It’s true that an element of mystery can add a touch of excitement and
intrigue to any event. And with this as a theme, Mystery Meals was started. As Membership Chair, it is important to bring your chapter together into closer fellowship. How do you do that in this day and age when everyone is going in so many different directions, sometimes making it difficult to even get to a chapter meeting? I developed Mystery Meals for Chapter K, Dallas, as a result of needing to solve this problem. Everyone has to eat, right? And very often in our weekly schedule we make time to catch lunch with a friend here and there. So why couldn’t that idea be incorporated into our lives as P.E.O.s? And what about those sisters we seldom see because our meeting date just doesn’t work into her schedule? While our meeting times together are fun and we have our social time together, there is rarely a real chance to learn about our sisters on a personal level because there are so many people around. Mystery Meals offers an opportunity to talk to a small group of sisters on a day that works into our busy schedules. It’s given an
element of fun by incorporating mystery into the concept by keeping who will eat together a mystery until everyone shows up at the restaurant. And quite often the restaurant ends up being new and different to someone in the group too.
To successfully create Mystery Meals events, I became Chapter K’s social secretary. Everyone in the chapter (including those that never come to meetings) told me a handful of dates (or a specific a day of the week) within a timeframe of a couple of months that they could work in a lunch (or breakfast, or dinner) into
their schedule. I then put everyone’s name on the dates they specified on a calendar. Without fail, dates that sisters were available overlapped, so I could easily make groups of three, four or five sisters. I emailed or called everyone to confirm a date to be put on a calendar to minimize backing out. No one was to talk about their date with anyone in the chapter because who they would be dining with would remain a secret until they showed up at the restaurant. That’s
the “mystery” part. Everyone would be surprised with which of their sisters they would be sharing a meal. Closer to each group’s date, I then emailed or called each group with the time and place they were to meet. Email makes this easy because just one email can be sent by blind carbon copy so no one knows who else is getting the email. Most everyone in our chapter has email these days, so very few calls had to be made.
Normally, our meeting participation rate falls below 40 percent, but the Mystery Meal participation rate was at 70 percent. Half of the sisters whose name we hear at roll call during each meeting, but don’t see, also participated. One sister, after her Mystery Meal outing, emailed me and said, “I want to let you know what a delightful time I had at lunch. It was a wonderful way to get to know two of my P.E.O. sisters better. I know it must take a lot of work to get this all together, but for me it was well worth it.” 
