Missionary Moment Ice Breaker

As you know, we have the missionaries living with us. Although I was willing to have them, it has been quite the adjustment. I have to say, they are just great missionaries and they have spoiled us in how polite, clean and respectful they are.

When they moved in, I told them that I would have a tendency to forget that they were living here. In order not to startle me when they walk in the house I asked them to call out something. We would choose to call out "hello" to announce ourselves.

They have chosen to say, rather quietly "missionaries home". They say it EVERY TIME they enter!!! How annoying is that? My idea was that they would say it like at 2:00 in the afternoon when I would be home alone and could be startled. So when they do it and we are all in the kitchen it has become a little annoying. I have been trying to figure out how I could talk to them about it. But I never got that figured out.

So how embarrassing is this? Last week, after a wonderful day for them at Zone Conference they come in the front door while I am standing right there at the top of the stairs and they said "Missionaries coming in". I temporarily lost it, and said, "You don't need to tell me you are coming in when I am standing right here! I asked you to do that so that you didn't scare the HELL out of me!" I was not yelling, but I my voice was strong.

They went to their room and I went in the kitchen and ask Glenn if I had embarrassed him. He said, "NO"... I had embarrassed me...UGH.

Later that evening, I was reading in the living room and they came up, sat on the floor and had a "heart to heart" with me. They were totally stunned that "Sister Perrins swore!" My response was "Oh was that swearing? I was just being descriptive!" (group laugh).

Bottom line, they still robotically call out "missionaries coming in". I always call out a cute friendly response. But the fun thing is that they think is was hilarious and we call it our "ice breaker". It is about time after 3 months!