The Tuesday night group

Every Tuesday night, the young adult group gathers at our house for food, fellowship and study. When we first started about a year ago, our studies ran about 6 weeks and then we would take off a couple of weeks. Well, this year we started on the first Tuesday of the new year and we've been going strong ever since. We are studying Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis and it is taking us a long time. We have found a method that works for us after much trial and error. We actually read a chapter out loud (taking turns) and then we discuss. Then we read another chapter. Most weeks, we cover two chapters. The good thing about meeting for 6 weeks and then taking a break was that I could repeat our menus!! I'm having to come up with more new menus this time. If you have any great recipes that serve 25 people, send them my way!! We've had chicken fingers and homemade mac & cheese and we've had breakfast casseroles and biscuits and bacon. One of their favorite meals is Poppyseed Chicken and sweet and sour green beans and rice. We've had chicken spaghetti and pizza spaghetti and husband's delight. This last week, we grilled 6 pork tenderloins and we had corn pudding and green bean casserole and oriental slaw. We almost always have a salad of some sort every week, too. You can tell by the size of the bowl that we are feeding a lot of folks. I think we fed 23 last Tuesday. On Fat Tuesday, we even made miniature pancakes for dessert with lots of toppings. It has been a little bit harder during Lent because we have two folks who gave up grains, at least one who gave up carbs and several who gave up sweets. We have one person who has Crohn's and one who hates nuts and one who hates cheese. We've learned these things about them as we've gotten to know them better. I try to have at least one thing they can all eat. I know this is a silly picture but the colors were so pretty that I just snapped it. Can you guess what we were having for dessert? There are about 6 friends who have made our desserts each week. They have made trifles and chocolate chip pound cakes and all sorts of cookies. I can never thank them enough for their help!! Since we are in the season of Lent, we have been having fruit every week also for those who gave up desserts. I had failed to line up someone for this last week so I just bought a huge thing of Neapolitan ice cream and some toppings and sliced up a couple of packages of fresh strawberries. Here is the group. Aren't they great looking? It is amazing how much Mark and I have grown to love all of them. It is really funny because we feel like they are "ours" . . .like we feel about some of our own kid's friends. They are all such great young adults. They are smart and funny. When we first started about a year ago, we only had two guys (I think that is right). You can see that we now have a great mix of folks.

This is one of the bonuses of being a middle-aged momma - the resources to host this in our home each week. Goodness, we are blessed!!