The Game Feed

This may appear slightly outdated, but its been a busy few days.

Last Friday was the peak of the Men's Ministry at my church. Every year, we put on an event called the Men's Wild Game Feed. This was our 10th Annual feed, which is crazy. I can't believe it's been 10 years that it's been going on.

Admittedly, I haven't personally been involved with it that long, but pretty close. I was not at the first event, which occurred in the Fellowship Hall of our old church building. About 25 guys showed up and at that time, each guy cooked his own game and brought it. Really more of a pot-luck type situation.

However, we had a chef from a local resort in attendance that night, and he stood up and said "Okay guys, next year bring your game out to the restaurant a couple days ahead of time, and we'll cook it up there."

So starting with the 2nd Annual feed, we had a new location. This was the first time I attended. We actually lived about half a mile away from the restaurant at the time and our patio doors faced the street. I knew the event was going on but had it in my head that it started later. So after watching about 50 cars go driving by I thought maybe I should head that way. I was the last in line...figures. But that would be the start of a trend.

Starting with the 3rd annual event, I was on the planning committee. To be honest, I don't know how that happened, but okay. My part of the event was pretty simple. Together with another guy, we manned the money table the night of the event. Other than that, we pretty much showed up at occasional meetings for it.

The event remained at the restuarant for the next couple of years, but once our new church was completed, along with a huge fellowship hall, we moved the event to the new facility. The first one that happened there was teh 7th Annual event.

Okay, background is done now.

Friday afternoon I jetted out of work early and headed to the church. In addition to sitting at the money table (which ironically I didn't do this time) I've also inherited the role of leading the dining room setup and cleanup. Really it's pretty simple, but I enjoy it.

I got there about 1 and the first thing I did was map out the layout of all the areas that we would be moving around. That took me a little bit, and then we (me and a few other guys that were there to help) started moving tables, setting up chairs, setting up a stage, etc etc. It took us a couple hours and I tell you what, its a fun time.

The odd thing about this year was that I needed to leave while all the guests were arriving. I have a weekly conference call for Hebrew class Friday's at 5:30, so I headed home after the setup was completed. Once the call was done, I took my son and we headed back out to the church for supper. This was his first time going and he was pretty pumped for it. We got there about 6:45 and I figured by that time the line would be pretty minimal. I was wrong.

The line was clear down the hallway into the Narthex. So we had some waiting time. Considering that we were the tail end of the line, I took advantage and put the Narthex back in order. Once less thing for "cleanup time" after supper was done.

Finally after awhile, we made it to the food. The food. Let me tell you. It was amazing. Venison, elk, goose, duck, pheasant, fish. You name it, we had it. A good friend of mine (also a former chef, though different from the original guy) is in charge of the cooking now and it is spectacular.

The event was very successful. We had 240 people there plus all the kitchen help, so the fellowship hall was full.

The program went well. We had a great speaker and as a whole things went great. Cleanup went quickly too and I was home by 9:30. All in all, a great night.