Tuesday night (I know, I know, these updates keep getting later and later, sorry) we had the missionaries over for dinner. The children always look forward to these dinners, so we try to do them on a somewhat regular basis. Unfortunately, time seems to go by much slower in my mind than it does on the calendar, so it had been quite a while since they had been over for dinner.
Sarah and Sophie love to set the table super fancy. We use the lace tablecloth and the "cheer" (wine) glasses, and try to make everything look as nice as possible. I have told the kids that feeding the missionaries is like feeding Christ, since they are here representing Him, so we usually go all out. They, in turn, are very patient with the kids antics and hijinks while they are here. They laugh at Noah's silly jokes, they listen with interest to long drawn out stories from everyone, and always make the kids feel special.
And usually, at least one missionary will do something to totally mesmerize the kids. It has become so commonplace that after this last visit Nicholas asked me if you had to know how to do magic tricks in order to go on a mission! So cute. I told him no, but that it did help and you usually learned a few from your companions if you didn't know any already.
Tonight, Elder Tavake taught the kids how to make music with their glasses. It took a bit before they mastered holding their finger straight enough, having the tip be wet enough, moving their finger fast enough, and keeping the glass steady enough with their other hand to get a tone out, but they did it eventually. Once that was done, they had a blast changing the level of liquid in their glass in order to change the tone they could make with their finger. And amazingly, no glasses were broken during the experiment.
For their spiritual thought, they burned a tea bag while one of the Elders held it in his hand. Only just as the flame got uncomfortably close to his hand, the whole thing floated up harmlessly into the air and returned to the table as little wisps of ash. Very impressive, and the point was to have faith, even if you couldn't see beforehand what was going to happen. Also, that exact obedience was required since if the missionary didn't hold his hand perfectly straight and still, the tea bag would have toppled over and burnt him before it could float up into the air. Very cool. It is so nice to live where we can have the missionaries in our home often.
Hello Amy,
I was seaching through the internet and come across your blog and saw my son's pic (Elder Tavake) and