Dinner at Dallen's

So I just realized that I haven't ever talked about the fact that I'm having weekly dinner parties at my house. The guests? Children from our boarding section. One of the ideas I had when I was formulating a plan to work here as a missionary was to get to know all the kids. In the youth group back home, our youth pastor used to have "dinner for 10" at his house so that students would have a chance to hang out with him, and he would have a chance to get to know them. So as I calculated how much I needed to raise each month to be in Uganda, I added this line item to my budget.

At the end of March 2009, I finally organized the first "Dinner at Dallen's". I invited about 15 students to my house on a Saturday night and enlisted Teacher Deborah to be my cook for the night. Ashley and I led the students in some fun youth group games from back home. We learned the names of all of the children and had a meal that left many of us practically passed out on the floor. It was a giant success. After that first one, kids would come and tell me that they were going to be the ones at my house for dinner that week.

Since then, I've been able to host about 5 more dinners at my house for between 15 and 20 students. So I'm slowly getting to know each of the 170+ students in our boarding section by name. Right now we're on our in between holiday break so there won't be any dinners for a while, but I look forward to more fun with these students in the future.

FYI...dinner for that many costs me less than $20 and everyone leaves with a full belly of GOOD food...not posho and beans!