Baking and Church - Community Service of My Favorite Kind

This week was fairly ordinary, but I learned and taught a few interesting things, so I will share about that. 

I love baking. With a recipe in hand and some measuring devices, I'll give it a shot. Apparently, people are a bit more reserved when it comes to the baking. Every time I bake something, everyone is just in complete awe. It's hilarious, but it also makes it even more fun to bake. Almost since the first day I got here, people have been asking me about cupcakes. What are these little pastries? How do you make them? Is it hard to make? They watch Cupcake Wars and assorted other Food Network shows about cupcakes, which has sparked some curiosity. So, the other week I was poking around Tottus and found a cupcake pan and figured I could finally make some cupcakes and muffins. Yum! 

On Wednesday night, Billy and Karen and I got to work on the cupcakes. I found a simple recipe for banana and vanilla cupcakes on the allrecipes.com app. Bananas are a very easy to find ingredient here and I love bananas, so seemed like a good combination. I brought measuring cups with me, but as they weren't getting any use here in Lima, I left them in Huanuco last year, so back to baking without measuring cups...keeping things interesting. Haha. I found that we have a small glass cup that seems to be approximately the size of a 1 cup measuring cup, so it has become my go-to measure. Fortunately, I do have a bit of experience with measuring, so I can sort of eyeball it. Billy assisted with measuring, cracking eggs, and cleaning the pan. Karen got home in time to fill the pan. Then, we mixed up some frosting while we waited for the cupcakes to cool. 

Banana Muffins!

Around 8ish, we had a church leadership meeting, so I had to leave the cupcake madness for a bit. After a while, I was anxious to try out the cupcakes, so I ran back downstairs so we could put the icing on the cupcakes and dig in! I figured it would be cool to pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes, turns out, not the best plan, but got the job done. Ended up being a nice experience to spend time with Billy and Karen and then a delicious dessert for our meeting. Pretty much everyone said they were good. 

Then on Sunday morning I wanted to make banana muffins, which Billy and Ana helped me prepare with Karen and Sandra supervising. I think Billy officially knows how to mix ingredients together now! Use that elbow grease! Mmm, I love me some banana muffins. As it turns out, muffins are more popular than cupcakes because they are not as sweet. Billy is convinced that eating the cupcakes gave him a cold because they were too sugary. I don't think that's possible, but at any rate, the muffins were more to his liking. I got a few other comments in kind, so I may stick to the muffin making...now to find baking soda and shortening to stick to the recipe. Know any alternative names for baking soda other than el bicarbonato de soda? No ones knows what it is and I'm not sure how else to ask for it.  

On a completely different note, I had a pretty good week in terms of church things. We have had some butting heads and conflicts of the sort of late that have made things way less than desirable at times. I don't know what happened, but this week had a whole lot less tension. With that, I was able to do more planning before the weekend got started. For once, I wasn't running around trying to figure out what I was going to teach for my classes. Also, I can respect a well-planned class that doesn't require a bunch of parts and prep. 

On Friday night I taught the Monte Sion adult class about the 4 Spiritual Types. I am sure I didn't do it justice, but it was good to introduce them to the subject and get them thinking about it. I think they enjoyed learning about them nonetheless. I learned that I have moved more in the 4 category, surprise surprise. [To oversimplify, 1s are head/intellectual church peeps, 2s are heart/emotional types, 3s are mystical/meditative types, and 4s are the doer/action types.] Also, Wilfredo seemed to think it was interesting and hopefully something we can bring to the Filadelfia congregation where we are currently trying to switch up church. Oddly enough, their idea of switching up church is moving towards the bulletin style service that we've been trying to move away from in the States. Whatever floats their boat. The one nice thing is that you know what will happen next and have a better idea for when things will end. The downside is that people don't know how to estimate well and don't compensate for things running long, so I think church will continue to be loonnngg. I know, I know, there shouldn't be a time limit on church, but I'm from the 1-hr church upbringing. Change is hard! 

Bigotes! (Mustaches!)

On Saturday, I had my usual kids class. Only 6 of the kids showed up, but they made up an amazing class! Like the kids, I most enjoy the activities. Having a "discussion" with 3-7 year-olds is not easy. I thought they would like to talk about the places they like to explore and go and they all said they liked to play with their friends on the soccer field. At least they talk, right? Anyway, we played Simon Says and Musical Chairs. We had a good time. Also, school starts next week, so I thought I would get the kids a back-to-school gift. Working with my budget, I opted for decorating pencils. So, I bought some pencils and then taped a mustache and the scripture Philippians 4:13 - "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" - on them and handed them out to the kids. They all seems pretty excited to get back to school and have... recess! 

The good thing that did come from said church service was that I was introduced to a pretty interesting scripture from Romans 12:1-2  (MSG), which says: 

Place Your Life Before God

12 1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

So, as we move in to lent, I will keep this in mind. I will have to work on the "readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it" part, but whatever better time than the present and the lenten season to do so?! Otherwise, I thought it was a cool scripture and am glad Jhonny brought it to my attention in his sermon, even if it was a 50-minute sermon. Oh Peru. 

I've got 2 more days to figure out what exactly I'm going to do for lent. The church has a "schedule" that will come in handy. What are you going to do/not do? Ideas? 

~nos vemos~