Blessings came in the form of 1,600 pieces of chicken and 480 slices of pizza this past Thursday when Michelle Raby, (our founder) and Abbie Hartsell (her PIC- Partner In Crime) went out to begin asking for donations for this year’s Evening of Dreams dinner. Now you may be wondering why we went to Chick-fil-a and Little Caesars when every year we work so hard to bring a fancy dinner to our guests, well as it turns out, that’s not what the guests want! We asked our parents and students last year for feedback on the prom and almost every one of them said how amazing everything was, but that maybe we could scale back on the meal. “It’s a really special event for my daughter, but her two favorite foods are chicken fingers and pizza! Maybe you guys could go with a meal like that in the future?” We took that request and the countless others that were like it and set out to get the best chicken and pizza that we could find!
Stop Number 1: First stop of the day was to visit the Chick-fil-a at Arden Fair. We walked in the door with donation letter in hand and asked to speak to a manager. After a short conversation with the manager, we were quickly introduced to the store OWNER, Joshua Paul, who loved what we are doing with Evening of Dreams and was willing to donate whatever we needed! We asked for chicken nuggets to feed everyone, and he said YES! We are getting 1,600 chicken nuggets from Chick-fil-a and Josh even said that the Chick-fil-a cow would make an appearance! But the excitement didn’t stop there…
Stop Number 2: On the way to the next stop of the day, we were calling everyone to share the great news about how God provides and then we decide to go to the Little Caesar’s off of Kiefer. Upon arriving, we were immediately introduced to the two OWNERS of Little Caesars, Mark and Jarred, who ALSO loved the idea of Evening of Dreams! They wanted to help us get pizza to everyone, along with the chicken, so the decided to donate 60 pizzas! They even said that if we started to run out that we just had to come back and they would give us more! How incredible! After a brief conversation with the guys we even found out that Jarred has a nephew in Idaho who has special needs and who would love the event. We told Jarred we would love to have him attend, so his nephew is FLYING in to attend the prom! Can you believe it!?
All in all, it was a pretty amazing day! We walked back into the office and were so excited we had to tell everyone! Our very own, Laine Alves even caught it on video! To view the clip click here. Within a one hour time frame all of the meals for the entire prom were covered because of the amazing generosity of Josh at Chick-fil-a at Arden Fair and Mark & Jarred at Little Caesars on Kieffer! What a blessing it is to have a community who comes together to support such an amazing cause like this. We are blessed beyond words!