The missionaries checked in to ask if it was still okay that they were coming for dinner tonight.

I’d totally forgotten I’d signed up a month ago.

We do that, though, we feed these kids along with everybody else and in gratitude towards those who helped feed my own boys when they were out there.

As I remember the woman who asked me my son’s favorite cookie recipe, baked a batch of those cranberry bars, and then since he was no longer in her area she and her husband got in their private plane and flew it to him still warm from the oven!

I can never match that story, but at least I can put on a dinner. I had cream, and chocolate tortes went in the oven just as fast as I could get them in there.

But the point wasn’t the meal. It’s that somehow that act of sitting down together in one’s home to break bread allows a coming-together and a tell-me-your-story that went round the table and welcomed in the love. Man, it felt good.

It had been three long years since we’d had dinner guests. Maybe it wasn’t the wisest idea quite yet? But maybe it was just exactly what kids who missed their families on Father’s Day needed the most, and it was a privilege to get to fill in the best we could.

We sent them home with half a torte and raspberry muffins.