The African Extravaganza!!

Sorry its taken so long to write about the AMAZING event we happened to be a part of this past Saturday.  I've been trying to put my severely neglected house back together and gathering items/organizing our upcoming rummage sale.

ANYWAY, the night was INCREDIBLE, AMAZING, HUMBLING, UNFORGETABLE! The church was an African paradise. Our friend from Kenya said that it was what he imaged his wedding looking like. Lots of brown silk and African decorations all over the place. There were three tables full of raffle baskets, a 7 day/7 night vacation silent auction, some African painting silent auctions, t-shirts, African jewelry, and more!

Matt and I greeted everyone at the door with a traditional Ethiopian hand washing, which was really an incredible experience.

The food was catered by Queen Sheba, the best ET food in Sacramento. She brought two veggie dishes, a chicken dish, some rice, the injera (a sourdough crepe), and some cornbread kind of stuff. We had Kenyan coffee spiced with cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom, homemade chai tea, lemonade, spiced iced tea, and some amazing water with mint, strawberries, oranges, limes, lemons. We had a kids food table with mini sandwiches, fruit, and pretzels.  For most everyone, it was the first time trying Ethiopian food and the general consensus was that it was delicious!

The cake was made by my friend Angela, and it was a four-tiered safari cake.  AWESOME!  and delish!

The beautiful ladies from Queen Sheba demonstrated a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony.

The program included music by DJ Jey and Samu. They had EVERYONE (all 169 people) up and dancing and it was a blast!

We shared our story, including the Why Ethiopia video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egPGBbmBqSs that my father-in-law made for us, and then my friend, who just adopted a 12-year-old boy from ET shared their story about how God worked through the entire process.  Their son exudes joy and happiness and an incredible amount of confidence for a young boy who has only been in the US for 10 weeks!  A true example of God's love and grace and mercy.

The program concluded with Jey saying a prayer for us (which was incredibly touching because Jey himself was an orphan and street kid) and the baby in Swahili, a Nigerian member of our church saying a prayer in his tribal language, and my friend's son from ET saying a prayer in his native language. It was INCREDIBLE!

We were blessed in countless ways that evening.  I'm sure all of you are dying to know, so I'm going to tell you - we ended up making over $4,000! We were also EXTREMELY blessed by a group called Hands of Hope.  They showed up and said "put us to work!"  Incredible.  We will never forget these people!

We will also never forget the way our friends and family stepped up to help us on May 22, 2010.  Everyone was working so hard around me, I looked around wondering what I should do to help!!  It was the most humbling experience thus far.  The church looked amazing and everything ran so incredibly smooth.  We could not have done this without them.  You know who you are - THANK YOU!

Our family with my friend's son, adopted from ET just 10 weeks ago.

We have 100s more pictures, but this is all we have online for now.  Hope to share more soon.

To everyone who helped with this eventl...THANK YOU!  And, we hope to repay you some day.