So you're sitting in Relief Society, excited for the lesson, when announcements are made and someone stands up with a clipboard in hand. "We need people to sign up to feed the missionaries this month," she says.
What follows is some impressive haggling for a good time slot, negotiating back and forth with your friends, and defending the time you finally manage to claim.
You got your name on that sign-up sheet, and now you feel awesome anticipating how great it will be to provide service for the missionaries!
As your assigned day approaches, you remember how daunting the task was last time and hope you can pull it off again. What are you even going to make? You should check to make sure they don't have any food allergies or extreme dislikes. That's the last thing you need.
Should you feed them a healthy veggie-packed meal their mothers would appreciate?
Or are they longing for comfort foods?
Should you make your very best dish to impress them?
You could just order from Pizza Hut and make it simple...
You read "20 Ideas for Feeding Hungry Missionaries" for inspiration, and you decide to make something healthy and relatively fancy. You just hope it's not something they've been fed a thousand times already.
When you wake up that morning, it's like the calm before a storm. You get to feed the missionaries today. The task looms before you, but you remind yourself...
Unfortunately, choosing a healthy, fancy meal means you have to buy a lot of last-minute groceries. And your window is very narrow. The missionaries only have an hour to eat, so you have to have everything made and ready to go by 5:00. You don't even get off of work until 4:00.
But you grocery shop like a pro and manage to coordinate all the cooking...
...hoping it's okay to speed some things up a little.
You're making so much more food than usual! You hope they'll like it and eat it all.
5:00 comes, and like clockwork, the missionaries arrive on your doorstep. You've never actually met them before, so you assume these are the right ones, but really anybody could just put on a suit and name tag and get a free meal out of you.
After the prayer, the missionaries eat with gusto. Fortunately, they love your food! Sadly, though, all your hard work disappears in under 15 minutes. They really do have to eat and run.
But they make sure to share a spiritual thought with you, which at first feels a little awkward. You smile and nod politely but feel a bit guilty for not being more involved in missionary work.
Yet as the spiritual thought goes on, you find yourself opening up and learning more about the missionaries, the gospel, and yourself. You're reminded of the simple basics of the gospel, and have a renewed commitment to help the missionaries however you can. Feeding them is the least you can do.
In the end, it's almost sad to say goodbye. You give them any references you can think of and send them on their way with dessert to take home for later.
Farewell, brave souls!
...until next month.
