Officially in Mexico

Dad, Fran, and Bethany took me to the airport at 5 o'clock in the morning. When we arrived, I had a wonderful surprise. Zach, Amanda, and Mel were all waiting there to say goodbye before heading home from dropping off the Rafferty family. After a tearful goodbye (on Fran's part not mine), I headed towards security for my full body pat-down and leg x-ray! I enjoyed a delicious pumpkin muffin(baked by Janelle) while on the first leg of my journey. All of my flights went smoothly yesterday, and I arrived in El Paso at 11:50am. I waited at baggage claim to meet up with the Rafferty family and begin our ride into Mexico.

We made a few stops in El Paso and had to get a tire repaired as well. We crossed the first border where I applied for my 6 month visa (no, I am not actually staying for 6 months). I got my first taste of Spanish from a native Mexican, and was surprised at how much I understood! I was still glad that Lisa was there with me to help me out. The military check points were a bit intimidating. Men dressed in camouflage with machine guns across their backs made me feel a bit uneasy.

For the first few hours of my time in Mexico, all I saw was dessert land filled with dirt, yucca plants, and mountains in the distance. The sunset over the Rocky Mountains was gorgeous. I enjoyed the car ride, getting to know the Rafferty's better; their likes (asian food) and dislikes (mayo). They also taught me a lot about the culture of Mexico.

Today they took me to the church and gave me a tour. There was then a women's ministry meeting at the church where I got the meet the missionary women as well as some of the women of the church. Everyone is so welcoming, as well as understanding of my uncomfortableness and weak knowledge of the language. Rocio and Fatima took me to the local supermarket, which has a food court, for lunch.... green chili chicken enchilladas---delicious! They then took me back to their house where I will be staying for the next few months. I am now unpacked at ready to begin my Mexico missionary adventure.  I am sure I can only imagine what the Lord has in store for me!

Lasts

Worshiping on Sunday at Open Bible was just like any other Sunday there...announcements, worship, sermon, special music, etc. Yet the whole time I could not help but think about how I do not have many Sundays left here. As amazing as I am sure it will be in Mexico, I know I am going to miss everyone at Open Bible so much the next few months. It was my last time to share in the Lord's Supper with my church family until New Year's Eve. Sundays will be very different. I will not be greeted by people I have known nearly my whole life. Faces that I look forward to seeing week after week after week. I truly treasure my church family, but I know that Mexico holds new faces for me to meet and learn from.

17 days and counting!!!!

Booking my flight today. This cannot really be happening?!?!?!


I am going to work with a missions group in Chihuahua, Mexico for 3 months. This group felt called to bring God’s love to this region of Mexico 4 years ago, to a population of Indians who have no word for “love” in their own language. The common occupation for the women and children is begging on street corners to feed their families because the men are not present in the homes to provide. There is also strong racist resentment from the Mexicans and these native Indians. The missionaries started a church to reach out to both groups and help bridge the gap between the Mexicans and Indians. The church, Capilla Calvario, ministers to the people through a worship service on Sundays, a children’s ministry two days a week, women’s and men’s Bible study, and a cafe which is open normal business hours throughout the week. The missionaries did not expect to see any adult come to know Christ is less than 10 years, but God saw fit to bring 3 men to Christ within the first 4 years. I am so excited to go down to this community and see, first hand, the amazing things God is doing to bring His light into this once dark city. 

This world needs Jesus, and God calls us to go out and be disciples to the nations of the world (Mark 16:15 ). Yes, there are ways to share God’s love in the United States, but at this time, God is calling me to minister to the Tahamurara Indians of Mexico. I have been trying to make my own community my missions field, just as we all should. I have served in soup kitchens, nursing homes, shelters, and assisted with various church activities/groups. It is so neat to see how God can use you on an everyday basis if you are open and willing. Now, it’s time to take things I have learned here to a new longitude and latitude. 

I covet your prayers and emotional support during my time in Mexico. Keep checking in here for more updates!!!

Heavenly Aromas

I have decided that heaven will smell of freshly baked bread. Wouldn't it be just delightful. I personally get pretty sick of smelling cookies, cakes, pies, and the like when it is all I smell for weeks, but bread has a light smell that is...well...the only word that I can think of to describe bread baking in the oven is... heavenly! So how and where did my infatuation with bread start? Well, doesn't everyone love bread!?!?!? One of the first things they tell you in Weight Watchers is to beware of bread... the basket of dinner rolls at fine restaurants can destroy a diet. They know that bread is one of those foods that everyone likes. It comes is such variety too...rye, potatoe, wheat, French, Italian, the lists goes on and on.


I was at Williams-Sonoma at Towson Town and ran into a friend of Fran's. I was introduced to him and we got on the topic of baking. He said that anyone who aspires to be a great baker needs to learn the art of bread baking. He recommended The Bread Bible. I have never dabbled in bread baking, but thought it may be something new and fun to try out. My sister-in-law, Amanda, has been learning to bake bread from my grandmother and her mother. She has had some difficulties which caused me some hesitation, but I decided to go for it. The lady I work for loves to cook and bake. I found that she owned a copy of The Bread Bible. I asked to borrow her copy and she complied adding her commendations as well. That is what brought me to where I am today... enjoying the rich aroma of fresh baked Buttermilk Honey Bread.

“Bread is the king of the table and all else is merely the court that surrounds the king. The countries are the soup, the meat, the vegetables, the salad but bread is king.”

~Louis Bromfield, American novelist ~

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“If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.”

~Robert Browning (1812-1889) English poet~

Hmmm....

Boy am I aweful at keeping up with a blog. I really need to get on and at least post pictures more often. I have been pretty busy with school work. Being junior is a lot of work. Anyway...enough excuses!

I learned something neat in my law class the other day. My ears perked right up when I heard the professor say "tort". He was not talking about the tort I was familiar with, though. Tort law is,
"A body of rights, obligations, and remedies that is applied by courts in civil proceedings to provide relief for persons who have suffered harm from the wrongful acts of others. The person who sustains injury or suffers pecuniary damage as the result of tortious conduct is known as the plaintiff, and the person who is responsible for inflicting the injury and incurs iability for the damage is known as the defendant or tortfeasor."
Quite a mouthful. My easy way of describing it and remembering it for tests is, " A civil wrong that interferes with one's property or person. e.g. tort of trespass, battery, assult, false imprisonment..." Kinda neat, isn't it.

As for my baking, I have had a few cake orders. Here are the pictures:

The cupcakes were for Mothering Mommies LLC. (Amanda's mom's business). October 9th is National Pro-life Cupcake Day. I bet you did not even know that day existed! The idea behind it is,

"Cupcakes were designed with birthdays in mind.However, not everyone has been allowed to be born.In fact one in three children will never celebrate their first birthday due to abortion. We simply don't think it's fair that so many children don't ever get to have a birthday party. So we thought that we would schedule a day to remember the children, who never get to blow out the candles, unwrap their gifts and eat some cake."

Here are some other exciting things that have happened over the past couple of months.

Anne Elise Correlli was born....

Pappy now has 4 lovely granddaughters. Only two can fit in his arms at a time, though. I'm sure he wishes he had more arms to hold them all :) ....

Summer......Annie................Kiera........................Molly....

CrossCurrent's Harvest Party was held at our house. I dressed up as a girl from the 1940's...

Dad and Luke celebrated their birthdays. I got a little lazy and just made giant chocolate chip cookies... nothing very fancy....

I also celebrated my 20th birthday. Fran made me a coconut cake (my favorite kind) and Ethan decorated a cake for me as well...

Sorry, nothing too terribly exciting has happened. Maybe I will get back on here soon and post some stories of the cakes. My aim for this post was just to get the pictures on here. Hope you all enjoy.

"The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.”
Edward Young quotes

Happy Easter

Welcome, Spring!!!!!

So why haven't I been blogging? Well there are two reasons: too busy and a feeling of inadequacy. I know many of my readers out there (all 5 of you :) are wonderful wives/ mother or soon to be of which I am neither. You have wonderful stories and life lessons learned. I am a simply college girl that loves to bake. How can I make a difference through the blogging world :/ I have been enjoying reading everyone else's blogs that I haven't written any of my own. At first, I had decided that I am not a very good writer and felt so inferior after reading all of yours. I have come to realize, though, that everyone has a story. We each need to share ourselves with others, so that others may benefit as well (even if it is just baking tips :)

Anyway...You all have been asking for a new blog, so here it is. If any of you thought I just must not be doing much baking, you are foolish. I always bake. Baking is a way of life for me, like breathing. Not a day goes by that I do not, at least, think about baking :)

What have I been up to during this dormant time in my blogging life? I have been embarking on all sorts of exciting baking adventures. The first of which was Chocolate Souffles. I have had these Ramekins for a while and never used them. I found this recipe in the newspaper and thought I would try it. Never in my life had I even attempted souffles because I have heard they can be very tempermental. They turned out beautifully. When I served them, I wasn't sure whether you are to use a spoon or fork to eat them. I ended up giving each person a spoon AND a fork :)

My next baking venture was a Maryland cake. Ethan's class has been doing a report on Maryland for the past month (maybe even a little longer). Maryland day, March 25, was coming up (I had not idea such a day even existed) and his teacher wanted to have a small celebration since it would go along with their report. She asked me to make a cake that would resemble the Maryland flag. I was more than happy to oblige ( I always love an excuse to bake:) Here's how it turned out....my hand hurt after piping so much. Ethan told me I was lucky, though. At least, the Maryland flag is one of the easier patterns for our state flags.

We had our family birthday party back in January to celebrate the birthdays for the December/January babies. They requested an ice cream cake. I had never done on before, so I googled to find a recipe. This one turned out pretty well, although, I didn't follow the recipe exactly. I felt that putting regular icing on it would make it way too rich. I used cool whip to cover the outside of the cake and then put some fudge in the center of the top layer. Funny story... I don't have any round cake pans that are the same size so I used one 9 inch tube pan and one 9 inch regular cake pan to make the cakes. Then I used a 10 inch and I don't even remember the other pan size for the ice cream part of the cake. I added the fudge to fill in the hole on the top of the cake and had to cut some of the ice cream part off to make the cake side's even. It looked a little lopsided, but tasted great.

I had been anticipating making these spaghetti cupcakes for April Fool's day. My dad gave me Hello Cupcake for Christmas and I had found this design. I thought it was very clever, so I made them for my Pathfinders....Butter cream icing, strawberry jam, malt balls, and white chocolate shavings.....delicious!

Next up is not a baking project of mine but it's cooking. I found this recipe in a Taste of Home magazine and I just had to try it. It was so simple too. I made salad bowls out of shredded Parmesan cheese and crushed walnuts. I just melted them in a frying pan and then quickly placed them over the bottom of a drinking glass to form to the shape of a bowl.

Finally, one last baking project. Bekah has been asking me for a chocolate cake. I am not really a chocolate cake kinda gal but Bekah is. Since Bekah passed her driving test (1st try), I thought it appropriate to celebrate with a chocolate peanutbutter cake (two of her loves in life :) This cake was dark chocolate with peanutbutter icing on the inside and dark chocolate icing on the outside. Even I like this one....

I have been doing lots of other baking, but none other that is truly noteworthy. Some sugar cookies and other things of that nature.

Something exciting that I must share with you is some recent additions to my baking supplies. A friend of mine entered a raffle to win a basket full of baking supplies. She hates to bake, but entered in hopes of winning it for me (isn't that the sweetest thing ?!?!). I'm sure you have already figured it out, but SHE WON!!! I must say, I have some of the greatest friends in the world. I cannot wait to use the stuff and I'm sure it will generate lots of baked goods to put on this blog. I will be baking things for her for a long time in hopes of "repaying" her. Baked goods to reach China and back wouldn't be adequate, but that is what I am going to attempt. Here are all the wonderful things that were in the basket... (look at those wonderful scrapers and all those lovely sprinkles!!!!!!)

Well, that is my baking adventures so far for 2009, but alas it is only the beginning!

"The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight..." ~M. F. K. Fisher

Christmas Season

Well, I haven't done anything too impressive lately. No beautifully decorated Christmas cookies or intricate birthday cupcakes for Ethan. I stuck with basic chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, and choclate bark in my Christmas baking this year. Somehow I never found time to make anything exciting.

Oh wait....I did make a wedding cake!!!! I wouldn't say it was easy at all, but I enjoyed nearly every minute of it. There was a point when I was nearing the completion of it when I looked at it and just cried. Not because of happiness, though, I just cried. I had been working on it for about 5 hours all ready that day and didn't like how it looked. I was very happy with the end product. It took 3 days to make it. The first day was just baking all the cakes. The second day was leveling all the cakes out and icing them. The third day I stacked all the cakes and then decorated it. The entire cake was about 16 inches high and 12 inches around at the base. It weighed about 50 pounds (this was 30 pounds of sugar and 10 pounds of flour...not kidding). I'm sure any of you who got to enjoy a piece of this cake are now wishing you hadn't...hehe! It was an exciting adventure and I would do again in a heart beat.

One other exciting thing that happened over the Christmas holiday was this BEAUTIFUL 5 quart Kitchen Aide mixer from my Uncle Earl and Aunt Marian.

I have enjoyed using it. You would never believe how much faster it is. In just a few minutes I have a batch of chocolate chip cookies made. My dad gave me Hello Cupcake. This is where I got the idea for Ethan's birthday cupcakes which he took to school. It has lots of other fun ideas that I cannot wait to try! He also gave me a rolling pin that you put cold water inside of. It sounds kinda odd but works like a dream! I have a pie baking in the oven as I write. I received lots of other baking things for Christmas as well. I'll try to post a picture of all of it soon: pie plate, cookie tray, oven mit, baking utensils, cookie jar, etc.

I hope each of you had a wonderful Christmas as well!