Superbowl Party II

A great time was had by all on Sunday evening as the men gathered at Breakthrough to root against the Packers and Steelers (in my case I was rooting against the Steelers more than I was against the Packers). It was a great time shared by the guests and employees of Breakthrough and they were gracious enough to host us and our 5 Loaves group from Willow Chicago. As is our tradition we had t-shirts available in the team colors - black and gold for the Steelers fans and green and gold for the Packers backers. The Steelers shirts seemed to be in much higher demand.

We kicked off before the Superbowl with Mike Yeh sharing the first half of a stirring message. That guy gets EXCITED for our God! It was a great way to get started. Right before kickoff we dug into the superbowl feast of all feasts... the type that has you doubled over in pain by halftime. We had:

• 21 racks of ribs which came to about 65 pounds of tender juicy babybacks dressed in a spicy rub and slathered in a few coats of Sweet Baby Rays sauce
• 300 wings (that's the equivalent of 600 for those of you that call BW3's a wing) tossed in some secret scary sauce from Adam Walls which I am sure killed any germs that may have been lurking nearby;
• 20 pizzas from Malnati's which probably weighed in at 150 lbs or more;
• an awesome full sheet cake that probably should have had a Bears emblem served with the softest richest ice cream I have had in a long time;
• and a keg of root beer which I witnessed Adam drink more of than I thought humanly possible.

All said I am pretty sure the average calories consumed was close to 5 or 6 THOUSAND. Not to worry - we will be serving salad for the guys at dinner when we are there Thursday. They will hate us but I will remind them that they ate a week of dinners on Sunday. :-)

If this sounds fun let me know know - we would love to have you join us next year!

Time for Healthy Snacks?

One of the things I've been thinking about is how to make sure that our residential guests get healthy snacks, especially for the long period in between lunch at noon and dinner at eight PM. I was recently talking to a Breakthrough volunteer who told me that although she's not able to commit to volunteering with Manna because she travels frequently for work, she'd love to drop off an appetizer or snack-type dish for the guests occasionally. If you know of anyone who might be interested in this, please pass along my contact information.

Again, thanks so much for all your work, and have a good day!


Tim van Alstyne

Manna Ministries Coordinator
(773) 346-1744

Email - Volunteer Update - February 2011

Below is the monthly email update for February 2011

Greetings, Wonderful Breakthrough Volunteers!
Snow kept you in recently?  Get out and volunteer with us!  You can stretch those cooking muscles and even dine on the fruits of your labors!

FEBRUARY MEAL OPPORTUNITIES  

Here are the details for the meal serving ops in February:

• Thursday, February 10th - Men's Facility 
• For the Men's Meal, we need volunteers willing to help prepare and serve food - and help set up the dining room.
• Friday, February 18th - Women's Facility (AKA Joshua Center)
• For the Women's Meal, we need volunteers willing to help lead a craft and volunteers to help prepare and serve food.

Let me know if you'd like to sign up for either or both of these meal times and I'll make sure to reserve a spot for you - and feel free to invite friends that might be interested.

OUR WONDERFUL BLOG
Don't forget to check out our blog: http://wcbreakthrough.blogspot.com/. This blog keeps an archive of all the monthly update emails, and there's also a lot of unique information here that's just good to know. Feel free to bookmark the blog for easy reference.

New Opportunity - Breakthrough partners with Whole Foods

The Breakthrough Fresh Market will be partnering with the Gold Coast Whole Foods store to provide donations of food. We're very excited about the wider variety of food this will enable us to offer to East Garfield Park community members, and we are looking for volunteers who can commit to helping us pick up the food. This will be on either a Wednesday morning or a Friday morning from 7:30am to 9am. People interested in volunteering to do this must have a valid driver's licence and must be willing to drive Breakthrough's cargo van. If you know of anyone who might be interested, please have them contact Erin, the Fresh Market Volunteer Coordinator, at 773-346-1743 or <freshmarket@breakthrough.org>.