I promised I would put cute pictures of kids this week from the creche - or daycare at the ROL. Sure enough, the kids were very cute. But make no mistake, making sugar cookies in a sauna is no sweet deal. With temps soaring in the mid 90's, turning on a gas oven only made the 76% humidity and heat soar even higher. You've heard that missionaries improvise with what they have...so here is my recipe: To keep from melting the dough (which we all know the recipe says "chill" your dough before using) roll out a small handful of dough on wax paper and put the rest in the freezer. Then cut around the cut-out cookie to separate it from the others in order to flip the cookie upside down onto the cookie sheet while removing the wax paper from the top of the cookie. DON'T move cookie from the cookie sheet once placed or it immediately becomes a blob! Put baked cookies in freezer. Rapidly make frosting and throw in freezer. Grab cookie one at a time from freezer and quickly frost. You have 30 seconds to frost and 10 seconds to put on colorful sprinkles. Return to freezer immediately before frosting slides off cookie. Do this 48 times and you have 4 dozen cute little cookies. BUT KEEP THEM IN THE FREEZER until they are ready to eat. :-)
My daughter-in-law Michele, who is Mrs. Homemaker Wyoming, gave me a recipe to make play dough with just four ingredients and water. That is perfect for here since finding just the right ingredient can be tough. She also donated a huge sack of cookie cutters from letters, numbers, holiday icons, cars, trees, stars, well...just about everything imaginable. The kids were very hesitant at first to play with what they thought looked more like their usual diet of "masa."
Once I explained the mechanics of working with play dough they all quieted down and went to work. You can see this little guy is really into his work...tongue and all.
There can be up to 35 children in the creche - all in one room. A few months ago the creche burned down and so now the children are meeting in a borrowed preschool room.
Because the preschool room was so hot, we put the children outside and their little plastic desks. But since I had promised them REAL cookies with the cookie cutters we had to put them back inside once they were done with the play dough because I didn't have enough for the entire preschool who had been watching with fascination as the little ones created with this new strange dough.
The creche serves as a daycare for many of the projects workers. This is Joel. He is our activista Josefa's only child.
I am sure hoping he is eating a cookie and not the play dough. :-/
The kids were fascinated with the shapes of the cookies. The boy in the back is trying to make the shape of his cookie with his hand. The boy in the front is trying to figure out if it is real dough or play dough.
This little cutie is Invanilde.She is the granddaughter of my empregada, Ana.
I also found ingredients in Beira to make my own version of rice krispies. I had also brought some M&M's with me to add to the ingredients. For the most part, they were a hit.
The children are not use to eating such a rich cookie!
Another sweet little girl. Notice she chose the PINK cookie.
I think this little one was feeling sick. But she tried to eat the cookie anyway.
Good even on your hands!
If you look closely, you can see the sweat on Joel's face. One room with all these children and workers and temps in the 90's without a cross ventilation is almost unbearable.
Always a smile from Junior. This is Manuel and Ramizia's son. He is the national leader working with Phil in the Green Door ministry. Manuel also teaches two times each week at El Shaddai, four different nights (two nights in Beira) at two different Bible schools, pastors the Savane church on Sundays, is working on a pastoral training program, and is involved in MOZ-CRI. Do you think he has enough to do?
I used the cut-out cookies to quickly explain God as our creator (a flower), God's love for us (a heart), His gift to us of his son (a star), and His salvation (a cross). I had to about tell it that fast too because their attention span was very short!
What a sweet face.
Truthfully, the little kiddies weren't able to eat much of their cookies. They were very hot and our American cookies are pretty rich for their humble diets. So they wrapped them up in the paper towels I had brought in order to take them home. It was a fun day in the sugar sauna.
This is Carlitos and his wife Antonia. Carlitos is a lay pastor and lives in Macharote. He is suffering from TB of the bones. He has been sick for almost a year because it is so difficult to detect TB when it is not in the lungs. I went to visit them this week and Antonia was making their lunch. It consisted of a type of bean she had picked and she was going to cook the leaves with the beans. They also have several children and grandchildren who live with them.
I visited Chico who is blind and had accepted Christ last year in our Project Life program. We had started him in a business and he and his sister, who is also involved in PL, continue to sell their products. He had a lemon tree by his little rented house so I bought some of his lemons from him. That is a blessing for Mozambique....all the available fruit trees one can eat from here during the fruit season.
One of the reasons I took the time to go to the creche is to lighten my heart. Children can always lighten our load with their smiles! I spend the week working in an AIDS hospice. The suffering of these people weighs heavily on my heart. This is Isabel. She was married for many years to the same man who died in 2011. They had three children who are now 9, 13, and 16. In this culture, even if her husband had a large cement block home, his relatives would have come and taken it upon his death. As it was, he had little and she was left with even less. Her mud home collapsed this last month in the rains and she is trying to rebuild her mud home (behind her) the best way she knows how. As you can see her roof is very precarious and will not keep the rains away for very long. She is weak and tired, but she walks to her machamba (garden) which is 10 kilometers from where she lives as often as possible. She knows that God will never leave her nor forsake her, but every day her reality is a struggle to keep her children and herself alive.
This is one Green Door home of two that we are in the process of building. We praise God for the donors who come alongside the Isabels, the Marias, the Josés, who they do not know, and share their burdens of poverty.
I would like to share one more story with you. I spent the week visiting individuals in their homes in PL. I love to do that because as my translator said, "You can really begin to see the spirit of the person when you take the time to be with them." How true. This woman's name is Fanita. She has been on the waiting list for a Green Door home for a year. She is suffering from a blood disorder. Her activista had encouraged her to go to the doctor at the clinic. The doctor then sent her to Beira for testing. She didn't have the 78 cents to take a ride to Beira. So she gave up. Of course she should have asked her activista for help. That is one way that we can help. But the fight to stay alive has died within her. It is just too much of a struggle to fight to have a safe place to live, to fight to have food to eat, to fight to have medicine to take, and to fight loneliness. For the widow with AIDS, it is just too much of an overwhelming fight. We must intervene on the behalf of those who can no longer fight for themselves. Intervene with prayer, love and encouragement and every practical way we can. What a blessing it is to stand in the gap for these precious souls that Christ died for.....keep praying with us for the people in Project Life!
No comments:
Post a Comment