It's coming....

...just delayed. Tell you why soon.

......Who knows what it'll be by 4:30 next week?

Good thing I'm flexible.

The plan was to fix breakfast tonight- pancakes, sausage and cheese grits.
I got to the church about 4 to check on sausage and saw 7 pans of food in our fridge that weren't there yesterday. 2 pans of chicken, 2 pans of potatoes and carrots(or as I call it "going one for two") 1 pan of corned beef, 1 pan of cabbage(gag gag gag gag hack!) and a pan of sweet potatoes. Well, that was enough for the 1st stop!
John Liverman had Rotary Club today and it was catered by MOI. He hung around to see what was left and he got it and dropped it off. How great is that?! Corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day!

Then, after I went and picked up the truck, hit Sam's, and came back downtown, Donna Livingstone caught me in the parking lot. Her Beta Club at Hanover had organized a "Peanut Butter and Jelly-a-thon" to benefit some agencies and had some sandwiches left over if we wanted them. How many? 200!
Oh heck yeah! We bagged 'em 3 to a lunch bag and passed them out to folks as they left. That's always a nice feeling, because you know you've given them something for tomorrow, too.

Check it out:
PEYSON SHANE HAMPTON AUSTIN NELLIE ALEXIS ELLEN JOHN J.BOGGS RYAN LAURA BRIEN TERESA ZACH CAMERON DON VIGUS KINSEY VIGUS BRYCE VIGUS MITCH ALLEN BLAKE ALEXANDRA TWIG CREEEEECH! and me.
That's 26 people getting the jobs done tonight. And I might've missed somebody!
Pruden, Craig, Kelly, Anna, Christian, Dallas, Cameron - all regulars who were out for various reasons tonight.
That's one of the cool things about Tuesday night. I usually only have a vague idea who'll be there. You never who'll walk through the door.

Let me tell you who I am always glad to see walk through the door. Brien Campbell, Teresa Bland, and Anna Tolar. Why? Tons of reasons, not the least of which is they wash dishes and clean the kitchen like champs. Like Heavyweight Champs. Like Undisputed, Undefeated, never knocked down Heavyweight Champs.
I praise them all the time and you would too if you were me, because they make my life so much easier on Tuesday night with their servant hearts and attitudes. I've taught a lot of kids to make sweet tea, but I ain't never taught one to want to wash dishes.
Most nights when we're ready to go upstairs and get ready to serve, they're still in the kitchen cleaning pots, wiping tables and sweeping floors. This means when we finish up and come back, we don't have to do those things. Amen and Hallelujah.
Others pitch in and wash, too. Heck, catch me on a good night and i might even rinse out a pitcher or two, but week in and week out they step back, let others do the fun stuff and clean up after the rest of us. Most guys can't find one woman like that and I've got three! Hah!

Ellen Liverman is the absolute all-time best at inviting people to come with her on Tuesday nights. Nobody else is even close. I know she has invited at least 10 different friends to come over the last year and a half. And it's a rare night when she doesn't bring at least one of them. Tonight she had two! Nellie and Alexis came with her.
I always tell kids that inviting a friend to anything that exposes their friend to Jesus and his ministry is one of the best and most effective things they can do and that it pleases God immensely. More adults need to realize that, too.

Don Vigus came out tonight with his niece Kinsey and his nephew Bryce. They're on break from school back in Memphis and so they here for the week with Uncle Donald and Aunt Connie. I kept getting Bryce to his "Uncle Donald" impersonation. "WHOA-OOOOH! BUSTED! WHOA-OOH!

Some of the grits on the stove splattered on my hand tonight when I was stirring them. Don't really recommend that to anyone. Burnt like crap.

NCAA championship Monday is coming up. You know what that means.
Party at the church with the Mercy House guys!
And maybe, just maybe,...another stab at a TURDUCKEN!
We'll see. The current score is TURDUCKEN -1 GARY-0

It looks like next week we might cook some of the turkeys we have in the freezer. But that's just the plan now.......

......"Well, look what the cat drug in."

Tuesday 4:00 - No idea what we'll cook tonight. I'd thought about it all day, talked to several people about it, brainstormed a list, yet nothing grabbed me and said"COOK ME!" When I left school, I was pretty sure it was either gonna be hot dogs, pancakes or meatballs subs.



Finally, I figured we'd cook whatever we had in the freezer and that way we'd be killing two birds with one stone - cooking a meal and freeing up some room in the freezer.

Opened up the freezer and a package of something started to fall out. Caught it, flipped it over, BOOM -Chicken Thighs.

Well, there you go. Let's cook chicken.



Pulled out just about all the chicken we had and thawed it out. A quick Sam's run and we were in business.

BAKED CHICKEN (WITH MONTREAL SEASONING AND TEXAS PETE)

MASHED POTATOES

GREEN BEANS

DESSERT

SWEET TEA

When we make our mashed potatoes, we pour them into a 7 gallon Gatorade cooler. We pour half of the potatoes in and then toss in the cheese, sour cream and butter, then pour the rest of it in. When we get outside we stir it up right before we serve it. Muis muis delicioso!

PEYSON DALLAS CAMERON ELLEN JOHN L. J.BOGGS CHRISTIAN TERESA BRIEN PRUDEN CRAIG ALLEN HUNT KELLY BLAKE MITCH HAMPTON ALEXANDRA CREEEEECCHHHH! and me were the ones whipping it all up tonight.

Looks like we're going to try to have another NCAA Championship game party with the Mercy House guys. It has a different feel from the SUPERBOWLPARTY but is just as fun.

Time to pressure wash the tables and coolers again. Yay!

Don't have enough excitement in your life? Cook a meal for 80 with Peyson, Hampton, Dallas, and Cameron, my 7th grade Bible study guys. Wide open doesn't begin to describe it. Watching all four of them at once trying to take chicken off the pan with tongs and put it in the cooler just about Heart Attack'ed a couple of adults this week.

Kelly Ledger continues to express amazement, tinged with fear, at the # of items we can find to put Texas Pete on.

Brien came back to us this week. Her father passed away 2 Sundays ago and she has been stretched very thin the past 3 months traveling back and forth to be with him on the weekends while doing everything she needed to here in town during the week. She gave a really nice account of how his last days were spent, especially his last Saturday when all the family and grandkids were brought in. She told us how he was able to keep saying I Love You until the last of the grandkids had come in.

I told her the story of when my Mom died and her last words.

I had been out of town and just gotten back, only to get a call from my sister saying Mom had been put in the hospital that morning and was fading. Fast. Get here as soon as you can.

Don rode with me and we took off. I got to Cape Fear Valley Hospital and saw my sisters and brother real quick to see how things were and then went in to see Mom. She was going fast and could barely speak. The first thing she said when I walked was also the last words she ever spoke. She said.......

Actually wrote this last week but hit "SAVE" instead of "POST". My bad.

It was so cold last night, if you were outside, you couldn't smell anything.



We brought the folks brave enough to show up and eat with us inside. We had a great meal.

Baked Spaghetti

Salad

Garlic Bread

Desserts

Sweet Tea/HotChocolate



THE TROUBLE WITH NOODLES*

We brought the leftover noodles from the Spaghetti supper Sunday downtown to use last night. There were a lot of noodles for us to take. And they were all in several black trash bags. We got them and brought them into the kitchen in those bags. After we used all the noodles we needed for the meal last night, there were still several bags left to deal with. We managed to get most of it in 2 large buckets and the rest in freezer bags.

Now I just had to find room in the freezers.

After accomplishing that minor miracle, 20 minutes later I looked under the cart and saw 2 more trashbags of noodles. I swear they weren't there before.

Tonight would be the last night Tom Varno would be around. He was in town for the past several months rehabbing a back injury and had been cleared by the Doc to go back to Fla. and resume work. I got the book "Jesus Wants to Save Christians" by Rob Bell and had everybody sign out. We gave it to him at the end of the 1st stop. We will miss him and wish him well.

Twig was sick. Hope he gets better.

Finished late. Gotta run. Going skiing this week with Youth Group.
In Maryland.
First time for that. Let you know how Maryland is for skiing.

g

* It's an old Star Trek reference. Don't feel bad if you don't get it. gh

How cold was it?......

It was so cold last night.....
....I cut a guy off in traffic and he gave me the "mitten".

....I saw an Amish guy buying an electric blanket.

It was 22 degrees when we finished up last night.
That kind of cold keeps people away, especially at the first stop. We saw 10 folks there, and we were bringing them inside.

Prayer Need

Brien Campbell's father passed away Sunday morning.
Brien is one of our weekly faithful. In addition to everything else, she washes all the dishes we get dirty in a way that reminds you of Mother Teresa.... if she were a drill sergeant. I think a lot of the guys at Mercy House come out just to see if she's there.

Brien's father had been sick for a while. Keep Brien and her family in your prayers this week as they cope with the loss of a loved one.
g

Have to put the pancakes on hold......

I don't know what we were thinking.

Last week when we were finishing up, Twig and I were talking about things we could serve this week. Breakfast was the option we finally settled on.

But we forgot to factor in The Follies.

The Follies is the big church wide fundraiser we do for the Youth Mission Trip. It's a spaghetti supper fixed by the parents and served by the Youth Group. Then there's a program, with things ranging from songs to skits to all sorts of things in between, for entertainment. Then Don shows a slide show of the previous year's mission trip and some pictures of this year's destination. An offering is taken up to go towards the trip and help offset the cost for those going. Last year it brought in about 10,000.

All of that is to say we always reap the benefit of the extra sauce and noodles. So, forget breakfast, we're going Eye-talian this week.

It's supposed to get very cold tomorrow night so a warm plate of spaghetti might hit the spot.