Tacos and banana milkshakes

Our family had some great experiences today.

We traveled 67 miles to Hamilton where I believe for the first time ever in that city a sacrament meeting for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was held. The branch president for the Gatesville Branch presided over the meeting. Twenty-two people attended, and Paul Ivan passed the sacrament.

The meeting was in a rented hall, a fine arts center, just off the square in downtown.

Afterward a member of the branch who is a retired CIA agent invited our family to his home. While we were there he took an old tea cup out of a China cabinet and let my children hold it. After he had it back in his hands he told us that his ancestors came over on the Mayflower with that tea cup.

His house was filled with artifacts from all over the world -- most of which he collected during his days working for the government. He also showed us what looked like an ancient water pitcher. It was flat and rounded and had a carving of the sun on one side and a moon and star on the other. He said he received it as a gift from a family he was close with when he worked abroad.

This man lived with his family in Bolivia in the early to mid 60s and had many opportunities to help the church grow in that part of the world. He said his wife was the second Relief Society president and organized the first primary in that nation. I am not clear if he was a member of a mission presidency or what, but he shared an experience he had with President Spencer W. Kimball when he was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve.

President Kimball had stewardship over Bolivia during the time this man lived there. A meeting with missionaries was conducted in his home. At some point it was appropriate to begin planning for lunch. The couple asked President Kimball if there was anything special he would like to eat.

At this, the man said President Kimball turned to one of the young missionaries and asked him if there was something he might like to eat, something that he hadn't been able to eat in a while.

The young man said he was from Arizona and hadn't eaten tacos since he left home. He asked for tacos.

President Kimball turned to this man's wife and asked if she could make tacos.

She said she could.

President Kimball then turned to another missionary and asked him what he would like. The missionary said he hadn't had a banana milkshake in a while and would like a banana shake. He again asked the lady of the house if she could make banana shakes, and she said she could.

For lunch that day this family had banana milkshakes with tacos at the request of a man who cared more about others than himself.

I asked them if since then they had ever had the same meal, and they laughed and said no.