Communication is Everything!

In Japan, the custom is that, after a woman has a baby, she goes and stays with her mother for at least a month.  Our branch president and his wife live about 40 minutes away, but her mother lives near us here is Tsuruoka.  They recently had a baby.  Because he had several days off last week for "consecutive holidays," he brought his wife and baby home for those days he had off.  We had been waiting for when they were back together to take them a big, nice meal.  We asked him once what his favorite food was and he said it was spaghetti with meat sauce (he learned about it when he served with an American companion on his mission.)  So, Ken called and asked if we could bring dinner to them on Thursday.  President said he was taking her back to her mother's on Thursday.  So we asked if we could bring lunch instead.  He said yes, so we set it up to take it at around noon on Thursday.  That meant we had to leave our house by about 11:20 to get it there by noon.  Ken had previously set up to go out with a couple in our branch to photograph birds early that morning.  They left about 7:00am and I got up and started working on the lunch.  I made meat sauce from scratch, carrots, breadsticks, spaghetti, salad, and chocolate chip cookies.  Ken was late getting home and found me still in my nightgown with a royal mess everywhere. There was meat sauce spattered all over the stove and dishes and pots and pans in the sink and chaos everywhere. He finished up the salad and breadsticks while I ran and showered.  We had purchased special containers to take it all to them and we packaged it up and Ken ran to change (no time to shower) and I was just finishing putting on my make up (on the table- no other place to do it) when the doorbell rang (It was about 11:25)  There they were on our doorstep, obviously expecting to eat here!  Oh my!  What do you do?  So we invited them in, cooed over their baby and started cleaning things up.  I put the meat sauce on the spaghetti while Ken set the table.  We sat down to eat lunch at about 11:30 (we had just barely eaten breakfast about 10:30!)  I looked at the clock and had to suppress a giggle.  We still don't know what happened.  Did Ken use the wrong words when he called, so they thought they were to come here?  Did they think we would stay and eat with them, so they wanted to eat here?  Do people not take meals to people who have babies here?  We still have no idea what happened.  We just enjoyed the meal and the baby, and his wonderful parents, and packed up the leftovers and sent them home with them. 

The next Sunday, Sister Endo brought me this sweet note.

Communication is everything, indeed.  We hope, that even though there was a mix-up, that we communicated love!!