Wednesday, August 26, 2015

 

The past two days we have been preparing and serving lunch at the Annapolis Zone Conference and the Baltimore Zone Conference, which was actually in Essex, MD.  Tomorrow will be the last one this week and it is the Columbia Zone Conference in Ellicott City, MD, which is actually the closest to our apartment.

Irene Planned the menus, we went to Costco (my favorite store), priced the items and estimated quantities of each item.  I put the information in a spread sheet for future use and printed them off as a shopping list for our Costco run.  As we have seen need to modify amounts and prices, having the info in a spread sheet makes it quick and easy to update.

Elders Carlson and Stevens were a big help for us on Monday evening as we prepared sloppy Joe's for the Annapolis Conference.  Of course the "Master Chef" instructed them in the fine art of slicing olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, and frying hamburger (not the "Berger Cookies").  We served ham, potato salad, roll and butter, grapes, and peanut butter bars today.  Tomorrow we will serve sloppy Joe's at the Columbia Zone.  We planned on 40 people at each conference.  The cost per person for each meal was $3.49, $2.64, and $3.53, respectively.

We are grateful to have this experience.  It's giving us the opportunity to attend more zone conferences where we can be fed spiritually, while we feed them physically.  If these missionaries' parents could only see their sons and daughters serving as faithfully as they do, they would be totally amazed!  Maybe not, though.  After all, they did raise them up to be valiant sons and daughters in the service of God.  Thank you parents for training up your children in the way they should go.

It is fun and exciting to hear the missionaries share experiences where they have recognized the hand of the Lord in their lives as they have sought out people to share the gospel with.  Just as fun and exciting is to hear the experiences of those the missionaries have taught and how they have recognized the hand of the Lord in their lives as well.

Here are some pics of the missionaries while at the Annapolis and Baltimore Conferences.