Service Surprise

Tonight about 8:30 pm we got a knock at our front door and when I opened it I beheld a big surprise! And it wasn't even for me!
A small group of 5 girls and women were delivering groceries they had collected from people in their ward to donate to the missionaries that are living with us! What a fun service project... something I had never even thought of but what a generous gift for these wonderful young men. I was so astonished as bags and boxes were brought in and set on the kitchen table. They had brought such a wide variety of items: bread, butter (like 5 lbs!), pancake mix, cold cereal, cake mixes, cookie mixes, egg noodles, chips, Ramen noodles, even light bulbs and toilet paper and paper towels -- just to mention some of the goodies. I guess this was a Young Women's evening service project. They had contacted the ward members earlier in the week and then gone around the neighborhood tonight and collected all the donations.

The missionaries weren't home (unfortunatly) when the girls came by. When they got home about a half hour later and I told them they'd had some visitors while they were gone, they were just blown away when they saw everything sitting there on the table... they had no idea... no one had ever done this for them before. I try to feed them an occassional meal if our schedules happen to coordinate but mostly they are on their own for buying their own food and preparing their own meals. Luckily one of the Elders loves to cook but a lot of their meals just consist of warmed up frozen foods. Maybe once or sometimes twice a week they get invited to someone's home for dinner.

One other surprise, the Young Women's leader turned out to be a good friend of mine, Diane Stewart. She didn't realize until she got into my neighborhood that she was coming to my house. I told her a couple of weeks ago that the Elders were living with us but she didn't connect the two facts of the address where they live and my telling her until just before they got here so that was a fun coincidence for both of us.

I wish I were a more thoughtful person. I'm always so impressed by people that do such simple but meaningful little acts of kindness and service. I thought I'd pass this along to you; maybe you can think of someone that could use a surprise like this!