2026 February: Haitian Dinner at St. Columba

 13 February 2026

Today was a busy day for both of us. We both had commitments at St. Columba church this morning. Both of us needed to be there for 10:00, so we biked there together. Once there we went our separate ways. Clark went to practice music for Sunday's church service with Johnny while I headed for the kitchen area to help prepare food for this evening's Haitian fund-raising dinner. 

I expected to find some number of people in the kitchen area, but the only other person there was Pastor Debra. The food had not arrived yet nor had the person in charge to say how she wanted things done. I decided to grab a seat to wait for things to begin. 

Before coming to the church, I went shopping at Walgreen's and Publix. I keep track of expenses in my phone, so I decided to update my records. No sooner did I open the app than Debra put me to work setting up and decorating the dining area. She said, "I don't want to waste your time." and proceeded to assign me work! Love it!

My first task was to put the napkins and menus out on the table. The Haitian flag contains red, white, and blue, so we used that as the color scheme.

Haitian Flag

We ran out of blue napkins, so Debra suggested we alternate tables blue then white with a menu at each place setting.

Once that was done, she asked me to put red, white, and blue beads out for a decoration.  Separating out the red, white, and blue beads from the vast assortment of other colors proved an interesting challenge. I ended up decorating myself! My friend Nancy said we needed a picture!

Once I untangled the beads from each other and from me, I placed them on the tower shown below as a bead tree.

After completing those tasks, the fellow kitchen workers had still not appeared. Fortunately, Debra had more work for me. She had gone through her personal collection of Haitian art to offer some items up for auction as part of this fund raiser. She found me a dust rag and put me to work putting a shine on these, mostly metal, object d'art.

Then I worked with Debra to set up the display of the items to be bid on.

This truck was the hardest item for Debra 
to part with.

Besides the items up for silent auction, Pastor Debra brought in a number of items for show only.

Debra rummaged around the church closets until she found the bulletin board she was looking for to make a display for the evenings gathering.

We were just finishing these various preparations when the food and our chef arrived to begin food prep. Almost 80 tickets were sold for tonight's dinner, so we had a lot of vegetables to chop up. My friend Nancy and I began by slicing multiple heads of cabbage and then moved on to slicing radishes. 

Nancy (Sous chef) and Winese (Chef)

While we were busy chopping, Pastor Deb continued decorating and put out orchids on tables.

Although they are all fake orchids, they look so real.

By 1:00, I had been at the church working for three hours and needed to head "home" for lunch. Clark was still busy rehearsing with John for Sunday. We biked home as soon as he was ready to go. After lunch he headed off to work with a fellow boater on a battery issue while I stayed on the boat and tried to stay awake while reading. I mostly failed!

Around 5:30 it was time to head back to the church for the big event. We passed by the folks waiting for the sunset and grabbed a picture before continuing on our way.

We thought we were on time, but when we got there, the room was packed with people.

Fortunately, Nancy and Steve had availability at their table for us. The food was plated in the kitchen and brought out to us. The menu is shown below.

Black rice, coleslaw, chicken and
fried plantain on my plate.

Dessert table

As described by Pastor Deb,
"Rum Punch with rum and
Rum Punch without rum!"

We had music before dinner.

Steel Band Music

After the meal, Pastor Debra made a presentation explaining the purpose of the dinner 

Pastor Debra

and then called Winese out of the kitchen to recognize her efforts to support the orphanage in Haiti and ask her to say a few words.

Winese

The event proved to be a success. The food was excellent; the silent auction fruitful for the orphanage. I was happy that I was able to acquire the one thing on the silent auction table that I wanted because it would fit on our boat. When I went to check out the table, I found that the refrigerator magnets that I coveted were not part of the auction, and I could buy one right then and there! Yay!

I have added this to my nook on the boat where I place my treasures from memorable moments.

Ev with Winese at the end of the event

I helped with some of the cleanup; Clark chatted with his fellow band members. By the time we left on our bikes to head back to the marina, it was near 8:00, so we put our lights on our bikes and headed out.