Great Adventure 2010

This past Saturday evening was Medical Teams International's 5th Annual Great Adventure Dinner and Auction.  The evening was amazing and we raised $1.34 million!!!  The weeks leading up to the even were long and stressful but I was suprised at how well everything went on the night of.  Of course there are always a few kinks throughout the night (for example: a lost puppy kennel which turned up on the bottom of a cart in the catering tent), but overall everything went very smooth.

It's exuberating to see all of the hard work that has gone into planning the auction come together.  It was almost surreal to see the doors open at 5:00 and watch 650 guests pour into our warehouse which was completely transformed into an amazing international silent auction area and tropical Guatemalan dining room.  I was also amazed at the generosity of our guests.  The live auction was so exciting (at least the bits and pieces of it that I caught while running around dealing with logistics) --- people were raising their bid cards high and often.  Each time a package sold, I thought of all of the effort our committee members put into procuring each specific items that ended up raising thousands of dollars.

So the night went well and was tons of fun.  But most importantly we raised $1.34 MILLION which will touch the lives of millions of people around the world!!

 The International Silent Auction room



our incredible Silent Wine section

Our auction intern Olivia with the $8,000 puppy and one of

the Trail Blazer cheerleaders (our spotters for the evening)

Father Ganz, one of my favorite people in Portland

- so glad he was able to make it to the auction!

Bas and the Auction Chairs about to announce the total

celebration dance!

me and our new Director of Development, Kristen Kirst

click here for more pictures

and here's a pretty cool video of our warehouse transformation