Monday, March 26, 2012

Elders who Bake!


Sister Otto, the mission nurse, must cringe every Monday when her phone rings.  That is P day for the missionaries, and they often break themselves playing soccer, or other sports.  Two months ago, Elder DeLora (middle) had such a Monday.  Just three weeks ago Elder Carter (right) had the same misfortune. Often missionaries are assigned to the office when they have injuries, so they can mend.  
Elder Frodsham (left) is our travel secretary who documents the missionaries with the Guatemalan
government, arranges their travel with Salt Lake and such things.  He also gets to be the mission organizer, hefting all the heavy office supplies back and forth from the bodega to the office.  
That's a tough assignment when your two companions are both broken, so Elder Fairbourne tries to help. They all do what they have to do without complaining,
 including hiking up the office stairs or the hill from their apartment on crutches.  
They are quite accomplished at hopping around the office on one foot.



Elder Andrade (right) and Elder Becerra (2nd from right) are the current APs (assistants to the mission president).  They spend their days in the office, or helping the president and then teach their investigators in the evening.  One Monday night they had a family home evening planned at a member's home and they had volunteered to bring refreshments for 24 people!  Yikes!  Elder Andrade asked if they could use my kitchen  to make cookies, so I assembled the ingredients and offered suggestions as to technique.  Of course we used high altitude substitutions, which makes the cookies a bit different than 
in Minnesota-not quite as sweet.  They did a very impressive job. 


 Elder Andrade is from El Salvador.  He will be studying to be an anesthesiologist when he returns from his mission.  He had never eaten chocolate chip cookie dough, so we initiated him once the dough was finished.  We made a double batch of dough, which would normally be more than ample for 48 cookies, but every time a pan of cookies was nearly cool, they disappeared.  
We finally scraped enough together for them to take and after they headed to their family home evening, 
we finished baking a couple more pans for Elders Frodsham and DeLora to drop off
at their investigator's home.



Can you tell I'm tired tonight?  I posted this w/o taking the time to make it upright beforehand.  Oh well, Elder Becerra is handsome sideways too.  Notice the tucked-in necktie.  His folks are mission presidents serving in California.  Sr. Becerra....your son can really put away chocolate chip cookies and milk!
He earned all the cookies he ate after being assigned to get new phones for almost 200 missionaries
 just days after helping the president reorganize the mission.
It's such a privilege to see the day-to-day character of these young men and women
and to know they are self disciplined, spiritual, studious and have exceedingly high morals.
It's nice that they are also a lot of fun.
I'd better think about getting my children to send more U.S. baking supplies.....



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