All-American

It will be a full week-end for most of our YSAs.  We had institute tonight, tomorrow night is temple night with dinner following, Saturday is the evening session of stake conference, and Sunday is stake conference and our own YSA sacrament meeting at 7.  They are always incredible and I always come away lifted and inspired.  

It will also be a full week-end for us as well.  We have all that plus on Sunday right after conference, there will be an open house for the Hansens.  They will leave Tuesday morning and I know they are full of mixed emotions.  They have collected some wonderful wonderful reminders of their stay in Denmark, and they are struggling to get everything packed up and sent home.  They can only carry so much with them, and so they found a packaging place that hopefully will get some of their things home to St. George safe and sound.

Immediately after the open house, all of the senior missionaries will go out to our mission president's home to dinner.  It will be the formal farewell dinner for the Hansens, the Garriots and the Ivies.  They all came out at the same time and are now tearfully saying their farewells to people they have come to know and love.

Then of course the week starts over with Monday family home evening.  Our chairmen, Louise and Morten have as a goal getting 50 people out weekly to our center on Thursdays.  I hope we can do it!  On the other hand, I don't know how I will do at the meals.

SK has not been helping me for the last month, because we were asked to teach institute in English for those who don't speak Danish.  There is consistently a count of 6 or 7 who want to attend the English class.  SK can't fix a meal by himself so he teaches.  So I hustle around the kitchen while everyone is in class and try to get everything ready on time.

Tonight I was caught .... the larger class which usually gets out at 8:30 came thundering out at 8:15!  I was cutting bread slices.  The menu was meatloaf, funeral potatoes, green beans and peanut butter bars.....can you get any more American than that?  Several had never tasted any of those items (well...everyone has had green beans!) and they seemed genuinely interested.  

Of course you can't go wrong with funeral potatoes, and it seemed that the meatloaf was a hit.  SK liked it, so that makes it a hit in my book.  The stress of the evening came as people started arriving at 5!  I love these guys and it is so fun to talk with them....but I began to realize that we might have a larger turnout tonight than usual.  

I figured that I had made enough meatloaf for 25.  I thought (wrongly so) that since there is a YSA weekend in Stockholm, we would have fewer people.  I made plenty of funeral potatoes and had bread enough for people to fill up on.  By the time institute started we had 35...and I don't know if more showed up.  I cut the meatloaf in very thin slices and got 33.  Gulp.  It might be that meatloaf did not appeal to many of them...I don't know.

I can't tell you how many times in the last months I have troubled and troubled the Lord with pleas for help with our meals.  In the vast eternal plan, our meals don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world (kind of reminds me of a line in "Casablanca!"), but I always want them to be nice and taste good.  Tonight I was also pleading that there be enough....and somehow there was.  I don't know how.  But I am grateful.

Conversations with YSAs were especially wonderful tonight.  At one point, I was sitting in the kitchen with 5 young women.  I asked them what they did to relax.  

"Sleep!" one answered.

"I create....paint or draw or something similar where I lose myself in what I am doing."

"I just kick back and read or listen to music or just think."

Then one said "I read my scriptures."

Another chimed in, "I go to church."  She elaborated....she has always loved church.  She wakes up on Sunday morning and thinks, "It's Sunday....I get to go to church today!"  She said that she has never lost the "butterflies in her stomach feeling" because she gets excited about it.  She has been a member for several years....she teaches the three-year-olds in primary.  Isn't that cute?

Most agreed that Sunday itself is a good tool to bring a sense of balance and peace.

What do you think?  Pretty great right?

It is exactly 2 a.m. and for relaxation, I am going to go to bed!