Celebrate Your Heritage!

Our Enrichment Meeting for June was a completely fun 'celebrate your heritage' picnic. We had a potluck picnic, where sisters brought recipes that meant something to them, maybe something from their own heritage, or perhaps a recipe they make a lot in their homes and plan to pass on to future generations. Before the activity, we had the women submit their recipes by email - then we compiled the recipes into cookbooks which we handed out on the evening.

We had the activity in my backyard - mostly because we wanted a change from always having it at the church building, and because our house is so close to the church we knew it would make it easier to find. The weather was ideal - warm with a very very slight breeze which kept things at a comfortable temperature. I set up the food tables on our deck, and opened the umbrella to keep it in the shade. The women brought their lawn chairs, AND a potluck dish to share.
We had a great turn out (28 women) which is a LOT for this ward. We filled half of the yard, and had so much fun visiting. There were many women I hadn't met, yet, there so it was nice to put a face to the name and visit with them. A few brought friends, including one sister in the ward who is elderly, who invited her young neighbor who came with her 18month baby. I was so impressed with her courage to do missionary work. She said she usually doesn't because she doesn't know her neighbors, but she wanted to invite this young woman. I'm so glad she came! Another set of visiting teachers in the ward invited a sister who has been rather less active lately - and SHE came as well. It was so, so nice to see these women extending the hand of love and friendship to their friends and neighbors. It was wonderful! We visited, laughed, and got to know each other much better. It was so much fun to invite all these women into my home, my yard, and really feel like we were a big family.


We ate, ate, ate, ate.. I filled my plate one too many times. But the food was absolutely to DIE for.. and the best part?? I have all the recipes now! YES! We plan to have recipes from future meetings and activities printed up for the women to add to their cook books. My friend, K, who lives here was kind enough to compile the cookbooks and put them into some gorgeous duotangs so we can add more and more recipes. It's so nice to have the name of whose kitchen the recipe came from so we know who to call if we need help, and we can always think of that person while we are enjoying their dishes. YUMMO!

My Enrichment counselor gave a wonderful spiritual thought on celebrating our Spiritual Heritage, then introduced our special guest for the activity portion of the meeting. A fun young sister in our ward teaches Caribbean dancing, and she was more than happy to bring some costumes, tell us about her heritage and what the costumes mean, explain where the "limbo" dance really came from, and then get us all up doing some fun dance moves. I was laughing so hard! It was such a fun activity! I even dressed in this, against my better judgement:

Yeah, I know... I'm one hot mama.