We are a family of three who have been sent to Ukraine to plant churches. We are constantly growing and learning how to be the people God calls us to be.
We enjoy life, and want to share with others the things that make our lives so great.
In July, our team got together to brainstorm what we could do to follow up with the contacts we received from the Let's Start Talking (LST) campaign we had in July. We had a bunch of new contacts and we wanted follow-up with them as best as we could. We started several different activities and parties, one being a cooking class once/month. Our team makes bakes a lot of stuff here - cookies, brownies, cakes, etc. and are always being asked for recipes. Ukrainians really don't bake very much, if at all. In fact, many don't have an oven in their apartment. They cook, but when it comes to sweets or breads, they usually buy them from the store. We have a lot of events and host a lot of people in our homes, so we bake a lot - partly because we enjoy doing it, partly because it seems more welcoming, and partly because we just like some of our sweets better than what is in the store.
Katie took on project of the cooking class and started it up in her home. She prepared a recipe, had the ingredients ready, and set up her kitchen. There were eleven of us there at the first class, three who had been LST readers. The next month, we did it again. We've had four classes so far and they've all been great.
Two months ago, I was able to teach the class how to make pumpkin bread and pumpkin soup - one recipe I picked up in the States, the other from New Zealand-- both weren't common here in Ukraine. This last month, we hosted the class in our kitchen. We had 19 of us crammed into my kitchen and since it was around our Thanksgiving holiday, Lucy and one of our AIMers EJ taught how to make pies. We ate one of them, then invited all our guests to our combined assembly the next day where we were planning on eating all kinds of pies together.
Opening up our homes is easy. Converting the recipes takes a little effort, but it's not difficult. Measuring 1/2 cup in a small tea cup (instead of our 1/2 measure) or trying to get precisely 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda on our teaspoon (rather than using a 1/4 teaspoon measure) takes a little practice and a lot of guesswork, but it's workable. (They don't have dry measuring cups or spoons here.) Explaining what "dough" is can be complicated, but dictionaries and visuals make it possible. The fact that we're able to do it is a blessing. The friends and visitors who come encourage us. In fact, I think we gain more from these classes than we put it.
God is good. It is a privilege to be able to serve Him here and a joy to do it through mere cooking.