Harvest Festival: Post Event

The Harvest Festival on Saturday was an exciting event and a major success.  While I can't speak for the whole festival, I did talk to many of the people who worked at the booth from our church service. 

It was the first time that the Jabriya Life Center participated in the Harvest Festival in such a major way.  Of course, people from our service have attended and donated to the event in the past, but this is the first time that we operated a food booth.  As I mentioned in the last post, one of the largest draws of the Harvest Festival is the food because you get to eat food from all over the world, and the proceeds go toward missions.

our "fearless" leader, flipping burgers

Since the leader who headed up the Harvest Festival is an American, he decided to have typical 'American' food.  Nothing is really as American as grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, so that was the food we sold- a big contrast to all the Asian noodles and other traditional dishes being served.

Nearly all the food was donated from various vendors, which meant that all profits went toward missions.  There were also four propane gas grills that people lent out to be used for the booth, and many volunteers worked hard to prepare the food and set up/tear down the booth.  In the beginning, it seemed like there would not be enough volunteers to make the workload light; the festival lasts from 9am-4pm. In the end we had more than enough volunteers for two shifts, a set-up crew, and a team for clean up. This allowed everyone to enjoy the festival at the same time as serving.

serving the tasty food

I was really happy to see the collaboration among friends and others who are in life groups at Jabriya.  I was also glad to see a lot of new people in the church taking time out to serve in this capacity.

I don't have all the numbers from the entire festival, but I know that the money brought in by JLC's hamburger food booth was 475 Kuwaiti Dinar- about $1,675USD!  This proved to be a major success and was still just a small part of the large contribution to missions.

 

the performance stage with children singing

The rest of the festival was a lot of fun, with many people eating, chatting and enjoying the different sights and sounds of the festival.  There was music throughout the day, along with hundreds of children playing on inflatable slides and getting 10 times their daily sugar intake from cotton candy.

Thanks to all those who served, attended, or prayed for the event. Please continue to pray that the money raised will be used to have a major impact on God's Kingdom throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

 

smile!- photo by Ptr. Mark, edited by me