I have a good friend named Adam Friesen who lives in Henderson, Nebraska.

Henderson lay (and still lies) conveniently in the middle of my 7 hour trek between college and home, and on occasion, when time allowed, I would drop in to pay a visit. We would catch up on life while he cooked me a meal.

I’m not talking about Mac & Cheese or hamburger helper. Adam would walk out the door, come back from his little garden with an armful of vegetables and make pizza or pasta with a delicious sauce. From scratch. And then he would bring out a pie for desert.

He took great joy in cooking, and this inspired me. Now, I make a mean Mac & Cheese and if I want to get fancy, I might even fry up a few hot dogs to throw in the mix. But I never really had the time or motivation to cook in earnest.

Until now.

Unlike most SALTers, who live with a host family that is always bustling about the kitchen, I share mine with a bachelor who lives off whatever can be made with tortillas, cheese, and ham. If I want to try something, he is more than happy to give me the whole kitchen.

A few months ago I asked the directors for their copy of the “More With Less” cookbook. On the metro ride back to my place I studied it intently (to the great interest of everyone around me), picking out reasonable recipes and making a grocery list.

I strolled into Wal-Mart later that week with Mario, ready and eager. I soon discovered Mexicans use about a fourth of the ingredients we use. A whole isle is devoted to nothing but cooking oil, yet sour cream? Creamed corn? Corn starch? Go fish.

It did not help that my vocabulary is highly lacking in kitchen language. The Wal-Mart employees didn’t make my scavenger hunt any easier, offering strange looks and pointing in vague directions, almost as if they are paid to not know where anything is.

When I finally stumbled upon the vegetable shortening I had to restrain myself from hugging everyone in the aisle. Celebrating over the return of prodigal cooking ingredients is akin to being excited about getting underwear for Christmas, but I guess we all grow up sometime.

Shopping also needed to be done for measuring cups, spoons, cooking sheets and pans, apparently none of which Mario has needed in his 24 years, to prepare his food.

I started my cooking adventures with biscuits. I figure you can’t go wrong with biscuits. If you are cooking anything with flour and milk, you could stop halfway through and call it biscuits.

My first challenge was the Mexican oven. After taking the dishes out of the oven and doing some generous dusting, I was ready to light it. My faithful cookbook told me to heat the oven to 450. The dial on my stove said 1,2,3,4,5. I thought 5 sounded good. I have since fine tuned my system by putting my hand in the oven after about 10 minutes (“Hmmm…I guess that could be 400, it feels pretty hot…”). As a general rule, if I turn the oven as high as it will go and put the food in for twice as long as the recipe suggests, things get more or less done.

My biscuits, while leaving room for improvement, turned out quite well. Mario loved them. My confidence boosted, I made a coffee cakes, one for Mario and then one for the pastor’s family. Before I knew it, word of my cooking had spread far and wide.

Since then I have consistently been pestering my mother for recipes. She does so willingly, seeing the potential of never having to bake again once I return to the States. Over Christmas I taught the pastor’s family how to make Christmas cookies.

making Christmas cookies with Cha Chas

A few nights earlier there was a big gathering and I prepared some baked apples and a triple batch of Vietnamese Fried Rice. Everyone marveled at the creation and immediately put it in a tortilla. We called it Asian tacos. Some habits are hard to break.

Lining up for Asian tacos, tortillas in hand...

I have discovered how much cooking builds relationships and shares ones culture. At Sylvia’s house we made no-bake cookies last week. Eladio loves learning American recipes and in church one week I heard his older brother complain that he had to work on Saturdays while his brother makes American deserts.

The girls in RECH are pressuring me to do a “girls only” breakfast, while another girl in the youth group has me penciled in to show her how to make a chocolate cake. Her father, after having my Vietnamese Fried Rice offered me her hand in marriage. I politely declined, but made note of my cooking’s potential.

Last Saturday I went to Silvia’s English class, where I sometimes help out with pronunciation. We stumbled across the word “pie” and I found none of them had ever had any. I plan to take care of this next week, as we all gather at Silvia’s house to make a peanut butter pie. Not the most traditional perhaps, but I’m still a ways off from making a good crust.

Cooking has become cathartic for me. It is a piece of comfort from home and it also allows me the chance to share something of which I have more expertise than those around me. I have found that to be important during a year where everything I do is a slow and awkward learning experience.

It’s in my blood now. My parents sent me a Freeman Courier over Christmas and after reading it cover to cover, I clipped out what appears to be a delicious sweet potato recipe.

The other day I helped my host mom make her first batch of rice pudding, and it was delicious. I have never felt more proud. Thanks Adam. When I come back, you can swing by my place. We’ll catch up on life and I’ll make you a meal.

One of the pleasant surprises I had at my orientation with the country reps upon arriving in Mexico City was learning that I would have the chance to go to Nicaragua for MCC Central America regional retreat. That to me sounded like a fun time. This event happened last week, and more than exceeded my expectations.

It was in the low 40’s when our team got up at 2:30 AM to head for the airport and when we landed in Managua at around midday, it was in the mid 90’s with an impressive amount of humidity. Throughout the week as I busted out my shorts, dipped my legs in the pool at night, and turned on the AC before I went to bed, I marveled at the fact that back home in South Dakota, it was likely 100 degrees cooler.

Our resort. A bit ritzy for MCC but supposedly for a group our size there is not much outside of touristy places like this. I'm not complaining...

We ate every night under this canopy by the pool

Regional Retreat includes the MCC teams of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Mexico, around 80 adults and 20 children. What a great experience to be around so many fun and interesting people.

I have found that an organization like MCC attracts people like this. Anybody who willingly gives up a chunk of their life to leave friends, family, and everything comfortable to live in a foreign land where everything is strange in the name of service almost always fits in this category. It was an especially fun to catch up with the 11 SALTers and other young adults serving in Central America. A week truly felt like too short a time to spend together.

Liz Goering, Jordan Penner and I, attenders of Faith Mennonite Church in Newton, united halfway around the world.

Our theme for the week revolved around the idea of maintaining a healthy spiritual life alongside our day to day work. We worked/meditated/ for 4 hour sessions every afternoon, sometimes with partners, sometimes alone, sometimes in small groups. Our two leaders from the south of Mexico led us in some very experimental meditations, rituals, and group activities. Not all of it worked for me, but there was some very valuable group time and a particular activity that stuck out to me:

We gathered in a large circle and then with our eyes closed we were to walk towards the center and find a pair of hands that we liked. After this we mixed up the circle and with our eyes closed, we were to find the same pair of hands again. An odd exercise but a very spiritual one. It’s hard to explain, I suggest you try it yourself if you ever get the chance.

My responsibilities for the week were twofold. First of all, I took on the responsibility of planning the worship service that MCC Mexico was in charge of. I chose the theme of “calling” and with the help of my team, it went very well. The twist was that everything had to be in Spanish. After the first hymn I told everyone to “feel themselves” instead of “seat themselves” but after that I did alright.

My second responsibility was MCing the highly anticipated talent show on the last night. This decision was unanimously made by my team without much room for rebuttal. I wasn’t so sure I would be funny in Spanish. In the end I stumbled through the bare essentials in Spanish and switched over to English for the punch lines. The event was filled with skits, dancing, and ended with a rousing chorus of “MCC, that’s where I want to be” put together by one of the MCC teams.

The talent show underway...

We had a lot of fun enjoying each others company, from the relay races and scavenger hunt of the MCC Olympics, riding the packed school bus we took to see the Nicaraguan countryside, the boat on the choppy waters of one of Nicaragua’s larger lakes, and talking and laughing late into the warm muggy nights. We ate together, sang acapella hymns together, and grew closer as an MCC family, as far apart as we may be during the majority of our time abroad. I am truly blessed to be a part of such an active part of the body of Christ. These are memories I will cherish for the rest of my life.

An afternoon on the lake

First of all, for my avid readers, I have posted new pictures on the following blog posts:

Dec 27 -- Rapping for the Masses...In the Name of Service
Dec 21 -- Nights in the City
Dec 19 -- My Brief Stint in the Adult World and its Sudden Demise
Dec 16 -- Partying in the Name of the Virgin
Nov 25 -- DJing the Rech Concert Festival
Nov 14 -- The Youth I Spend Time With

Now back to your regular scheduled programming...

Happy New Years all!

16 days in is still new right? As you can see, I’m still tying up some loose ends as far as my blog posts go.

I brought in the New Year much in the same way I celebrated Christmas, at the pastor’s house with the whole family and Mario. Except this time there was pizza instead of a Christmas ham. And grapes.

I noticed all day that grapes were being sold by the box just about everywhere all day. Noticing the mountain of grapes in the pastor’s house I asked whether they were in season. “No,” I was told, “They are brought in specially from Chile because Mexicans love to eat grapes on New Years.”

This was about the most bizarre thing I had heard, but I wasn’t complaining. I love grapes. When the new year finally hit, we were to eat 12 grapes, one every second, for good luck. Grapes are small, but 12 at once is quite a mouthful. I hope to never have that much fruit in my mouth at the same time again, but I sealed up my good luck for this year.

12 grapes strong...

Much of the rest of the evening was spent playing Settlers of Catan with Emanuel, Luis, and Cha Chas. Being an avid board-gamer I scouted out the potential in these three for a move beyond Monopoly. Unfortunately this is a TV dominated culture which tends to rot the mind and leave no room for the strategy and creativity involved in more advanced board games.

I traveled hours across the city in search of board games and the most complex thing I could find was a Simpsons version of Clue. I figured it was worth the postage to have my parents send it.

I put it under the Christmas tree along with American calendars for everyone else. I did this without realizing that most Mexicans don’t gifts on Christmas. It was a rather awkward experience, with many grateful thank-yous and apologies for having nothing for me. I assured them I was merely “sharing my cultural traditions.” Good cover Caley.

Regardless, we have been playing Settlers with fervor since. I’ve already been beaten twice, so I think they are getting the hand of it. The pastor thanked me the other day for introducing games in his house. Luis and Emanuel do not go to church and the pastor told me before they had these games they would spend most of their time in their rooms away from the family. Games have really opened them up to spending quality time with the family. God works in mysterious ways does he not? Even through the trading of sheep for ore…

Settlers of Catan with the boys

“If Mexicans don’t give gifts on Christmas, when do they?” you might be asking. The answer to that question is January 6, El Dia de Reyes (Day of the Magi). Mario told me a week before that the day before parents bought their kids toys and the day of the kids opened them. I asked him whether there was any religious significance and he thought about that for a while before telling me “he didn’t think so.”

I was afraid of that.

Traditionally I believe Dia de Reyes celebrates the day the magi came to pay their respects to the newborn savior. However this has been replaced by the idea of paying with their credit cards to respect the wishes of their not-so-newborn children.

I had spent the morning as I spend all my Monday mornings, with Carlos working on a 1000 piece puzzle that my mother sent me. This is something we both enjoy. Carlos asks me every time whether the puzzle’s picture of is of my farm. Though I believe our farm to be a little piece of paradise, I highly doubt it has ever been put on a 1000 piece puzzle.

Carlos and I tackle the puzzle

2 hours and roughly 7 puzzle pieces later Carlos asked me if I was going to the pastor’s house to eat today.
I told him I was and he asked me how.
Well, by combi of course
“Not today,” he said. Your street is shut down today.

We immediately took to the streets to investigate. Sure enough, the main public transportation route was shut down for miles, the street packed with nothing but toy vendors. It is quite a shameless commercial holiday. In the US we hide it behind the facade of peace and goodwill for all, but here you have to take on a Mexican mentality: Why celebrate once when you can divide the religious and the commercial and celebrate twice?

Greetings all! This is something I put together for the congregations supporting me this year, but I thought it might be of interest to more of you too...

VIEW FROM THE OUTSIDE
Here is a look at the church from the outside. The church owns all three levels, though one of the church families rents out half of the first floor for an apartment. There might be four or five cars outside on a typical Sunday, but everyone else walks or takes public transportation to church.

THE KITCHEN
The first level houses the church kitchen. It is a bit small at the moment because the wall on the left divides it from the apartment I mentioned. The plan with the construction is to eventually move them to the top level to give more room for the kitchen and open up two rooms for Sunday school classrooms.

VIEW FROM THE KITCHEN
A look out the doors from the inside. The doors are open on Sunday morning but if you want to get in any other time you knock and wait for the family that lives on the first floor to open the door for you. Luckily my job gets me one of the few keys to the church.

THE STAIRWELL
The stairwell connects all three levels. Often the Sunday school projects are displayed here on the board. The plants in the window (and throughout the building) add life to the otherwise stark building.

THE SANCTUARY
Our sanctuary in its holiday finest. The stage holds all of the praise band equipment. We sing 4-6 songs every Sunday, all unison praise songs sung off of the overhead. Some are well-known English songs translated, but there are also a lot of great songs popular to Spanish speaking countries that I had never heard before.
The service starts with an hour of devotions, music, and prayer time led by different congregation members.
The second hour is offering, announcements and the sermon. The pastor and his wife preach about half of the sermons and there are about three others that give the message on other Sundays. The young children leave during the second part for children’s church and return at the very end to share a scripture verse they memorized with actions.
The blue chairs are set up every week and taken down and put against the wall after the service. When we have a meal, tables are set up and the room is transformed into a Fellowship Hall.

ADULT SUNDAY SCHOOL
At the back of the sanctuary is a corner where the adults have their Sunday school. Sunday school is about an hour long after the service.

ADULT SUNDAY SCHOOL 2
Another view of the adult Sunday school. This is also the corner where we have our prayer meetings on Tuesday and Bible studies on Thursdays.

ROOFTOP LEVEL
This is the third and final level of the church. The door straight ahead is where we have Youth Group. This is where all the construction is taking place.

FUTURE APARTMENT
At another angle. This is where the first floor apartment is to be moved.

YOUTH GROUP
This is the youth room, where we have Sunday school. Pastor Fernando is our teacher. When the construction is done, this room becomes part of the upstairs apartment and the youth room will move to another location.

GUEST ROOM
This room, right outside of the upstairs apartment, will be a guestroom for visitors and perhaps the living quarters for future SALTers. Notice the walls made of Styrofoam and chicken wire. Not exactly top quality, but within the price range and quite commonly used in this part of the city.

PASTOR FERNANDO
This is our pastor, Fernando Perez, though he shares almost all church responsibilities with his wife Rebecca. Though I live with Mario, a 24 year old university student, I eat my noon meal at the pastor’s house and spend a significant amount of time there. It is truly a wonderful family and the core of our congregation.