Missionaries

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly...

Last night as I was trying to get the kids in bed the phone rang. As I picked up my phone, to my surprise it was my mom calling. Wait? Isn't she suppose to be at the MTC? I hurried and picked up.
"Mom? What are you doing? Is it okay that you are calling?" I joked.

Fortunately as senior couples you have several perks that younger missionaries don't. I knew my parents didn't want to be getting a call from me when I was at the MTC. That would only mean trouble. She sounded so happy and said that she and dad were having a great time. The MTC normally gets 30-40 senior couples. That particular week they had 102 couples. Needless to say, there wasn't enough room for everyone there. Can you guess where she was calling me from? The Marriott!

"So, do you get to eat your breakfast there too?" I joked some more.

She didn't talk long. She had homework to do. They were getting ready to present the first discussion. I loved how excited she was and how happy she sounded. It certainly made it fun to talk to her and not feel sad at all.

Now on to my other missionary story. I only tell this portion because it really just makes me laugh.

As a missionary we hated when people would dog us and our teaching appointments. I remember the one time it was almost okay. This sweet lady wrote us an apology for not being able to keep the appointment and left us a bag of cookies because she felt so badly about it. Well tonight I was dogged once again. This time it was by the missionaries themselves.

I just keep hoping that these two are okay and that nothing bad happened to them. I signed up at church to feed the missionaries. Mark made arrangements to come home early so we could accommodate their schedule. The appointed time came and no missionaries. We waited. And then we waited some more. The boys really were excited about having the missionaries over to our home so I felt badly that it didn't work out. Finally, after 45 minutes we sat down to the table. I kept waiting for the doorbell to ring, but it never did.

As you can imagine, we had plenty of food for dinner. I may not have to cook tomorrow! It really wasn't a fancy dinner or anything. I was just a little frustrated that they never called to cancel or tell me what was going on. I even stressed out that the cake I made didn't look so great and made frosting to jazz it up a bit. I confessed to Mark that the only reason I made the frosting was because of the missionaries. He didn't seem to mind that they elders never showed up. He was just happy to have chocolate frosting on his zucchini cake.

Next time I talk to my mom, I'll remind her not to flake out on their dinner appointments.