Biscuit Day and Nacho Night!

Today was a wonderful day!  Half of the team left for mini-outreach, to Sheffield, in Northern England, and I wasn't sure how our day would go since we were "left behind".  Our day started out as usual with various cleaning chores.  Our clean-up and prayer was a group time in the park.  We came upon Lizzie, our local Police Community Support Officer (PCSO), and chatted with her a bit.  She had us help clean up the memorial area from the woman who was murdered in the park a few weeks ago.  It was so nice to build relationship with her and she was so pleased to see us hard at work trying to make Harlesdon a little better.  After we got back to the house, we got ready for our afternoon evangelism.  We baked some sweeties to pass out to the school children in the afternoon.


Batter for the "Promise Cookies"

 Marta, wanted to make fortune cookies with sweet words of encouragement from God in them.  She discovered that making these was a bit of an art form!  She burnt her fingers shaping hot cookies and had a hard time getting the batter just right so she enlisted the help of Matts, our resident chef.  (Really, he was a chef in his pre-YWAM days!)

Matts (Belgium) and Marta (Portugal) trying to fold the HOT cookies!

 


The "Promises" we put inside the cookies. 

 

The "American" Sugar Cookies. YUMMY!
I think we should have called them "Sugar Butter Smartie Biscuits".



Me, Amy and Ella were on the baking team as well.  I thought we could make Sugar Butter M&M cookies (which are my favorite) with hearts on top.  One of the problems with this country became clear on our shopping run, I couldn't find one decent sized bag of plain M&M's anywhere!  Who doesn't sell M&M's? Ms. Tammy always has a giant Sam's Club sized bag of M's in her office-just in case.  I came home defeated but two of the girls ventured back out in the cold rain and returned with Smarties.  I thought they would be like Skittles (since in our country, Smarties are sour little candies) but they were actually much like M's!  So, we carried on with our project and couldn't pull off the hearts but made cute and yummy little gems none-the-less. 

The others on the team worked on labels for the cookie bags to give them a bit more meaning!

Andrea (Germany) and Josmar (Puerto Rico)

Our goodies ready to hit the rainy streets of London!

We finished and were so pleased with our little bags of sunshine!  We headed out in the cold rain to see who's day we could make a bit brighter.  Amy and I went out by the grocery store and tried to pass out the "biscuits" to some of the school children but they were (rightly) reluctant to take our gifts.  I decided to ask an old man who was so tickled by us and that got us going.  We asked, "Would you like a biscuit to brighten your day?  We made them ourselves!"  We met so many people who smiled and were so excited by our offering.  One man came back to us to tell us how kind we were and what a good job we were doing spreading God's love around!  Another man asked me why we were doing it-he said he would love us to be there every day around the same time to give him such a nice treat!  The wetter I was, I think the brighter my smile got out there from all the peoples reactions to us.  It blessed me so much to see that. 

After our biscuits were all gone, I decided that we should have a special dinner.  Since I was on cooking duty, I asked if I could treat the group to something off our menu schedule and went shopping with Josmar.  We made a Nacho Feast-which was more like a Nacho Feat.  Finding black beans and Tortilla Chips was quite a challenge.  I bought up every bag of chips at two different stores (it was only 4 bags...all they had!) and one bag was cheese seasoned which I found strange but the group ate just fine.  Many of the group had never had nachos and didn't know how to make their plates but everyone had such fun and were so excited by the meal!  We laughed and ate and then all felt stuffed to the brim with chip and cheesy goodness!

The girls enjoying the Nacho Feast!
(clockwise) Amy, Michela, Angelica, Andrea, and Julietta



I think David quite enjoyed his Mexi-meal!

So, our little mini-team had a wonderful, eventful, and special day--and everyone who knows me knows I like to end a with a little Tex-Mex.  After we cleaned up the kitchen, we all snuggled into the living room and watched Julie and Julia.  (It was nice to all fit in there!) Baking, a dinner with lots of cheese, and a movie about baking and cheese...ahh!  this was my kind of day!