I have a cool calling at church. It's my job to arrange for people to get together and have dinner parties with each other every month. Yeah! Finally, my bossiness is put to good use!
I send around sign-up sheets and otherwise have people tell me they want to be included. They let me know if they want to host, and if they do, they then provide the main dish and tell the people they're hosting what to bring.
After the first month, I found that it helps to ask how many people they want to host. I've lived in Virginia for a month, and the names are just names on a page. They tell me how many people are in their families, but beyond that, I don't know anything about them. Last month I wound up sending maybe 6 people over to someone's house, and when I talked to the host, they had a great attitude about squeezing that many people into their studio apartment. So now I ask how many people they want to have over.
I'm learning a lot as I go.
I also found that not everyone who signs up to host can actually follow through. Something always comes up for someone, and then I have to juggle people around to fit them in. I realized after my first month that instead of assigning myself a group to host, I should leave my house open as the back-up for when another host has to bail.
That was my intention, at least, except that this month I'm out of town. Honestly, it's almost as easy to plan these parties from New Mexico as it is from Virginia, but I don't exactly have my house open as a back-up. I also found that two people who signed up have managed to essentially disappear off the face of the earth. They haven't answered my emails or phone calls at all, even though they said they'd like to host. If I were in Virginia, I could try to track them down at church, but that's kind of hard from two-thousand miles away. So I think I'm just going to let a couple people fall of the face of the earth and make amends later.
Anyway. I'm writing about this not because it's the most interesting thing I've done recently, but mostly because I just finished planning for this month, and I'm happy to be through.
Yay! Let the parties begin!
5 comments:
This is a great calling. We did this in our DC ward for awhile, but all too soon, there was more bailing that following through, which was a serious drag. I like it though and it was a great way to meet people in an enormous ward. Maybe I'll suggest we bring it back...course, I don't want to be in charge, so maybe I won't.
Hey I like it calling...I can do that. :0)
That is a drag two people fell through and you are in NM...
welp better luck the next months...
That's kind of cool. I'd love to have someone tell me who to have over for dinner. Less thinking is always good.
What a fun calling! My ward doesn't do this, but perhaps I'll suggest it... Or maybe I'll just keep working on having people I don't know very well over for dinner once a month.
Boy, that's pretty inventive! I suppose each ward has to do what's best for their wards and it looks like urs is pretty transient. Way to fulfull ur calling.
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