Wednesday Night Dinner

My good friend Cari is now in charge of providing a family dinner on Wednesday nights at Salem. I help her with what I can.

The response has been incredible! We were initially anticipating 30-40 people the first few weeks. Instead, each week the number has gone up. Last week we served about 75 people. And the amazing thing is that God has allowed us to feed that many people on a budget of $100 a week.

Not to say that everything has run smoothly.

One of the men in the church who was in on the initial discussion about the dinners decided on a suggested donation for each person and a maximum donation per family. His pricing did not quite line up with Cari's.

The kitchen closest to where we serve the dinner is in need of a serious remodel. So we fix the dinner in the building across the parking lot and bring it over to the other kitchen.

On another occasion, Cari did not receive the money to purchase the food until Wednesday afternoon.

And there has been some conflict about the fact that Cari has a set menu for the rest of the year.

Still, with all of that, the dinners have been a huge blessing. For me, I don't have to worry about rushing to feed my family before praise team practice or eating at 8:30 when we got home. For others, there are some children that used to come to church only with their grandparents. Now, their parents are coming to the dinner and I have seen them in the service the past couple of Sundays as well. More and more people are showing up for the dinner. I do not know how many are actually staying for the service, but it seems as though our attendance at the service on Wednesday has grown.

Helping with the dinner is hard & exhausting work. But I am so glad that our church is reaching out to bring families together.