we wound up getting:
2 Industrial Boxes of Mashed Potatoes
2 Industrial Size Cans of Green Beans
10 Industrial Size Boxes of Velveeta Shell and Cheese
200 or so Drinks
200 plates, napkins, plastic ware
200 Sister Schubert Rolls
115 Chicken Breasts
100 Steaks
Miscellaneous items like marinade/seasoning/table coverings/shredded cheese/Pans to hold the food
The back of 1 of 2 cars
Let's invite:
So we continued with the process of inviting people. Some things fell through as far as 'advertising' our 'little' event. And really in honesty, we tried to figure out how many people were going to end up coming. We were going to hand out these flyers with directions to my house and also requesting people call us by Monday to "RSVP", and wanting them to RSVP simply so we could have an idea how much food we were going to need to buy. But the flyers never happened and then we were going to have them announce it at Church, but that didn't end up happening either. So after buying all this food we ended creating a Facebook event last minute. Like I've said since the beginning, we really had no idea how many people were going to end up coming, but regardless we were going to prepare. I think one of the crazy things about it is that we kept on telling people by word of mouth, and also to invite their friends.
We truly gave people no excuse not to come to dinner. We kept on telling people, "It's from 5 p.m.-10 p.m., even if you can only come and grab food and then leave, that's totally fine. There are no strings attached, we just want to feed you". The reason why we extended the time from 5-10, is because some people had exams until 7 o'clock and wouldn't be able to make it if dinner were short. But then we had to keep in mind that people had exams at 7 o'clock, so we had to make it early enough so that they could make it before their exam. We also knew that for most people, this could possibly be there only study break time or big thing they do for the entire week, seeing that there were typically no events happening because of finals. So really there was no excuse for people not to come...
Having said that one of my friends called me and left me this voice mail on Wednesday: "Hey John... just looking at this event page going on for yalls dinner thing... I'm just curious ARE YOU CRAZY? So far 44 people have confirmed and you have 279 people waiting reply... I'm just curious if yall are crazy."
Let's start:
We woke up early Thursday morning and began this epic process of preparing for an unknown amount of people that might or might not arrive at my house from 5-10 p.m. We got tables, chairs, wood for a fire in the backyard, two more grills for outside, pots/pans, ice and coolers for the drinks, lights for outside, and extension chords. We all split up responsibilities for cooking and started around 3:00 p.m. (Side note: I loved hanging out with these guys the whole day! It was so much fun making jokes and just being ridiculous with them)
By the way, if you are still reading this, I am very impressed, this is a ridiculously long blog entry... So around 5:00, some of our friends started trickling in. There were about 7 of them. Around 5:30, the pace picked up a little more and some more friends came in, and we were all still cooking... At probably around 6:30 or so there were probably about 30 people there... as the night continued we estimated that there were probably around 130-150 people that came through my house through the entire night.
I distinctly remember sitting down, during the masses of people that were there, looking into my living room that was completely full, and not knowing but maybe 4 people in the room.
It was so cool being part of something that was so much bigger than me. Truly, it was crazy to look back and see how improbable it looked from the beginning. There is an overwhelming amount of joy that I get when I can say, I got to step in faith with my brother's in Christ. Not stepping in faith because of them, but knowing and believing that God was leading all of us in the same direction, same purpose and same reason; His Glory and His fame Thursday Night.
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