Thursday, May 12, 2011

Meals with Missionaries! Casual sandwiches & such

Kim and I were really looking forward to baking and cooking together in my kitchen and we got the opportunity for almost the entire visit! We ended up being blessed with Bruce's amazing amount of work in literally rebuilding our bedroom so the contents of the room were moved out and stacked around the rest of the house and I lost exactly half of my kitchen ... to include my baking center. So, sadly enough there was no breads or baking but I am praying for a future visit... smile. Speaking of the home remodeling done, I will share pictures and more on that story on the Home Notes blog.

Coffee and cooking... we got those in! The coffeepot was steadily perking out coffee and mugs were filled and refilled as the hours passed by from morning to evening. We also had to keep snacks and meals readily available for easy grabbing or quick sit downs to keep the guys going as they worked for hours and hours at a time some of the days on the bedroom project.

I made the guys tuna melts (I split some bread loaves and topped with all white tuna in olive oil with some shredded cheese and broiled it until melted and slightly browned) and these were served with sweet and kosher pickles and unsweetened ice tea.

One evening, we got deli roast beef and turkey, deli cheese slices and sandwich rolls along with whole wheat bread. We placed pickled okra, pickles, pickled vegetables, Romaine lettuce, condiments and a few other things in the center of the table. Each person made their sandwich right where they sat! It was easy serving, eating and clean up!

Another meal was pizza we picked up from Papa John's and we just propped our feet up and gathered in the living room to eat. We watched some TV, talked, discussed work with the men and the kids had a chance to talk to Kim. It was needed let down time and we all cherished every moment of it.

Look next for the really good food because Kim was cooking!

Meals with Missionaries! Meeting and first meal. . .

We had some dreams and prayers come true in the month of April! We got to meet in person a missionary couple from Latvia ... face to face!

I have corresponded with Kim in Latvia (many readers and email list members will instantly recognize her:) for around eight years now. In that time, we have prayed, shared, connected, concerned, ministered to and received encouragement from and the list could go on for eight more years.

One thing we haven't done is to meet in person and one of the times we discussed it online, Kim mentioned that we might not meet this side of heaven but one day we would. What she said stuck with me and I honestly felt that meeting face to face would be nothing short of a GOD thing.

The glory and honor and praise are HIS and HIS alone and HE got them here during thier six months in the United States! The itinerary for them is almost non-stop (quite literally) and they are traveling for entire days at a time between destinations so it is a big gift to have them make good on the plans they made to make it here.

They left here on May 1rst but the presence of Christ pouring through this beautiful couple still touches our hearts.

The first time I saw them ... I was instantly struck with how it did not seem I was meeting them for the first time AT ALL! They looked, sounded, spoke, and just WERE everything I felt I already knew they were. I guess our communications through the years were genuine enough to warrant that kind of first meeting.

Our soon to be D-I-L and teenage daughter planned, shopped, prepared, served and cleaned Bruce and Kim's first meal in our home. It was so nice!

Mexican Lasagna
Tossed salad
Desserts in stemware glasses (Bottom layer: broken up pieces of sugar free angel food cake. Next layer: ice cream sweetened with Splenda. Next layer: sliced strawberries and bananas and all was topped with whipped cream.)
Ice tea


I wish I had pictures of how pretty everything looked and to capture all the smiling, talking and laughing that went on but we were too in the moment to think of it, I guess!

Our family unit was here - my husband, self, teen daughter and eight year old son - and our college age son and his fiance. Our next to oldest son and his wife stopped by and we all enjoyed getting the visit started.
I will share our meals and some of the memories we made in a series of sorts so the blog posts aren't overly long and easier to digest. Still smiling as I type . . .

*The spelling check doesn't seem to be functioning on this site right now and I can't figure out how to add the right grammar mark on fiance ... so please forgive that and any other errors!*