After the chaos of the event, there was some really great outcomes! Praise God! And although we were worried, God knew all along how the night was going to go!
Fun Fact #4
The first Alfarero project was in Sucre, started in 1997 by Graham and Debbie and their team, and in 2007 the leadership team had become all nationals, and was mostly run by locals.
Fundraising and prayer
Thursday night there was an event to raise money for some of the costs of the final details, and also to gain some continuing support for the ministry.
So, I had the morning off to catch up on down time, although reading my other posts it doesn't sound like there was a lot of 'up' time! Anyway, I got to fit in some blogging and some reading, and general 'soaking' up of surrounds haha I can hear some people reading this, 'arghghgh!'. And thats why you weren't invited... j.
We all had lunch together again, Annalea cooked up some amazing food as usual! And I could eat most of it! Needless to say I was looking forward to lunch... One way to stop snacking through the day, take away your fridge and add a language barrier, that makes you not really want to go buy as much as you feel like... 2 points to Bolivia.
Siesta. Check.
After lunch, Debbie picked me up to help clean for the event, but the industrial cleaners had done a lot of the work, it was good to see what goes into setting up the fundraising events.
The event was for businessmen, and they were hoping to impress and open opportunities for donations to the ministry. I was helping to serve drinks and food for the night. The guest started to arrive and we welcomed them and served them drinks. Then Graham took about 14 of them on a tour around the building. While we waited for them to come back and start serving dinner, we were chatting about the cafe, previous fundraising and who works which events, and then we realised that the chef hadn't checked in, and we were supposed to serve the food when they got back from the tour, in 15 minutes... Samuel got out his phone to see how far away the food would be.
'where are you?'
... 'yes its today?'
... 'its always Thursdays'
... 'I've got to go.'
The chef thought the event was tomorrow! He didn't have a thing ready! WE HAD NO FOOD TO SERVE! We were asking these people for money to finish the things we needed to finish, and now they would really see we really are in need and so were they! hahaha it was crazy! After she realised it wasn't a joke, one of the Directors, Fatima, just kept saying 'wow...' 'wow...' 'wow...'
Samuel disappeared and Becca, Ellie and I were left to hold the fort, although we weren't really guarding anything and we didn't know anything if anyone asked anyway!
Eventually we got a call from Sam telling us to lay out the plates and he'd be back soon. We moved it to the down stairs kitchen, so that the guests wouldn't see us unpacking the food from the takeaway containers! We plated it up and served the food, I think we kept our cool very well, but I wonder if they noticed!
Dessert was cooked by Ellie and Samuel, so by the time dessert was called for we were a lot more settled.
Everyone was pretty exhausted and we prayed like crazy it wouldn't effect the outcome of the event and the view of El Alfarero that the guest would take away!
After the chaos of the event, there was some really great outcomes – praise God! And although we were worried, God knew all along how the night was going to go!
On top of some very generous donations on the night, one of the attendees of the event has offered to pay for all the signage or stickers in the building, which will be an amazing help (they're pretty expensive)! And even more incredible still is the story of another possible networking opportunity, with a couple (who didn't even plan to come to the event until after it had already started) who's friend is a business man looking to give to projects like ours! Praying that this connection with El Alfarero will lead to further contact and partnership in the gospel by giving this much needed funding!
After it was all over and Marco came to get me, I was glad to find friendly faces at home to unload all the stress I'd been keeping under the surface! (Hey if the waitresses are stressed it gives it all away! 'Keep it together man!')
