lifesaver

A few weeks ago a list was passed around at church asking for volunteers to bring food to a special enrichment meeting. Usually when the relief society has these special meetings, they happen on Saturdays (at least that is how my experience has always been). Knowing that I would have most of my Saturdays free, I decided to sign up to bring baked potatoes (because they are easy to make and fairly inexpensive).

Last week I was sitting in church and a reminder note was passed around that enrichment would be this Thursday. Thursday?!?! I can't do Thursdays. I have class on Thursday nights. I figured that I would figure out a way to get the potatoes baked and sent to the church in time for the ladies to have dinner. Well, I kept forgetting to figure out a way to get this done and then yesterday someone left me a voice message reminding me to bring my 10 baked potatoes to the church in time for dinner. This is when I started to panic. I quickly devised a plan where I would get up at 5 AM, put the potatoes in the oven while I finished writing a couple of papers that were due, then come home during my 40 minute break in the afternoon and beg one of my neighbors to take them to the church later that evening.

This plan would have worked out perfectly if I had been able to get myself out of bed at 5 AM and remembered to bake the potatoes. Instead I woke up at 6:20 and between having an aching stomach and stressing about not having time to finish my papers, I completely forgot about the potatoes. I left the house (15 minutes later than I should have) resigned to just call someone from the enrichment committee and tell them that because of my back-to-back classes and work today, I would not be able to bring the potatoes.

After the school's printer jammed about 5 times, I was able to get to class 25 minutes late... just in time to see all of my classmates leaving. I handed in the last of my assignments and off I went to finish the other papers that had been due on Tuesday. I finished the papers, printed them (no printer problems this time), my professor briefly glanced at the work I had done (all of those wasted hours, and he literally just glanced to make sure that I had the correct format), and I was on my way. I looked at the time and realized that because I hadn't needed to sit through the full class, I had a full 70 minutes before I needed to be at work. So my plan with the potatoes could actually work.

I thought about the possibility of running to Wendy's and buying 10 plain baked potatoes. But I didn't know if the potatoes came pre-sour creamed and I couldn't take that chance (plus Wendy's probably doesn't serve baked potatoes at 9:20 AM). So then I thought that maybe I had time to run to the grocery store to pick up some extra potatoes (in case I didn't have enough at home), bake them, and then run home during my 40 minute break in the afternoon to drop them off at someone's house (I would later have to figure out who this "someone" is because we don't really have any friends in our ward). This plan would have been ok, except for the fact that I didn't have enough time to run to the store AND cook the potatoes. And that is when it dawned on me. My visiting teaching companion, Lisa, is a stay-at-home mom :)

Lisa is one of the nicest people I've met in our ward. She is always really friendly and always makes sure to remind me that we need to go visiting teaching (if it wasn't for her, I would probably never get it done). I figured that Lisa would probably be attending enrichment tonight and probably wouldn't mind baking my potatoes for me. So I quickly called Lisa and asked her if she could do me this huge favor. Lisa responded by not only doing me this favor, but also went above and beyond by offering to just use her potatoes so that I wouldn't have to run all the way home.

I've never been a huge fan of visiting teaching. But today my visiting teaching companion was my lifesaver. I've never lived in a ward where I didn't have any friends. I've always either lived with roommates or family and so whenever I needed anything, there was always someone to turn to. Since we live so close to family and friends right now, we haven't really had a reason to get out of our comfort zone and get to know the people in our ward. But I am grateful for my visiting teaching companion who has always been really nice to me and has always made me feel like I could count on her for anything.