A few weeks ago, a call went out in our ward for volunteers to help prepare ground on a patch of land that the Church had secured for a new welfare farm. This news was very exciting to my husband, Larry. We have worked at the cannery and the bakery and the pasta factory, but there has never been a welfare farm within the confines of our stake’s jurisdiction. Part of the attraction was that it was “man’s work,” clearing virgin ground just as the pioneers had done. He immediately rallied our sons to the cause, but when he tried to recruit our daughter as well, she offered instead to rustle up a he-man’s breakfast for the workers.
So, naturally, Larry announced in priesthood meeting that anyone who wanted to come to our house at 7:00 on Saturday morning prior to going out to haul rocks at the welfare farm would be treated to a he-man’s breakfast cooked by his wife and daughter. And then he came home and announced to me that we would be serving a sit-down breakfast for 15 (not counting me and Sylvia). This was not a bagels-and-cream-cheese proposition. This was not a matter of a quick Krispy Kreme run supplemented by a gallon of milk. This needed to be a breakfast to sustain a man on the prairie, including BOTH bacon and sausage as well as hash browns, pancakes, scrambled eggs, milk, and juice.
Midweek, my husband called me at work. “You really need some help with this breakfast,” he said. “Why don’t you call K. and E. and ask them to come over and cook with you?” When I sat silent on the other end of the line, he said, “Do you want me to call them?” Yes, I wanted him to call two women whom we loved but who never came to church and ask them to be at our house at 6:30 on a Saturday morning to cook for a church project. So he did. And they were absolutely delighted. Eager, even.
Cutting to the chase, we cooked the breakfast (and he was right; I couldn’t have done it without the help), fed eleven men and four women, and sent the men off to serve. It was hard work all around, as anticipated. And it was a blast, as anticipated. Our men supplied 11/12ths of the workers from our stake that day, and I know most of them were there because someone said, “Hey, let’s do this thing together.” That someone was my husband, who didn’t have an assignment to do it or a calling to do it or anything but a personal sense of mission that told him we could make a difference.
Three things I learned:
1. People like to feel needed. That’s not a Church thing; that’s a human thing.
2. Sometimes it’s especially rewarding, in an increasingly abstract world, to do some kind of excruciatingly tangible work that you can actually look back on at the end of the day and know you’ve accomplished something.
3. I myself am always squeamish about asking people to make sacrifices. I’d rather just quietly do things myself than inconvenience others. But sacrificing makes people happy. It helps them grow. It draws them closer to God and to each other.
And that’s just one more reason why I love my husband.
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