The "Table"

As I mentioned in our last blog post, we were kept quite busy for a couple of weeks in anticipation of our first official promotional event this past Saturday. I gave a little insight into the formation of our promotional packets, but now I want to give a little insight into the other main component: the table display.

If you say "table" to a missionary, they immediately know what you mean. For those of you who aren't missionaries and don't get the reference, I'll explain it a little. It is quite similar to a booth at a convention. It is standard practice for missionaries to create a table display to showcase/promote the mission they will be partaking in. Like many other things in life, there is no blueprint or right way/wrong way to do it. In some ways that's nice, but in some ways that makes it harder.

As I mentioned in the last post, Polly took the lead on the table. She is better than I am at things which are cosmetic or visual so it made since for her to take control of it. I helped her in figuring out what types of things we wanted to have for our table and the general layout, but she did the laborious work of getting the items and putting it all together. To be honest, I think that putting together a table the first time has got to be the hardest. I mean, missionaries who have already been on the field to a particular country/region have the advantage of having pictures and items that are unique to that area. Polly and I had nothing Costa Rican prior to this so we were literally starting from scratch. This meant that we had some shopping to do.

Polly went to Christmas Tree Shop and picked up a coffee mug, some candy dishes, a place mat to go under the dishes and a basket for our promotional packets. She went to Target and got a brown tablecloth. At Walmart, she picked up a couple of foam boards and a small foam tri-fold board. Then, I did what I do best. I went online to Amazon and bought a bag of Costa Rican coffee, a small globe, a map of Central America and a Costa Rican flag. I couldn't help but think about missionaries who served before the era of the internet. I wonder how they got stuff for their table. I'm sure they did okay for themselves, but it must have been more difficult then.

Quick side note: The cool thing about buying stuff on Amazon is that I'm an Amazon Prime member. Here's a hint for any online shoppers out there. I never paid for that membership. While we were still pregnant with Genevieve, I signed up for Amazon Mom (anyone can sign up for it, not only parents). Amazon Mom is (or at least it was) free and comes with a free year of Prime. But many purchases we make on Amazon extend that free Prime membership a set amount of time each time. What's the advantage of Prime? Free two-day shipping. In fact, we typically receive our orders the day after we make the purchase. And all this from the comfort of my sofa.

Anyway, we printed out a few things and put the whole thing together last Friday night (Polly did most of the work on this then too). While at the event on Saturday, we took notice of other missionaries' tables to look for possible ideas. It quickly became evident to us that each table display  took on the personality of its creator. Polly and I are similar in our personalities when it comes to these things. We both like things to be clean, neat, uncluttered, organized, coordinated, etc. Our table reflected our personalities. Maybe that's why we decided that we like our table just as it is. It was definitely worth the effort.

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God bless,

Mike