Three Missionary Christmas Dinners

For Christmas 1988, I was serving in Nürnberg, Germany (aka Nuremberg by the Americans) as a full-time missionary. I was transferred to this city on December 15, 1988. I served in this city for the last month of my mission. 

In 1988, Christmas day was on Sunday. On the Sunday before Christmas, Elder Ringger (my companion) and I each accepted separate dinner appointments for Christmas dinner the following week. Fortunately, one dinner invitation was for early afternoon and the other dinner invitation was for the evening. Thus, after Elder Ringger and I compared notes, we decided we could keep both commitments. 

For a couple of months or so before I was transferred to this area, the missionaries taught and baptized a part-member family. (I do not remember whether it was the husband or wife who was the member.) Elder Ringger and I were teaching this family the "new member discussions." We met with them twice each week. 

After one of our lessons, we were talking about family Christmas traditions. The husband mentioned that in his family they always cooked a goose for Christmas dinner. Both Elder Ringger and I commented that we had never eaten roast goose. The couple said they should invite us to come to Christmas dinner. We ended our lesson and left. 

On Christmas Sunday, we only had Sacrament Meeting. After sacrament meeting, the new member couple approached us and asked what time we were coming over that day for dinner. Elder Ringger and I were surprised because we had not realized we were invited to dinner. Apparently, the couple had assumed that our conversation about the roast goose a couple of days before was a formal invitation to dinner!

Fortunately, the time the couple was having dinner was in between the times of the two other Christmas dinner appointments we had. So, Elder Ringger and I visited three different families and ate three different Christmas dinners that year. As far as I am aware, none of the families knew we ate dinner with the other families. 

I do not remember what the roast goose tasted like except it was tasty!