Schnitzel Anyone?

Jared is the president of his teachers quorum and he decided to have a family history night.  He had each member of his quorum bring foods that represented where their families came from.  I'll admit that when he told me about the night I got a little sad at the amount of work that was going to be inflicted upon myself.  After the initial response (I seem to have a history of bad first reactions)  I was impressed by this activity.  I have been really impressed by all of his ideas.  He is really taking his responsibility seriously and has the weeks broken out into themes.  One week they focus on learning a skill.  One week it's service and one week it's stuff like family history.  

So, Jared did some research on-line, picked a dish,  and sent me to the store with a list of ingredients. Then we set out to make schnitzel for the first time ever.  He was cracking me up with his need for putting all the ingredients out into bowels in preparation - just like you see on tv - and just like I used to do when I pretended I had a cooking show when I was around his age.  My mom worked so it was my responsibility to cook for my brothers and myself, pretending I had a cooking show made it not seem like such a bad thing. 

He impressed me again by not handing me the project to do, but actually wanting to do it himself.  We used boneless pork chops and cut them in half to make them thinner.  Then we put them between wax paper and beat them to death to make them even thinner.  Then it was off to their coatings before being pan fried.  He took the cooking very seriously and had everything under control - and guess what?  Schnitzel is really good!  It also helps you have a German accent for a couple of days :)

 I can't remember what everyone brought because I was off with the yw, but I do know that someone brought cannolis.  My group was supposed to be playing volleyball, but we had no ball so we joined the beehives who were making no-bake cookies.  We voted between, healthy, nutella, and peanut butter.  The healthy were nasty and wouldn't set - fat is essential in something like that setting!  Yuck!  Jared brought his left overs into the kitchen and they were devoured in seconds.  He got the vote for best cookie -even though it wasn't technically a cookie. 

What the whole experience reminded me of was something that I heard at a roots tech conference.  It was by Allen F Packer - I found this quote in an article when I was looking it up:

“The second suggestion is that it is about the hearts first, not the charts; that will come later,” he said. “Start by touching their hearts with stories and pictures of their ancestors to help members have a spiritual experience to feel the spirit of Elijah.”

Basically it's- hearts before charts.  This is a perfect example of your heart being touched by connecting to your ancestors which will then lead you to doing their work in the temple - aka genealogy - aka family history - aka something that we think only old people do.  His heart is being touched and he's helping others experience the spirit of Elijah.

Something that has nothing to do with what I just talked about, but is adorable and cute in every way - my son and his cousin wanted to rollerblade outside, but the wind was really bad and there was a lot of dirt in the air - how do you solve that problem?  Why with swim goggles, that's how.  btw, Nate talked Ethan into cutting his luscious locks for the summer - he keeps reminding me that I need to keep him missionary minded and not indulge him in his love of long hair.  I'm more of a pick your battles of rebellion kinda person and think there is value in getting some things out of your system.