A New Way to Enter a New Year

January 1, 2008

As I expected I was up very late last night and did not sleep in too late this morning so sleep is still on my agenda. The New Year's Eve Service and youth program were both good. We entered the new year in prayer and after a group prayer for family and Honduras the pastor called all "extranjeros" or citizens from other countries to the stage. I was hoping that I had misunderstood him because I really did not want to go up front but no, someone kindly nudged me to the front. At least I was not alone because there were people from Guatemala, Puerto Rico and other Latin countries. The pastor then prayed for each of us and our countries. It was a neat time.

This afternoon my friend Lourdes and I hiked up to the large Coca Cola sign on one of the mountains outside of the city. It was a nice walk up to the top and once there we discovered that we were the only ones there, though usually the picnic area is filled with people and trash. (Nearly everything in the city is closed down today and the lack of cars on the roads was wonderful). We enjoyed some tranquil moments and I was able to pull out my journal and Bible. It did not quite meet the need of being by water, but it was good and the Lord had some words for me there. After this hike Lourdes showed me the other safe place that she goes to in the city for quiet moments. Ironically it is the cemetary. The cemetary really was quite pretty since it is set up against the mountains and the grass was covered with flowers (though most were fake ones it provided lots of color). And so I spent part of the first day of the new year in a graveyard. I think that I will go back there to rest -- not permanently of course, but during those moments when I need to escape the city and cannot make it out to camp. As it is I look forward to returning to camp tomorrow morning and getting refocused. I need to be there again to remember the work I am doing. I have had too much time away from that place.

Random story from a few days ago. I have discovered two things about cooking. First of all, it is hard to cook in someone else's house because you never know if they will have all of the ingredients that you need. Over the weekend I was making a pie crust at the old house where I was house-sitting last month and when I added the vinegar to the dry ingredients, I suddenly realized that it did not smell like the kind of vinegar that I needed. It smelled like something for vegetables and indeed it said that it was a condiment. So I proceeded to scoop out the saturated part of the dough and throw it out and then waited until I got to the next house to finish up the crust.

For the most part the crust turned out okay though it would not win any awards. But the second lesson in cooking, do not bake when tired and think before you add ingredients. I was baking a apple pie because I needed to use up some apples. The first step was coating the apples with cinnamon and sugar -- certainly not hard. A 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/4 cup of cinnamon -- or so I thought. Even as I poured out the cinnamon I thought that it seemed like a lot. I never put that much cinnamon in anything in comparison with the amount of sugar added. But oh well, I dumped it in. Only after dumping the cinnamon did I take a second glance at the recipe -- 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. Oops!! I scooped out as much cinnamon as I could but needless to say there was still cinnamon in abundance. Somehow the pie still turned out and is more than edible though it has a strong cinnamon flavor. On that note I think that I should head to bed so that I do not have any further cooking catastrophes in the days to come.