Last week, later in the evening one night, we had a knock on the door. We weren't expecting anyone, so we wondered who might be stopping by. It ended up being our local Mormon missionaries! We were happy to see them, as we always are. It's fun chatting with them, having dinner together, and we always feel a connection and camaraderie as our oldest son, Andy is also serving a two year LDS mission in Ghana, Africa. We hope that there are people there who are happy to see him at the door and invite him in with a smile.
For those who don't know much about LDS missionaries, these young men and women volunteer 18 months - 24 months of their lives to share their beliefs and serve the area where they are sent, all over the world. It is a great sacrifice for them, but also an enormous opportunity to broaden their horizons and think about others over themselves. If you ever need help of any kind, feel free to reach out to them, or let us know and we'll put you in contact with them. We often have them over to our house for dinner.
Back to my story: much to our delight, the missionaries had a different purpose in mind that night. They asked if they could come and help out with our project house! We were thrilled to have their help, and decided that the next Friday would be a good day.
Later in the week, they contacted us again and asked if they could bring a few other missionaries with them. Of course! We would love all the hands we could get.
So, Friday rolled around and we woke up to another cloudy Seattle Day. We were hoping for some good weather, because many of the jobs we needed to get done involved being outdoors. Luckily it wasn't raining yet, but the clouds looked ominous.
Right at our scheduled time, noon, the missionaries started arriving by twos. And with their arrival, the rain also arrived. We welcomed them into our little Noah's ark and fed them pizza and cookies. In just a few minutes we had 4 sets of missionaries. Eight people with a total of 16 hands to put to work. (Not including Bill, Myself, Sarah and Ethan when he got home from school), so really, all totaled, we had 24 hands hard at work on Friday.
We had a huge list of things that needed to get done. First, a powder room demo. Two of the missionaries got right to work on that.
We also had a condemned playset in the back yard that needed to be torn apart and disposed of. Two other missionaries immediately volunteered for that one as well.
We had some power washing of the driveway. I felt bad for the unfortunate missionary who volunteered for that one, but he seemed pretty cheerful about it...don't let the look we caught on his face fool you.....He was great!!
Then we had the other spare help Bill with some framing in the kitchen. (He also did much if the bathroom...Elder Mobley rocks!)
Lastly we had two awesome and super willing sister missionaries who worked out in the front yard pulling out heather bushes and raking five years worth of dead leaves.
Those sisters did a great job! I think they sort of got the short end of the stick, but no complaining! They got out there and went right to work....in the rain. I felt bad for them, so I decided that that's where I should be as well. The three of us worked out in the rain for a couple of hours.
I was so impressed and so grateful that all of them would spend their afternoon getting dirty, muddy and wet helping us with the house. I think it was hands down one of the most fun work days we have had so far. I loved their positive attitudes and their playfulness as they went about their work. The two guys on the playset even crafted a frisbee out of the old plastic playset steering wheel and tossed that around in the rain for a while.
At the end of a three hour block, every job that we had on our list for the day was complete! Bathroom...gone. Playset....disappeared. Driveway....washed. Bushes....gone and bagged. Wall....framed.
We couldn't be more grateful. It would have taken us a solid week to get all that done without many hands.
Another honorable mention....our neighbor and friend, Anna, who lives right across the street from the project house saw us all out working hard. She came over to the house with warm chocolate chip cookies for all of us.
One of the best lessons that I have learned from starting this journey is that people are kind. We have had numerous offers for help. We have had people drop by just for a moment and help us with a small task that we couldn't have done with just the two of us. We have had people (Sarah) come and stay for three weeks to work side by side with us, we have had awesome people offer to be mentors, and we have had many many tips, suggestions, and tons of encouragement through social media. We love it! Thank you for a awesome community, awesome family and amazing friends.
And especially this week, a big thank you to our wonderful LDS missionaries. They are an extraordinary group of young men and young women who want nothing more than to make people's lives better. It makes me excited for the future as I see young people out in the world having high standards and being such great examples. Thank you missionaries! We know your families miss you, because we miss our missionary, but there is no better work for you to be doing. Thanks for your sacrifice and for two years of your lives. We love you!