Monday, March 23, 2009

Save the Date! Feast with the Angels!

Fuller Center for Housing - Iowa Great Lakes
Fundraising dinner and silent auction with live music.

Friday night, May 8
5:30-7:30 p.m.
First Lutheran Church
West Okoboji, Iowa

Tickets $10 from any Fuller Center Iowa Lakes board member
Email: fullercenteriowalakes@gmail.com
Call: 712-441-5437 or 712-260-5027 (leave message on voicemail)

Why should you come and dine with us? See blog below.

We can't wait to see you!

Is there a video with this short blog? Of course there is. Is it by downhere? Taste and see!

"We've got lots of gifts so why don't we do what we were saved for? Come along and why don't we stir?"

Feast with the Angels!

It's sunset on an evening in May. You're seated at a round table where the view of new houses dotting the green hills of West Okoboji are bathed in brilliant pinks, oranges and the shade of red that says love. You know the shade. We see it all the time on the Lakes.

The scent of fresh baked desserts competes with the smell of pasta and garlic coming from the kitchen. Live music from local artists sets the stage for a night where not only do you get out of the house to see, be seen, socialize and savor, but the community comes together for one of its own.

Right. I've been to a thousand spaghetti dinners, fish fries, hog roasts and pancake breakfasts in this town, you say. It's not all that, and your purple prose will never convince me otherwise.

Fair enough. Maybe what we have is a garden variety spaghetti dinner
fundraiser.

What if we have a not so secret spice in our kitchen? Before you groan that my analogy is cheesy, bear with me for a moment. What if the little we can do -- put on a pretty average pasta dinner -- is expanded, enhanced, grown to ten or a hundred times its scope through our faith?

Huh?

I'll be perfectly up front -- we're a new organization. We need everything. We have lots of passion and little money.

But, our account has grown exponentially in the last two weeks through little donations -- $25 here from a total stranger who read the Fuller Center -- Iowa Lakes story at http://fullercenter.org/ $150 from Farmer's Bank where our account is opened.

We could raise enough money for our Terril project selling $10 tickets to our dinner one at a time. With live music and a silent auction, it's a bargain night out for a great cause.

But it's more than that. All the dinners around town are for worthy enough causes, and all of them bring out generous people.

All we're asking from you is a little, because God will take your $10, your mustard seed and grow it into a large tree, or in our case an entire house that needs to be redone almost from top to bottom.

When people act in response to human need, giving what they have without seeking profit or interest, we believe God magnifies the effects of our efforts. That's the economics of God's kingdom.

Glen Barton, field operations for the Fuller Center for Housing, says our covenant partner has come about as "fire, ready, aim." Our first project found us, and as you can read in previous blogs, when we heard Lisa's story we knew we had to help. It was just us and we had no money, hadn't really started our covenant partner, we had nothing.

Ed and I reached out last summer and fall for people to take a chance with us to make this project happen and found a fantastic, motivated, talented and inspired board that any nonprofit would be blessed to have. (Attention other local nonprofits -- do NOT steal our board members. You can borrow them, though, if they have the time and inclination to serve you the way they've served the Fuller Center for Housing).

God grows the littlest shred of promise into a beautiful garment that can cover us all. The smallest effort, if he's in it, can create a new society. Rest assured our entire board is praying like it depends on God and working like it depends on us.

Come see a few noodles grow into a magnificent feast. A few materials create a new home. A few hearts glow scarlet with the color of amazing, agape love.

Today's video is another fitting song from Downhere called "Little is Much."
"This is a song for the weaker, the failures and so-called losers. Little is much when God's in it and no one can fathom the plans he holds. Little is much when God's in it, he changes the world with the seeds we sow."