Kurds and Cooking

It is definitely time for another blog. If I don't write one soon, I won't be able to remember everything that has happened. Actually, things are already kind of fuzzy from last week. I actually have no idea what I did Tuesday night. And I thought my memory would get better once I stopped working nights...



So the highlight of lectures last week would have to be Tom Sine coming. He talked about different ways that churches are rethinking what they are focused on and how they interact with the community. He also talked about Christians living more in community (not communes!), for economic, environmental and spiritual reasons. He did some quoting of Shane Claiborne (for anyone who has read The Irresistible Revolution). He also encouraged us to do a lot of brainstorming for ways that we could do things differently after we get out of KBC. In some ways this lecture would have fit more into the third term of our course, but I think it was a good thing to have it now because it got us thinking about how we can practically apply things that we are learning.

Tom was with us on Thursday and then Friday after lectures I drove up to Derby with Daniella, one of the other students who is from Derby. (By the way, Derby is pronounced "Darby", although no one could give a good reason for why they say it that way!) We stayed in the house that Dani had lived in before she came to KBC - and it was amazing! The giant three story house is owned by Adam and Karina who are the pastors of the International Salt and Light Church in Derby (as opposed the regular Salt and Light church in Derby which is much bigger and meets in a regular church building.) Also in the house are Adam and Karina's three kids, a young married couple (the husband is an American!), a girl who is working with the international church, and a young Iranian guy who is doing a discipleship program with the larger Derby church. Actually, those people are just the current permanent residents. There is also a constant flow of missionaries who are home on sebatical or people like us who are just passing through for a night or two. I love how Adam and Karina will just welcome anyone into the house. It is such a homey atmosphere and they don't seem to stress about anything. Billy, the American guy, was telling me that one night a week before there were 18 people in the house - with only one shower because the other one was broken. Incidently, 5 out of the 6 adults in the house are former YWAMers so they know how to live in those types of conditions!

The house is in a highly Middle Eastern neighborhood - specifically a very Kurdish area. I loved watching how all of the people in that house have become a part of that community. The night that we got there, Adam and Karina went with their kids to visit a new family on the street (I think the family was Iranian, but I could be remembering wrong). Adam ended up sitting down with local mosque committee and telling them a parable. Then Saturday night a Muslim Jordanian couple was over the house. It was amazing to see how you can be cross-cultural missionaries without ever leaving the western world!

Here are some highlights of the weekend: On Saturday night we were hanging out in the living room having an impromptu worship service. (We were singing OLD songs from this book in which the titles were written in a type of Arabic - so it was a constant guessing game of name that tune!) Then a missionary couple who were spending the night came home. Food was brought out and port was poured. We were passing around pieces of nan bread (which is a flat bread, almost like pita bread except better and without a pocket), when Adam was like, "Well, we might as well have communion while we're at it!" So we prayed and had communion with the port and nan bread. I loved it! Another highlight was getting to spend time with Tasha, the single girl who lives there. She is a good friend of Dani and also of some other people here at KBC - and she is so great! On Sunday we went out with Tasha and a couple of her friends to Kurdish Kabbob restaurant. If you ever have a chance to eat Kurdish food, jump at it! My goal is now to learn to cook like that. :)

Speaking of cooking, we have community lunch for all of the staff and students every Thursday and today I led the group which did the cooking. That in and of itself is kind of funny because I have spent the last month saying, "I hope that when I'm on community lunch there is someone in the group who really knows what they're doing." Well, I guess that person was me! Our group was generally inexperienced in cooking, although I did recruit my little brother Mike who can cook and was a great help (good job, Mike's mom!) So we made lasagna and this banana cake with chocolate chips for desert. Everything came together and I think people enjoyed it. It was kind of hard to tell myself, because I was too busy to really taste the food I was eating - and I was pretty sick of it after looking at it for so long. The banana cake didn't fully cook in the center, so we tried to just pass out pieces from the outer edge and people didn't seem to mind. We also accidently put in double the amount of salt than there was supposed to be in the cake batter (lack of communication between several cooks). I did have a dream last night that I was explaining to Simon and Gaynor, our principal and his wife, why the cake tasted salty - but thankfully my dream did not come true and you couldn't really notice the extra salt. I was completely exhausted by the time we were done, but it was a good experience and my group was so great!

Ok, gotta take a nap now. I am really looking forward to resting this weekend and hopefully will be able to write about lectures this week. Lots of good stuff to think about!

~ Hannah