Harvest Thanksgiving Celebration (HTC) was the weekend of October 18-19. It is an annual event at ARI. We celebrate the harvest with a party for the local community. About 1,000 people come each day.
We have not posted about HTC until now because, frankly, we did not want to think about it for a while. It was an all-consuming, exhausting marathon of planning, preparation, and execution.
It was one of those events where you think it is going to be a train wreck and will never come off, and then God smiles and, miracle of miracles, it all comes off better than anyone could have asked or imagined. At least that is how it felt to us. The weather even cooperated and the rain started literally as we closed up the second day.
Chrys was on the worship committee, which planned the opening ceremony on Saturday morning and the actual worship service on Sunday morning. She also served as one of two liturgists (Chrys in English and Yuko in Japanese), who introduced speakers and such. Scott got volunteered to be an usher at both events.
Chrys also pulled shifts at the Language Cafe, where visitors could talk in one of many languages to a member of the ARI community. Chrys did Spanish and native English, but there must have been 20 or so languages available.
Scott was on the food committee, which planned the dishes that would be served each day. One of the big draws of HTC for the local community is the opportunity to try dishes made by people from around the world.
One of Scott’s jobs before the event was to help butcher 125 chickens (see the earlier post “At Least they Died as Christians”) for the various dishes.
We also made 140 apple turnovers to sell. It was a lot of work and took us about 5 hours on a Sunday.
During the event Scott helped Nick and Sarah (both from the Philippines) gill pork and chicken lechón over an open fire.
Besides the food there was a full slate of entertainment by the ARI community – a lot of musical talent, games for the kids – and outside vendors plying all sorts of wares.
It wears us out just thinking about it again. You can find out more at ARI’s web site.
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