Spontaneous Dinner w/ Friends

Tonight we had a spontaneous dinner party. Last week we got a new Elder in the ward--he's from Arizona and at one point attended the same elementary school at which I had taught a few years before. The kids I taught are 24 and 25 now. Hard to believe. Anyway, I'd signed up to host the missionaries for dinner this week, and when I had met the new missionaries, I decided we needed to have Navajo tacos.

Then this morning Chris decided it could be fun to invite another family from the ward for dinner, too. And I agreed. So he invited and they accepted--but this all happened with a busy Friday happening around it, so it wasn't formalized until 5:30 at night. We didn't sit down to eat until 8:00 pm. But the fry bread turned out and the toppings were a hit and there was enough--it was close--but there was enough to go around. Enough beans and enough meat and enough fry bread. I did the fry bread on the side-burner of the propane grill because even in this heat wave, doing the fry bread in the open air was better than filling the house with the smoke from the hot oil. I did two batches--one with yeast dough and one with baking soda dough. As usual, the yeasted dough turned out better fry bread for me. I don't know why that is. The baking soda dough is more authentic, but I've never really mastered it. The best I can say is that the baking soda dough turned out edible and that's improvement for me.

Anyway, the company was fantastic, even I loved every minute of the little party (Chris will say that's because I spent half of it on the porch watching through the window, but, well, so?) and Elder Norton, the new missionary, gave a lovely lesson at the end that was really quite moving.

I really enjoy feeding the missionaries. We always get so much out of it and tonight was an especially enjoyable example of that. An exceptional Friday evening.