..... just made that our little blog "secret".

I had to try and get to Food Lion last Tuesday before they closed because they had 10 lb. bags of chicken leg quarters on sale for 4 bucks. I figured I'd wait to post and try to get to it tomorrow and BOOM....it's a week later and I still haven't done it.

My bad.

Last week was great. I mentioned the week before that someone had graciously donated 3 Boston Butts. Well, I went to pick them up and by the time I got to the church, somebody donated 7 more! That's 10 total Boston Butts total.
Last week we chopped them up into BBQ and used half and saved half for another night.
I know we're in the EASTERN BBQ area and vinegar-based sauce is how we're supposed to do it, but our guys really like it when we mix it with Sonny's Sweet BBQ sauce and serve it wet.
We served almost 100 people last week.

This week we had meatball subs, but we did it a little different than usual. Instead of serving the meatballs whole, we quartered them to make it easier to eat and less likely to roll off the roll.
And we used top split hot dog buns so it would sit on the plate and hold the meatballs better. Our last wrinkle was instead of putting cheese on top of the sandwich, we opened the roll and put it in the bottom so it wouldn't fall everywhere and would melt faster.
What can I say? We're thinkers.

ELAINE / ANNA / BRIEN / TERESA / STEVE / TWIG / ALEX / KATIE / JENNY / CECELIA / BLAKE / LAURA / PEYSON / CAMERON / CHAMBERLAIN / EMORY /
MERRITT and me were at the first stop.

I wish you could see how good some of the youth are at interacting with our friends at the first stop. They do such a great job of listening and showing them how glad we are they came to eat with us.

The second stop started out with just six and added one as we got going. Having just a few is kinda good because everyone has something to do all the time and you don't have time to take your foot off the gas, it's just head down, non-stop, serve it 'til you look up and the line is gone and it's 20 after 9.

Just like back in the early days.

I can remember getting it done with just me, Gary McKnight and about 3 or 4 kids.

It seems like forever since we used to do it out in the kitchen at the Activity Center. We'd cook it (in the hottest kitchen in the world) pack it up, load it up and then drive the truck and a van downtown, unload it and serve it out. Then we'd load everything and everyone up and drive back to the Activity Center. It was a lot of doggone work and we had to hustle because we had to drive cross town. But I remember thinking we had to do it at the Activity Center because it was central and closer for parents to drop off and pick up kids. I thought doing it downtown would keep parents from bringing youth. Then the Activity Center renovation forced us downtown to the kitchen at the church anyway

I'm such a moron sometimes.

It worked out so well we decided not to even go back to the A.C. and its new kitchen when it was done. Losing kids because we were downtown? We had a string of weeks with 25+ kids for about a month this past summer! Parents drop off kids by the carload every week. We have a lot more youth participation than we did at the A.C.
Being downtown has been more successful than I ever thought it would.

And it had to be forced on me.

Forced on me because I figured success would be determined by my wisdom at planning and thinking I knew how things would work best. Forced on me because I was telling God stuff instead of asking Him stuff......I needed to quit overthinking and acting like I knew everything and let God lead.

I'm still trying to get better at that.

As far as my confession earlier about being a moron, I'd appreciate it if the 2 or 3 of you who read this .......