A Celebration of Love

It's utterly ridiculous that I can't fall asleep right now. It's after 1a.m. on a Saturday, which wouldn't be so unusual to be awake except that I have had terrible sleep the last three nights and tonight I went to bed (tried, at least) well over an hour ago. The three nights of bad sleep were pretty understandable. Tonight was the biggest event of the year for me with my job here. Tonight was the Valentine's Banquet where we raise money for youth trips, including the return trip we are making to Manila over Easter Break. It actually isn't our biggest fundraiser, per se, but it's the first one, and the only one that involves a meal, a speech, and an entire evening of event orchestration.

Before

As far as fundraisers go, the Valentine's Banquet is one of the best I've come across. We basically transform our church into a restaurant for the evening. Volunteers cook and run a kids area, and the youth serve tables as the wait staff. My job is to keep the evening moving, entertain everyone with games and such, and, eventually, to make an ask of everyone who came to support our trips. This year's theme was "A Celebration of Love."

After!

What I love about this fundraiser is that those who attend get a fabulous meal, awesome door prizes, amusing entertainment, and interactive, on-site childcare (and by interactive I mean Valentines crafts, music time, playground time and dinner... the kids even performed a song they learned for the adults at the very end!). And when you add up what that would cost out in town plus a babysitter, even a really generous love offering is a bargain to most families. It's a lot of work for a handful of people, but ultimately, everyone wins.

It's the handful of people that I find myself so grateful for tonight. Well, actually, now that I think about it, I'm really grateful for everyone who was there. At one point during my talk tonight leading up to the ask, I asked parents of youth to raise their hand. It was a small minority - maybe 15 to 20% of the 50+ people in the room. That means a notable majority of our audience tonight came with the primary intention of supporting our youth program. That's pretty impressive when you think about all the possible conflicting events on a Saturday night. Yes, even here.

Briefing the wait staff

Everyone who attended said they had a great time, which I believe since not a single person left early.  Parents pitched in and we had the entire place cleared out, mopped, and ready for tomorrow's church service 30 minutes after we handed out goodie bags. Even I had a wonderful time. Last year I was an anxious wreck, spinning around the room in an adrenaline-fueld frenzy. This year, I had a calm approach to all the preparations and took advantage of the zillion offers for help from parents and church staff. Everyone made it so easy... and so fun.

And just as it should be, my favorite part of the night was the meat of the program. I showed a video of pictures from our trip to Manila last year, and then asked four youth to speak about why they want to go back. It was amazing to hear them articulate in real-time, out-loud words what they learned from the trip and what they were looking forward to. Their sentiments all focused around the kids and babies who had so little. Our youth, our teenagers felt they had so much and still had more to give.

My heart is overflowing tonight with love and gratitude for everyone in our little island circle here who took part in our wonderful evening. There were three people there from Nick's command who heard me talking about the dinner and just wanted to be part of it. Earlier this week, a new friend who moved on my street just six months ago handed me a $50 check simply to support our ministry, even though she couldn't come to the banquet. Three other close friends took on cooking (for two days!) and running childcare (for 20+ kids!) so I could focus my efforts on the banquet program.

And so now I can't sleep because I am lying wide awake in bed writing thank you notes in my head to the dozens of people who helped make this event such a success. And I don't mean in terms of the money. Yes, we had a great response from our love offerings. But that definitely was not the point of tonight. Tonight transcended bottom lines and fundraising goals. It was a celebration of love that came straight from the heart of a whole bunch of people who simply wanted to be part of something bigger. And apparently that means sending us back to a very worthy orphanage in Manila. What can I say, love travels. It traveled to a small church in Guam tonight and filled hearts with blessings that in a few weeks will overflow into the lives of a few precious children... children who are still waiting for families.

And somehow, like most special days on Guam, this Valentine's Day is going to be hard to top for years to come.