More on "Amore Festa!"

Since Donna already told you the menu, I'll tell you the fancy-schmancy program names I came up with for the menu items (with the help of an Internet-driven Italian-English dictionary).

The food courses were as follows:
La zuppa: Minestrone alla salsiccia
La portata principale: Insalata di pollo e spinaci
Il dessert: Gelato alla pera

If anybody out there knows more about Italian than I do (and that should be about everyone out there), just ignore my prepositions and articles, OK? ;-)

Judy Hurst & Donna did an excellent job with the food. In picture #3, you can see some of the items on display for one of our games, "Test Your Italiano". Two of our ladies, Deyna Dodd & Pam Christy, have some Italian heritage in their backgrounds and were able to supply us with these Italian items which people had to match to the corresponding Italian word. I got 10 out of the 15 (by sheer luck--and maybe just a little common sense). You see in picture #4 that Donna was finally able to display some prints she purchased in Venice several years ago. Picture #6: Our teen/college girls did a super job as servers. Picture #7: Liz Cole was pretty much the woman in charge who expertly delegated to make sure that today happened. Picture #9: Jeanine Aumiller, who served as one of the chief decorators, brought her mom all the way from the hills of N.C. It was good to finally meet her.

Our other three unpictured games included: Italian Trivia, "Come up with as many Italian foods as you can" (how do you like that title?)--sort-of Boggle style, and the purse scavenger hunt (good one, gals! You'll have to try it!). A number of our ladies contributed door prizes that we were able to award to the winners. Our theme verse for the event was Matthew 6:33 ("But seek ye first the kingdom of God"). Jennifer Cox did do an excellent job in graciously, yet unapologetically, proclaiming the Gospel. As Donna said, we were very pleased with everything except the number of visitors. But even for that, we remind ourselves of the hand of God, and trust that it will be used for the profit of the Kingdom for those who were present, and perhaps even in the building of relationships with those who were invited but did not attend.