Loaves and Fishes

(picture from crossroads initiative)

These last couple of weeks I have been caught up in a church assignment. I still don't have a calling so it was nice to be "needed" for a special project. It was kinda a crazy assignment though. They wanted me to make the dinner for a Relief Society party for 60 people. That wouldn't have been that bad until you add in the budget of $60 (without having anyone bring anything). I am about as frugal as they come so I took it on as a challenge. I looked at spaghetti but even if I thought a pound of hamburger could be stretched for 10 people 1/4 of my budget would be hamburger. I went through 100 scenarios like that and was getting pretty frustrated. A buck a head just isn't very much. We had a pretty good ad though and I got 5 pound bags of potato's for 75 cents and 2 pound blocks of cheese for $3 and so I did potato cheese soup with my strawberry salad (really toned down), homemade breadsticks, and pavlovas for dessert. The only way I was going to pull it off was if I hand made rolled and twisted all the breadsticks and put a tray of pavlovas every night in my oven to dry.

I poured myself into the whole thing and worked like crazy to pull it off. I had 3 ladies come over one morning to roll about 1/2 of the 130 breadsticks (which we individually froze then put together in a container) and I took 4 ladies "packs" for the soup so I didn't have to do that but otherwise I did the rest.

My health had started to turn on this pregnancy and so I was sure I paced myself to pull it off. Imagine my horror on Sunday evening when I took Savannah's ice cream cake out of our deep freeze in the garage and it was mush. Luckily the breadsticks and pavlovas were fine. Lee cleared the compressor area and we thought we had solved the problem. Monday I went out there for something and I realized that the breaker had flipped and we had no power to it. The breadticks were in a block of mush. I was hoping when they refroze the flour would let them be pulled apart. No luck...I went to check on them later and they were a solid block of breadstick mess. I started to panic. This drove my blood pressure even higher. It was getting to the critical stage where I would need to call the Doctor. I stayed up all night worrying about it (because if you are an Earley woman in your brain you think that helps).

The next morning my BP was even higher. I figured I would try my best to get them apart and then if I failed I would have Lee get Costco rolls (and blow my budget). I e-mailed my kind friend Sara who was over the event and told her what had happened. She immediately called and said she was on her way to Costco and to go lay down and not worry about the breadsticks. I cried over the loss... (seriously all the time and effort and ingredients) then took a 2 hour nap.

When I got up everything went perfect. I loaded the van quickly, and when I went to go through the 800 boxes in the garage to find stuff for the table I found what I was looking for in the FIRST box.

Everything went smoothly at the church. 3 of the 4 soups showed up and they were great. The 4th soup showed up about 1/2 hour before the event. It was all black and completely burned to the bottom (which she had scraped to get up). I panicked a little. Her soup was inedible. We decided to dump her soup and take the milk and cheese we were going to add to it to the others to "thin them down a bit". My portion sizes were a little small I thought (15 people for one lg crockpot) so I was worried. We boiled some water just in case we had to throw some powdered potato soup in. The ladies arrived and we put out our goods (the table looked great if I do say so myself). They ate, they made yummy noises, they asked for recipes, they ate some more. When all had eaten and were full we went into the kitchen and there were still 2 crockpots full. I kinda chocked up. I thought of the scripture story of the loaves and the fishes: And they did all eat and were filled: and they took up the fragments that remained twelve baskets full (Matthew 14:20).

When I got home my BP was back to normal, the job was over. I was reminded once again though that this is His church, He is in charge, He cares about me (and will send a dear sister to care for me), and He will make everything o.k. if we do our best. Miracles happen even today. He has not forgotten us. He will come in our hour of need. Even when he has such heartbreak and need in Japan He cared enough to help Kira...after all she could do.