F.H.E. with the P.A.B.

As you may remember from this post , my cute little town was hit with a major snow storm last week...16 inches in one day.
Really. Besides being very inconvenient for the valley's football players and farmers, the snow also derailed our cute little branch's schedule for the week's Family Home Evening. This being October, we had planned on raking leaves as a service project (partly because we love to serve and partly because of the old singles ward superstition that the more service you do pre-marriage, the better looking your future eternal companion will be...but mostly because we love to serve...) but when the snow began stacking up we decided to swap our rakes for snow shovels and serve by digging the neighborhood out. We had good intentions (because the superstition also states that, by doing said service in inclement weather, you may score a good-looking and wealthy future E.C.) but we failed to factor Idaho weather into the F. H. E. equation. The temperatures ended up rebounding on Monday. By the time Family Home Evening rolled around both the snow and our dreams of hot, rich spouses, I mean SERVICE had melted away. Mother Nature was seriously messing with us. We couldn't shovel because there wasn't any snow on the sidewalks, but we couldn't rake because there was too much snow on the grass.

The leaves just sat there on the slow-melting piles of snow, next to the pristine sidewalks, mocking us. Any lesser branches, in the face of such vicious leaf-mocking, would given up and gone home...but not the P.A.B. Instead our leaders came up with another way for us to serve...
...by going bowling. And for those of you wondering how bowling counts as "service", let me remind you that with the current state of our nation's economy, every little bit helps. That includes renting ugly shoes for a whole branch of young single adults. It's called "economic stimulus" folks. I'm sure President Bush will be sending us some kind of medal any day now.

So since we "served"last week, this week's FHE was dedicated to learning about people whose church-activity-related-plans got even more messed up by early winter storms than ours did.

Brother Barker, using a power-point presentation, cool signs, and the world's biggest map of Wyoming, shared the history of the ill-fated Martin and Willy hand cart companies, along with his personal experiences retracing their trail of frozen tears over the summer.

And after his testimony-strengthening presentation, the time was turned over for us to do what singles branch members do best.
We wandered around the room checking out our options.

And it was a great night for perusing the bounty of our branch.

The above-average attendance really provided a delicious variety of shapes and sizes and looks to choose from.

It was hard to follow the counsel of our branch leadership not to "settle on one" for the night, but to mingle and give all of the mouth-watering options a chance to win our affection.

A few of us succumbed to love at first sight as we were introduced to the sumptuous creations sitting across the room. Others rekindled long-forgotten romances with old friends they had spent time with at countless family gatherings and ward activities.

Love was in the air. I even ended up taking a sweet thing home with me to nibble on later.

I am talking, of course, about the wonderful spread of refreshments that were available for our first annual branch dessert cook off.

What?

What did you think I was talking about?

Never mind. I don't want to know.

Let's focus on the refreshments instead. Don't these look great?

Really. Whose mom wouldn't be thrilled with the idea of their single son or daughter bringing one of these good looking "dishes" home to meet the family?
And when you consider the calorie count associated with all of these desserts, this could end up being the longest relationship many of us have ever had (I know those delicious brownies are going to be spending a good deal of time walking around with me...I'm sure I'll see them every time I walk into a dressing room to try on new jeans).
At the end of the night Sister Hobson and Zealanda gave out various prizes for the dessert categories. Because we are into living the law of cooking contest consecration, everyone who donated their time, talents, and tasty tidbits walked away with a prize. But it was our Branch President whose offering made the biggest splash. His "My Wife Wasn't Home To Help Me" Dessert (green jello with sliced hot dogs...yes, hot dogs) won two awards, including the sustenance prize which was given to the dessert that would have best kept starving pioneers alive. As President Jones would say, "It's all about the protein."
I'm sure there are a lot of other dating and marriage related lessons we could take away from our activity tonight. The stories of the hope-crushing sufferings of the saints on the plains alone could keep us going with dating metaphors for weeks, maybe for months....

....which is probably the same amount of time it will take me to repress the memories of the hot-dog jello.