All that and a Crate of Grilled Chicken

Our youth group just hosted a fantastic fundraiser.

Fundraiser? Oh yes, I forgot to mention it. We had to raise some money for our upcoming mission trip.

Mission trip? Oh yes, I also forgot. Our mission trip is going to take us to Phoenix, Arizona for a week in June, where we will be leading/orchestrating a VBS for (inner-city?) kids.

Since we'll be going to ARIZONA in JUNE, I've declared that our trip motto will be "Sweatin' for Jesus."

The fundraiser consisted of chicken, potatoes, beans, and a dinner roll, thrown into a handy-dandy carry-out container.

But ya don't just throw food into a box and call it good!

We marinated the chicken quarters for 36 hours in some ultra-secret marinade. Actually, the marinade isn't a secret, I just don't know what all went in it. I DO recall, however, that we spent a lot of time debating over how to pronounce "Worcestershire sauce." The final verdict was to just call it "WR sauce" because the camp was divided over "Warr-Chester-Shyre" and "Werr-shesh-ter-shrrr".

We washed the potatoes and started wrapping them in tinfoil until someone pointed out that wet potatoes will get moldy when stored in tinfoil. And here I thought tinfoil was the food-preserving material of the future! Perhaps it had to do with the fact that we were wrapping them on Thursday and the fundraiser was on Saturday. So we let the potatoes dry completely and then wrapped them.

We put the green beans into roasters. Green beans and me, we understand each other.

On Saturday, we took the giant loads of deliciously marinated chicken

Interrupting Cow: HOW MUCH CHICKEN?

Thank you for that pertinent question, Interrupting Cow. A lot. A whole heap o' chicken. So much chicken, that when we cut out the little flap of fat from between the thigh and leg of each quarter, the excess fat filled one-and-a-half 5-gallon buckets. To be precise, eight gallons of fat trimmings.

As I was saying, we took the giant loads of deliciously marinated chicken and grilled them in the parking lot at the church. I had feared that we would be flipping chicken until our wrists fell off, but no! Someone had done some crafty crafting. The leaders (Anthony, Leon, and Myron) had summoned up half a dozen grills made from steel barrels. You cut the barrel in half, stick it up on legs, fill the half-barrel bowl with charcoal, lay a grate on that puppy, load the grate up with chicken, slap another grate of equal proportions on top, then use that handy grate-sandwich to flip roughly 32 pieces of chicken over the glowing coals simultaneously. Awesome.

After we flipped the chickens a couple of times, they reached their necessary bacteria-killing internal temperature of 140 degrees. After all, we didn't want our First Annual Chicken Munch to kill off the attendants of our Second Annual Chicken Munch. The overcast, cool morning worked highly in our favor. The heavy atmosphere kept the grill smoke low to the ground, while a slight breeze transported that awesome marinated-chicken smell through all of Kalona. Literally, people came from the other end of town and said, "we smelled your fundraiser and stopped by to see what was up." Also, those of you that have slaved over a hot grill/stove/fire in a blazing, unmerciful Summer sun truly appreciate the cool breeze of a slightly-chilly-yet-not-cold day. I thank God for the perfect weather we had.

The chicken wasn't quite ready after coming off the grill. In fact, there was still blood inside them hunks o' meat. So they were immediately transported into large insulated coolers lined with tinfoil, where they finished cooking while staying moist! Tinfoil, you truly are the food-preserving material of the future. Forgive me for ever doubting you.

[Photo Missing!] 
Here's where I'd have a picture of this revolutionary redneck grill sensation, but I was too busy permanently permeating my favorite sweater with the smell of grilled chicken to take photos. Please ask Shaina for some of her photos.

The potatoes were all getting baked by wonderful Sunnyside ladies that live close to the church. They put their ovens into service for us, and we're grateful. Even though the potatoes were shipped out to a dozen locations, they all turned out delicious.

The beans were getting their very own buttery spa in the roasters.

The bread that we purchased sat in bags. They were made fresh by some bakeries near us. The Kalona Bakery, perhaps? I'm not sure. Maybe I should invest more interest in where wheaty items are produced. After all, if a Cyanide-and-Anthrax factory was opened up in Kalona, I'd pay pretty close attention to their wares.

OHYES,IFORGOT. Our youth group handed out a bunch of tickets before the fundraiser, to get a rough idea of how many meals to make. We handed out around 600, and therefore produced 850 meals. In the back of my mind, I had been estimating that for every 2 tickets given out, we should make 1 additional meal for those people that hear about the fundraiser from friends/family, see the signs, or smell our delicious chicken. Therefore, the proper amount of meals produced should have been around 900. I wasn't aware of the ticket numbers, because those were a closely-guarded secret. What better way to get youth to sell tickets than to have a competition to see who sells the most? It certainly worked for me! I handed those puppies out left-and-right (one stipulation of the competition was that you had to give tickets to people who actually planned to use them) and managed to shell out about 50. I'm not sure how Myron did it, (cheating? bribery?) but he gave out over 100.

I'd call someone and ask if they would be coming to the fundraiser.

Them: "Why yes! But we already got tickets from Myron."

Me: "That's fantastic! I'm glad you're coming. It doesn't matter, the funds go to the youth group, no matter who sells the tickets."

Them: "That's true! We'll see you there."

*click*

Me: "Growlgrowlgrowl Myyyyyyyyronnnnnnnnnnnnn...."

The carry-out setup was another brilliant idea. We had the meal-making assembly line set up underneath the carport, and when people drove in the parking lot, several of us guys would run out (sometimes jostling each other) to take their order and bring the meal(s) to their vehicle. The operation worked really slick, and only the curious souls that wanted to nose around our operation got out of their cars. No need to continuously clean tables or wait to seat people as others ate! (Although we did set up several tables in the Fellowship Hall for anyone that desired to sit and eat.)

So there we were, handing out meals like we were the only restaurant in town, and we glanced at our sale sheet. We shouldn't have glanced. Only one hour had passed during our 11am-2pm fundraiser, and we had sold 300 reserved meals and 300 "extra" or unreserved meals. We had the Kalona Garage Sale Day to thank for bringing in hungry out-of-towners. We'd already blown past our 250 planned "extra" meals. So the leaders began to sweat and fuss. What do we do?

Throw out the ticket plan and go "first come, first served"?

Turn away pleasant strangers by saying "Well, we gave away all these tickets for free but we didn't call you and um you can't have a meal because you didn't get a free ticket."

We decided to pray. God had multiplied a meal of loaves and fishes in times past, and there were leftovers! We weren't sure of the molecular differences between a fish and a fowl, but we were pretty sure God could handle it. 

We kept selling food, but refrained from eating any just in case someone might buy it and somebody else might not get any. After the fundraiser ended, our youth group was planning to eat a free meal. Might as well sell the food instead and get a few extra donations.

We feared we'd run out of bread, so we quick went and bought some more.

We feared we'd run out of baked potatoes, and we still had 150 raw ones ready to bake, but they wouldn't be finished before the fundraiser ended. 

We really feared we'd run out of chicken, but it's difficult to run, purchase chicken, thaw it, marinade it for 36 hours, grill it for 20 minutes, and then let it sit in a cooler for another 20 minutes, when we only had 90 minutes of fundraiser to go.

We didn't really fear about the beans. There were extra we could throw in a roaster. Worst case scenario, some meals wouldn't have green beans in them, and people would have less to throw away at the end of their meal. (Not me, I eat all my green beans!)

We also didn't fear about running out of vinegar. Somehow, a mistake was made in the ordering and we had 50 gallons more than we needed. We joked that we could have a vinegar-selling fundraiser if all the food ran out. 


As many of you wise followers of Christ already know, God never does things half-way. OBVIOUSLY we shouldn't have worried at all, but when you're seized in the moment, scratching your head wondering WHERE all these strangers without tickets came from, it's fairly easy to worry about food shortages.

2pm came, and we had leftovers.

Plenty of bread.
Plenty of potatoes.
Three coolers of chicken.

Thank you, Lord.

The fundraiser brought in more than enough funds to get us to Phoenix, and even enough to get us back.

Thanks go to our fearless leaders, Leon and Wanda, (read Wanda's blog here. Do it now. She's the best.) as well as Anthony and Shaina (they don't have a blog but they should HINT HINT ANTHONY).

Thanks go to our church, who love and support us and let us turn the parking lot and Fellowship Hall into a Den of Thieves (or, more accurately, a marketplace.)

The church members that fed us a meal while we prepared on Thursday, thank you.
The church members that baked potatoes for us, thank you.
The church members that ate our meals and donated a whole lot of money, thank you.

The families and friends and relatives and everybody else that came out of the woodwork to eat some first-rate chicken, thank you. And you're welcome, for the first-rate chicken.

Fundraisers are difficult enough, but this was the first time our youth group did a Chicken Barbecue. Now that we have some solid numbers (attendance, food supply, vinegar requirements), the next years' fundraisers won't be as daunting.

Arizona bound! 

Thank You for supplying everything we need, Jesus.