Cooking and life.

So, every Thursday is our day to make dinner. Last Thursday we decided to make Fajitas and beans. They don’t have tortillas here so we thought it would be fun to make some. So we go to the market with Auntie, which was quite the occasion. When I say market don’t picture a tiny market, this is a huge market, where there is barely any room to walk between aisles so there is plenty of pushing and shoving. Auntie speaks a little English, but it was only enough to just get us all confused. For instance, we needed flour and she led us to a bunch of flowers. We finally get home, and when we were starting to cook, Chantal asked, “What kind of flour did you want to buy?” I was like “Wheat flour.” Unfortunately we had bought Kasavah flour, which tastes about as good as body odor smells. They mix the flour with water, and it is their Native bread, which Megan and I strongly dislike. Haha. Anyway, so we walked to the nearest store, which only had corn flour, but I thought it would do the trick. Apparently corn flour doesn’t do the trick and our tortillas crumbled if they were less than an inch thick, so we tossed them.

We had Auntie cook up some rice at the last second and decided we could just make the fajita filling more of a stir-fry. It was a bit bland, so Auntie gave us some tiny orange peppers, which smelled like mandarins, so I decided I would taste it to see if it was even a pepper. To my shock, it was definitely a pepper, an extremely potently dangerously hot one, which burned my lips, mouth, hand, and nose quite badly. Megan found it rather funny, although, I found it painful. So we cut two up and put it in our stir-fry, which was quite a bit too much spice for anyone to handle. We found our dinner disaster quite funny, and our hosts pretended like they liked it. It ended up tasting like a number 6 Thai pepper dish.

As for important stuff, like what I am doing, and if I have malaria; I have been teaching English Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 5 ½ hours each day, and I do not have malaria. My classes are going pretty well. Most of the time it is really fun and once and awhile they have made rather interesting sentences, “I want to beat you, but I don’t have stick.” Or I asked "When did you stop wearing diapers?" And Margarett answered "2 years ago", she meant to say 2 years old, haha, she is 28. What makes it challenging is that some are more advanced than others and want to move faster, but I should go the pace of the slowest student (I have 8 students total). Like, some don’t want me to teach anymore vocabulary or verbs, because “We know how write and read, and know a vocabularly, we just need better pronouncing” but when I hear them speak, I can tell they haven’t mastered any level, for if they knew how to write in past tense, then they would be able to speak in it too. So it is a challenge to appease their wants, but also give teach them with a foundation behind it.

Also, on Tuesdays and Saturdays we help out with kids, and meet with ex prostitutes. I believe next week we will start teaching them how to make crafts that they can sell. This Tuesday Megan and I will be speaking at a youth event, so pray that that goes well! I don’t have much prepared yet, but I want to give my testimony and tie it in with following God, even if He doesn’t answer our prayers how we want. A lot of pastors have made believing in Jesus + faith = Miracles and blessings, and I wonder if those don’t come, what happens to the people’s faith? So I want to encourage people to follow God, even if He isn’t their personal Santa Clause.

OKAY bye! And mom, I don't think I will be tempted to not go home. I really think going to Moody is what I should do here. A lot of people here have very good educations, can speak many languages, graduated from University, but still can not find a job. I deffinitely will need credentials in what ever I do, and it woudl be best to get them at a good encouraging school.