A Gala Event

Hey look, it's us with our new good friends! A couple weeks ago, we received a text inviting us to "the gala." This text was quickly followed by another text, from the above pictured, saying, "Pastor D told us to text you and pressure you guys into saying yes, you're coming right???!!" Ha!

The purpose of this annual gala is to raise money for a children's village in Rwanda that our church closely partners with, in fact, a couple in our church founded it not so many years ago. They saw the conditions of the orphanages, they saw the hunger and abuse of the children there, and decided they would try to do something for the estimated 6,000 orphan children in this country alone.

Many people in our church have personal relationships with kids who they sponsor, many others have visited these kids and have fallen in love with everything about this ministry. We heard, last night, from a young man whose parents were one of each tribe--that soon went to war against each other. He experienced the genocide, and it was horrific. But he found hope in Jesus through the efforts of this new "family." He's a college student in the United States now, his main goal is to help the birth family who rejected him. Powerful!

The evening began with Buck at work and me trying to figure out the timing for getting "fancy." I feel like the self-hairstyling efforts looked better in person than in photos, but here is my dramatic piano-teacher from France look, hee hee :)


I arranged for a friend to meet at our house and for our pastor and his wife to pick the two of us up, so we could ride to the event together. Our kids were so excited to see the fancy that they were standing by the windows just hoping for a glimpse of dresses. When Pastor D stepped out of the car to open the doors for us, he got a collective, "OOOooh, a suit!" Ha! (We teach in jeans at our church :)

We arrived super early (sometimes I'm too good of an organizer :) and looked through the items for silent auction. Now this was a $100/plate event. Our church had purchased a table that needed to be filled with guests, hence our invite. The silent auction items were fantastic, but not in the budget giving or otherwise, right now. I was excited to later learn that the centerpieces, which at the base were beautifully woven Rwandan baskets, were available for purchase (you'll see mine at the end of this post--my new good friend said it was the prettiest one there; we looked pretty silly touring all the dinner tables checking out their centerpieces for buying options :)

Buck arrived, looking handsome and dapper. He got several compliments from the other guys on his stylishness--especially the vest. I have to say, he was the best looking guy a the whole event! It was good to see him laughing and having fun, because it has been a really (really) rough week being back to work fulltime and not having his time off requests (for church, youth group, etc.) honored at all. Okay, I'm not going to dwell on that though, because he had a good night at the gala :)

It really was fun to compare dresses and hairstyle accomplishments and woes leading up to the gala with the other ladies. It was really fun to see all of our usual mom crowd looking so elegant and glamorous for an evening! We had a great time taking pictures and talking about how unusual it was to be dressed up and out with friends. Quite the celebration!




Many of these pictures I borrowed from facebook, so I can't make them too big without them getting pixelly, but you get the idea--we took a lot of pictures :)




The husband of a photographer is well-coached in taking photos of ladies from flattering angles. Poor Pastor D went in at shoulder height and got reprimanded by every woman in the line up, lol!



After the interview and reveal of the new logo, everyone was invited to walk through a (recreation) Rwandan street and take yet another photo. We ended up at the dinner tables, practically shoulder-to-shoulder and with solidarity swearing off of Keto for the evening. You can't imagine how funny it was to see adults eating fluffy, white bread for the first time in months--almost everyone at the table is avoiding bread for some reason or another. Buck misses it most of all. Pastor D even went to another table and begged a second roll so Buck could continue enjoying the white bread experience :) 







And if you think we were excited for bread, you should have seen everyone bouncing in their chairs like kindergartners when dessert was announced! Ice cream with citrus caramel sauce and donuts--there was so much sugar you could feel it crunch between your teeth. 

I sincerely hope that the event raised an incredible amount of money for the future plans in Rwanda--which include foster homes, a larger school, and even a church plant! We hope to go visit in person in the coming year or two, so we can be a part of the beautiful story being woven between our country and theirs. It was a very unique (that's an inside joke :) opportunity to see what God's doing to heal a long hurt, while at the same time fellowshipping and enjoying the company of our friends. God is good! 



Before I go, it was really cool that our Crew was encouraging and excited about Buck and I attending this fancy gala. They were helpful in selecting outfits and accessories and hair style options. They kept the laundry moving while we were gone, made themselves dinner, and the house looked good when we got home. It is such a huge blessing that they are responsible enough for us to on a very rare occasion attend something so lengthy as this event. And they were excited to see us when we returned home, exhausted, but grateful :)