A dear friend passed away, and we've been so sad. In the midst of the first days following, we were faced with the nuts and bolts of details that needed to be attended to. Meals for his wife and family, notifying people who needed to know, and planning a service and a meal. Planning a meal seems easy enough, but planning this meal needed to be done right. It was too sensitive a time for everyone to mess it up or just throw it together. When faced with this task, I remembered this blog post that I'd read just a few months ago. I shared the link with a few friends that I wanted to pull together to help. In the end we did use several of Anna's (not to be confused with our Anna,) ideas, but some we just couldn't do. The best part of the wisdom gleaned from reading Anna's "detailed plan" was the heart of it: the sense of caring and sentiment that we wanted to express with sharing our very best efforts with our friend's family.
The tables were done up like this. Our friend loved the ocean and his island camp off the coast of Maine.
Some bulletin boards were done up like this. Adam took the large photo while visiting the island camp.
Adam also took the large photo on this board off the island camp.
It was all a very real work of God bringing our church family together with all of their talents and time to make this a special memory. You can't prepare for these in advance like a wedding or a shower. It just has to happen. Some in other churches are surprised that our church doesn't have a group of ladies who all just know what to do and get to it as soon as the word is out. Nope. We don't. It seems to me, however, that we should be more equipped to be hospitable at a moments notice; I've been trying to do that at home, so it seems only natural to try to help this along at church.
What we didn't follow from Anna's post was using real dishes. Our church doesn't have them; we don't put on a lot of dinners. We stock paper and styrofoam everything. What we really liked and did was have members as servers.They cared for the tables, refilled beverages and generally showed hospitality. The problem they ran into, was that we only have/had one creamer pitcher in the building and no matching sugar bowl! We generally set up a beverage area and guests help themselves. The sugar can is jumbo sized and the cream is put out in it's original quart sized carton! So, if tables "belonging" to two different servers wished to have coffee, the servers had to wait their turn for the creamer pitcher!
So, after talking to several ladies, last week I emailed the church for our phase one idea of improving our ability to serve and show hospitality. We are collecting creamers and sugar bowls. They don't have to match, but they all have to be clear glass...they sort of match that way. We are also adding trays to our kitchen. There will be a small tray per table that will contain a creamer, sugar bowl, S&P shakers, (we DO have a whole bunch of those,) and maybe butter and sweetener packets.
Of course, putting on a luncheon is only one way of being hospitable. There are many other ways, but that I'll save that post for another time.
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