The Meatball Supper Fund Raiser for My Church

Sounds pretty boring, but it ended up being a blast! 

I grew up in a very small town of 850 people, so you could imagine that my church was small and didn't have that many members, but for one day out of the year, the church was bursting with activity.

This is for the famous meatball supper.  People would come from all over the place to come and enjoy the supper. 

We would charge like $10 a head.  This money would go towards the church.  It would pay for the heating, the water, the electricity, the janitors and upkeep of the grounds. 

The people would get meatballs and gravy, mashed potatoes, cooked carrots, a beverage and a choice between a bunch of different desserts.  All of this food would be fresh and homemade.  I'm getting hungry just thinking about this.

Well, my part in all of this was that I not only got to eat the delicious meal, I helped prepare it.  I'll have to admit that I'm not the greatest chef, so how did I get into this? 

Some of the people that were in charge of the whole thing were my grandma and grandpa.  They are still in good shape and they had probably a dozen people in the kitchen, but they were going to have to serve hundreds and hundreds of people. 

That is a lot meatballs, potatoes and carrots!  Not only that, that is a lot of dishes to do and you have to have people to take the money and people to take orders over the phone from people who ordered meals to go etc.

Now, going into it, I thought that it would be boring.  I just wanted to do it to help them out and help out my church.  Helping other people makes a person feel better about themselves.

Even if you don't believe in karma, helping people out just makes a person feel better.  There is just so many bad things out in world and so many terrible things happen to good people, so when I get a chance to help people, I do it.

To my shock, it was actually a blast.  Now, I've done fundraising my whole life and I've always had fun doing it, but I had never been in a kitchen, cooking a meal while at a fundraiser, so I didn't know what to expect.

This is something that I always tell people about having or contributing to a fundraiser, they can be so much fun.  People will have all kinds of excuses that they don't have time or this and that, but it is probably just because they think that it is going to be boring and that they won't enjoy themselves and that is such a misnomer.

You can never predict when or if you will have a good time.  I've been in situations where I was dreading having to be there and I ended up having the time of my life and I've also been in situations where I thought I was going to have a blast and it ended up being really boring.  The only way to find out is to experience things.

The moral of the story is to give fundraising a try.  You never know if you're going to enjoy yourself, without at least trying it.  I'm still amazed that I meet people that have never really contributed to a fundraiser. 

Even if you can't commit much time to it, you can always contribute money, support and help by simply promoting it. 

Nate

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