2013 In Review

We had a great year in 2013, had lots of fellowship and did some Kingdom work also.  Here is a list of things from memory that we did in 2013, these are in no particular order just as they came to mind.  Feel free to comment if you notice something missing.

• Had a great time and raised some funds for outreach during our Christmas ham sale.  We sold a 30 whole hams (some we halved).  Thanks to Montevallo's mens group for loaning us the smoker again this year, could not do it without them.  Head Chef Bill Scholl did an excellent job running the ship.  We were also able to give our staff a ham as a Christmas gift.
• Also had fun getting greasy frying and smoking turkeys during Thanksgiving.  We cajun fried 30 whole turkeys and smoked 75 breasts.  We were not able to get the boneless breasts this year so we slaved away and de-boned 75 bone in breasts.  They turned out great!  We partnered with our Feed My Sheep ministry and gave away 50 of the breasts to folks that come to the food pantry once a month!
• Raised around $1800 between the Turkey and Ham fundraisers!
• Bought the Calera Middle School football team and staff a Chick-Fil-A box meal for their last home game.
• Had the Calera High School football team and cheerleaders in for a steak dinner.  This is an annual event and one of my favorites to have 80+ students from the high school in our church fellow-shipping and enjoyed a Rib-eye hot of the grill.
• A few of us braved the storms and went down to Fort Morgan for some fishing in October.  Had a great time but did not catch much.  Hoping to do this again this year.
• Had the president of Adaptive Aquatics Joe Ray in for our November meeting.  He gave a great presentation of the work that is down out in Wilsonville on Lay Lake by his organization.  We raised $200 in donations during that meeting to help support them.
• Had Conservation Officer Shawn Dixon in for our September meeting.  This was probably one of my favorite meetings of 2013.  Shawn presented some great material and he put up with being berated by our serious and some not so serious questions :)
• Cooked and gave out hot dogs for the prayer in the park service the weekend before school started.  This was a great event where we worked with other churches in Calera to give out school supplies and pray for the students and teachers in Calera.
• Did a 1 day outreach this summer with Firehouse Homeless shelter in Birmingham.  We split up in a couple of teams and tacked some grass cutting and painting in one of their apartments.  We donated 10 gallons of white paint to them.  After a hard days work a few of us went over to the new Regions Field and watched the Barrons play.  Hoping to do this again in 2014.
• This summer we took care of getting food for our Tuesday Family Fun nights in the park.  This was a great opportunity for the church family to get together and have some fun in the park after a long hard day of work and school.
• Sponsored a young mans Camp Sumatanga camp fee this summer.
• We cooked and served the ladies during their annual Mother Daughter Dinner in May.  We had a good time together cooking and waiting tables and served the ladies at the same time.  Had about 15-20 men show up and we all dressed in black.  I have to say we looked nice,or at least most of us :)
• Smoked some hams for Easter.  I think we sold 40 whole hams and we raised $1300.
• Held our Narrow Gate event over spring break.  This is a top secret mission, if you want to learn more about it talk to one of the guys in our group.
• We put 5 youth members to work on a February work day to earn money towards their encounter trip.  Paid $450 towards their trip.
• Put on a pancake breakfast for the Calera High School wrestling team at the new middle school to help them pay for a new wrestling mat.
• Had our annual Chili Cook-off in January.  Jason Carlee took home the trophy.
• Worked alot this year on our expansion trailers.  Got a deck built, got them underpinned, got electricity ran to them.  We still have a little bit of work to get them ready for use.

Looking forward to another great year in 2014!