Good morning, everyone -- (all 53 of you, we counted!) -- and thanks again for your support last night.

We raised $1,695 for the Boston cluster of Refugee Immigration Ministry, which will help a lot in our support of A. We’re glad so many of you got a chance to say hello to A and learn a bit of his story. We expect the donation total to climb, by the way, as a number of people unable to make the dinner have expressed interest in contributing.

I’m happy to report the winner of last night’s door prize. As a journalist, Anne Donohue brought an professional advantage to the competition, which makes the performance turned in by runners-up James Mitchell and Joanne Ekhaml all the more impressive.

Among the things we learned about last night’s group via their reporting:

We have at least a half dozen birth countries among us: Austria, Ghana, Hungary, New Zealand, Panama and the United States.

At least a half dozen dual citizenship combos: Hungary-USA; New Zealand-Australia; Thailand-USA; Ireland-USA; Panama-USA and Ireland-USA.

At least 16 U.S. birth states: New York, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Vermont, New Jersey, Kentucky, Georgia, California, Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts.

Lots of lines of work: account manager, accountant, actuary, programmer, journalist, teacher, high school counselor, retired, lawyer, non-profit director, spiritual director, preschool student, elementary school student, high school student, tennis coach, grad student, consultant, executive producer, surgeon, industrial designer, nurse, pastor and anthropologist.

If you think you might like to stage your own Dining for a Friend for RIM or other worthy causes, let us know. We’ve learned some things along the way and the franchise rights remain freely available (diningforafriend.org TK soon)!

Carol and Kate and Marton and I really enjoyed hosting all of you. As we debriefed the evening, it was striking how many of you arrived knowing only us or few of the other people -- and seemed to make a lot of friends really fast!

If you missed the dinner last night and might like to come next time, we’ve kept you on the list. If you’d prefer not to get these occasional invites, just shoot me an email at bmitch@gmail.com and I’ll remove you. We recognize that the people on this list are busy and already doing lots of good stuff in many ways.

Thanks, all!

Carol & Bill and Kate & Marton