Karla was late to the funeral brunch, but she’d known ahead of time that she would be. She had placed her funeral potatoes in the ward’s kitchen fridge yesterday afternoon with baking instructions for Daniella to follow, since she couldn’t miss her granddaughter’s soccer game this morning.
She shook John’s tattooed hand as she entered the cultural hall. Of course he was still greeting people, even though most of the ward was already eating. The bishopric had chosen such a kind, well-mannered young man to be the events coordinator. He managed to always stand out and look stylish, even while wearing the same generic white dress shirt and dark blue trousers as everyone else. Maybe it was his hair. It was always perfectly coiffed.
Karla greeted a couple of others. A large portion of the ward had known the deceased for years and had come to the funeral. She looked through the buffet laid out on white tablecloths on the folding tables under the basketball hoop to see if she could spot her best blue casserole dish full of funeral potatoes. She didn’t see it.
Daniella stood up from a table and gave her a warm hug. “Karla! I looked for your dish in the fridge this morning to put it in the oven, but it wasn’t there. Did something come up yesterday?”
Karla shook her head. “No, no, I made the potatoes and I put them in the fridge with my instructions on how to bake them properly. I’ll go check the kitchen.” Daniella had probably looked everywhere multiple times, but Karla still had to look for herself.
There were several people grabbing trash bags and getting fresh soda from the kitchen. Karla scanned the counters, but only saw chips and soda. She checked the fridge, but only found a few random bottles of salad dressing and mustard. She even checked inside the oven. Her favorite casserole dish, the one her mother had given her, was not there.
She went back out into the cultural hall and found Daniella. “I don’t see the dish anywhere. I know I put it in the fridge yesterday though. I don’t know where it could have gone.”
“Let’s ask around,” Daniella responded helpfully. “Not many people could have been at the church between yesterday afternoon and now.”
Within minutes, everyone at the funeral brunch knew about the missing casserole dish and individuals were coming up to Karla with their ideas on what might have happened.
“The young men had a basketball game last night. Maybe one of them took it.”
A young man with his long hair in a ponytail piped in, “No, the game was canceled last night because there was supposed to be a wedding reception here. We were all playing Smash Bros at the Donovans’.”
That was probably for the best. Karla knew how church ball tended to end with people injured.
A young woman spoke up. “There was a reception—Daniel and Janice got married. It was a beautiful event. I don’t think anyone went into the kitchen though. All the food was outside—they had food trucks.”
Brother Lawson, one of the young fathers in the ward, asked, “Who all has keys to the building?”
Karla responded to the question. “I have keys from when I was called to be the pianist a couple years ago so I could come in and practice. That’s how I got in to drop the potatoes off.”
One of the young men spoke with a nagging voice, as though he were telling on a younger sibling. “John is the events coordinator. He has keys.”
“I do have keys,” John said calmly, seemingly unperturbed by the implied accusation. “I opened up the doors for the brunch this morning. But I wasn’t here at all yesterday. Lots of people have keys to the building.” He might be the ward’s event coordinator, but that didn’t mean he had to be at every event.
A primary girl cut in loudly, “My daddy says tattoos are bad because bodies are temples.”
Karla shook her head. The comment was super random and out of place. The girl must not realize how insensitive it was.
John laughed at the small child. “You should definitely listen to your daddy, McKayla.”
The little girl did not stop with John’s graceful response. “Daddy also says that boys who are not married by their thirties are a menace to society. Are you a menace? Why do you have tattoos?”
John continued to smile, but it looked slightly more forced.
Karla spoke, trying to not sound too stern. “McKayla, it’s not nice to say that kind of thing. Where is your daddy?”
The girl’s mom came walking up. “What do you need her dad for? Is something wrong?”
“Nothing at all,” replied John.
Karla could see how John was just trying to be polite, but it wasn’t right, so Karla spoke up. “Sister Jensen, your daughter was just saying some rather rude things to Brother John.”
Sister Jensen turned to her daughter, her smile gone and eyebrows furrowed.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” said McKayla. “Daddy said that tattoos are bad, and someone bad took Sister Karla’s funeral potatoes. I just asked Brother John a question.”
Sister Jensen’s face turned red. “I am so sorry, Brother. My daughter must have misunderstood what Bob said.”
“It’s no problem, Sister. I know I stand out a bit here, and she’s probably not used to seeing tattoos.”
Sister Jensen smiled politely, apologizing again as she grabbed her daughter’s arm and pulled her away.
Karla turned to John. “My son has several tattoos and I think they’re lovely. It’s a shame that people worry so much about other people and not enough about themselves.”
John shrugged and responded gracefully as always. “It’s easy to jump to conclusions before you get to know someone. I know I’m often guilty of that myself. Looks like there’s another group coming, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go say hello.”
“Of course,” Karla answered.
And John smiled as he went to welcome those coming through the door.
Daniella wrapped an arm around Karla’s shoulders. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll keep looking.”
“No,” Karla responded. “Thank you, but let’s not worry about it.”
The amount of people trying to figure out what happened to Karla’s blue casserole dish was overwhelming. This was supposed to be a funeral brunch. Maybe the guests welcomed the distraction, but Karla did not want to become the focus of the event. She brushed off the next couple people that came to her, and just said she hoped the dish would return, but she was mostly glad she could come to support the grieving family.
Karla showed up early for church the next morning. John smiled and greeted her in the lobby. He turned around and picked up the blue casserole dish from behind him. It had a small bouquet of flowers in it. “I found this in the kitchen this morning.”
A young father, Brother Barker, walked past with his two children, “You ate the whole dish, John? That’s a lot.”
John shook his head and smiled. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to try Sister Karla’s funeral potatoes. I hope I get the chance sometime though.”
Karla called out to Brother Barker’s back, “I’ll make sure to bring some to your funeral!” and let out a chuckle. John laughed with her. She was glad to at least get the dish back. She accepted the risk of breaking or losing it by using it often and bringing it to events, but that was what her mother would have wanted. Not hiding the dish or just displaying it, but using it to make food to share.
It was a fast and testimony meeting. A few small children went up first and shared their short testimonies. McKayla stood up, but then glanced at her parents and sat back down. Karla worried a bit about her.
One of the sister missionaries got up and took the pulpit. Karla hoped she would actually share some stories instead of a generic, canned testimony.
“I was having a really rough day on Friday,” the sister began. “In the evening we had a lesson scheduled with an investigator I was really excited about. The first lesson had gone so well earlier in the week. We’d shared about God and how his Son made it possible for us to all be saved, and she seemed super receptive and thanked us for our message. But on Friday, she didn’t even want to let us in her house. She said that we were all con artists trying to get people to worship false prophets and that she didn’t want anything more to do with our cult, since she’s a true Christian. She seemed to have totally forgotten that we spent the entire last lesson talking about God and his Son, Jesus Christ. But since she didn’t want to see us anymore, we left, and right when we got to the sidewalk, we got a phone call from a number we didn’t recognize. This person knew my name and said he needed to talk to me. And then he started lecturing about how all we missionaries are going to be damned for the work that we’re doing and the world is going to end and we’re all going to go straight to hell. I tried to talk for a couple minutes, but my companion kept telling me to hang up, so I eventually did.”
The sister took a deep breath. “We were both very upset, so we stopped and said a prayer. I asked God to give us something good, since I was hungry and we were tired. We’d done everything we could, and nothing was working out. The church building was on our way back to our apartment, so we stopped here to try to calm down and bring back the Spirit. There was a wedding reception going on and we didn’t want to get in the way of anyone, so we stepped into the kitchen, which was empty. I opened up the fridge and saw a beautiful pan of potato casserole with instructions on top of how to bake it. I knew that this was God answering our prayers, so we took it back to our apartment, and that casserole was the miracle we needed to finish out the day. So, I want to thank whatever angel it was that left that casserole there, and to say that God truly hears us and knows exactly what we need. He loves us, and answers our prayers. And I say that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.”
Karla chuckled to herself. The sister missionaries. At least they’d washed the dish and put the thank you flowers in it. No one in the ward had thought it might be them. She considered standing up to bear her testimony about not judging others based on appearances and how God loves everyone, but there were other people already moving towards the pulpit, so she just smiled to herself, one hand resting on her favorite blue casserole dish.
— & —
Elayne “EJ” Petterson is an adventurer, linguist, and software engineer. She grew up in several different countries and has volunteered as an interpreter and translator for Spanish and Russian. EJ currently lives in Utah with her husband, son, and three dogs, and can be reached at ejpetterson.com or www.linkedin.com/in/elaynepetterson/.
