some tempura..a little bragging..and a whole lotta love

our very sweet friends, andy and sarah of landontastic, invited us and our other friends, edwin and cristy, to dinner at their house last month.  they told us they wanted to make tempura for us and we squealed for joy!  to be honest, allan didn't squeal.  only i did. but he was definitely stoked by the invitation to a night of fun and some homemade, authentic tempura.  when the night came and we got to their house, we smelled bbq and walked into an amazing array of water toys set up for the kids to play with.  there were even overhead sprinklers!  anyway, the bbq threw me off because i thought we were having tempura.  to be honest (again), i was wondering if they had changed their minds about the tempura. nope!  andy was bbq-ing up hot dogs for the kids.  they had everything set up for the kids to eat and play in the yard while the adults were to enjoy a peaceful and delicious japanese meal inside. well, that didn't happen.  not completely anyway.  when sarah told us all to go and sit down for dinner, we found that there were only 4 settings at the table.  it was odd to us, so we asked why there were only 4 settings when there were 6 of us.  you want to know why?  sarah was frying up the tempura FRESH like they do in traditional restaurants in japan and serving it to us as she was doing it.  it was AMAZING!  we were incredibly spoiled on our "double date!"  sarah kept making fresh batches of tempura for us and serving it to us round-by-round while andy entertained and occupied all of the kids outside.  the four of us felt really guilty eating, talking, and laughing while our friends were working so hard to serve us. but, in the end, the four of us had a blast and we felt incredibly honored and loved.  the whole night really reminded me of the verse our whole church was memorizing at the time.  Jesus tells us in John 13:34-35 that "just as he has loved us, we are also to love one another.  and, by this, all will know that we are his disciples, if we have love for one another." boy, were we loved, and boy, do we know that andy and sarah are Christ's disciples.  :)

check out the table setting...so authentic.  unfortunately, i was too busy eating and didn't remember to take pictures of the actual food.

our lovely dinner companions.  :)