~Our Couples dinner~

If you thought to pray for our couples dinner last Saturday night, Thank you! This dinner was to encourage those couples who are having problems, to edify all the couples, and also to encourage the couples on the fringes of the church that are living together and aren't married, to get married. The Lord gave us a wonderful evening!
~Sis. Farly asked that I make a certain salad and some cakes. So, here are Kimberly and I chopping up about 8 heads of broccoli, and 6-7 heads of cauliflower to make the requested cauliflower/broccoli salad.~~Here I am ready to add the bacon and cheese to all of our bowls of salad.~
~I also made about 56 heart shaped pink and white cakes to take to the couples dinner. They don't like a lot of sweets here, so I just put a dollop of cool whip (I made a recipe for Mock cool whip so it wouldn't melt) and a cherry on top for color rather than a bunch of sweet icing.~

~On Friday our family went to a floral shop of a Christian lady who has made flowers for us before. We asked her if she could make me a corsage with 3 roses in it to wear on my shoulder. Evidently they had never heard of such a thing, so she made me 3 individual boutonnieres. Help! When Phillip asked her how much we owed her, she said, "Nothing! Just please pray for my family!" How sweet! But....now I had 3 boutonnieres on my hands. So, Saturday afternoon I googled "How to make a wrist corsage" and also called my sister Laura. Between the two I was making my own wrist corsage one hour before we were to leave for the couples dinner. =D The Lord helped me and I was happy with how it turned out. =) The Ladies liked my corsage, although they had never heard of one before. The other husbands each bought a bouquet of flowers to give to their wives at the dinner. (That is what they do here in this culture in place of corsages.) Here is my corsage.~
~Here is a picture of my sweetheart and me before we left for the dinner.~
We passed out a piece of paper for each person to fill out about their mate. This paper contained questions like, "What is your mates favorite food, shoe size, favorite verse, favorite hobby, etc." They were to answer these questions without asking their mates. We choose 2 out of the highest scores to get a prize. We also passed out prizes for the couple who had been married the longest, the one with the most kids, the one who were the youngest when they got married, etc. We passed out some prizes to the couple most faithful to church, the newest couple in the church, and 2 of the couples who were just visiting got a prize too. (We had them choose a number between 1 and 10, for there were several new couples.)
~Here is one man THINKING REALLY HARD about the questions about his lady.~ =)
~These are the cute fun gift boxes of chocolates that we bought to pass out for prizes.~
~Here is our place setting. (Before we were served our food.)~
~Here we are at our table.~
~Jimmy and Farly each gave a challenge to the couples.~
~And they asked that we do the same.~
Thank the Lord for Jimmy's aunt. She caters meals and so she decorated everything, and made the main part of the meal. She served us a yummy fish fillet with a shrimp sauce over it, and rice. I made the salad and the dessert, and Sis. Farly made the delicious strawberry lemonade.
~Here is the pretty centerpiece.~
~His aunt is the one in the pink and black. Sis. Farly, Cindy and Joanna helped serve.~
~We had a good attendance. There were 4 tables, with about 17 couples or so! Here's one table.~
~Another table.~
~Our table.~
~Another table.~
~Here Phillip is presenting Pastor Jimmy and Sis. Farly with a gift.~
~Several couples renewed their vows. (It would have been hard for us to do so, since Phillip was performing the ceremony for the rest of the couples. HA!)
~More couples renewing their vows.~

~Then we took a picture of each couple. I'm just posting 4 of us couples. Here are Edgar and Joanna.~
~Jaime and Sofia.~
~Yours truly and her sweetheart. (and our PRECIOUS baby GIRL!!!!!=)~
~Pastor Jimmy and Sis. Farly~
~We got home at 11:50 Saturday night, and I was having 8 guests for dinner the next day. WHEW! It was a tad overwhelming, but my family and the Lord really helped and we had a nice Sunday dinner together.