We have made some good friends while being here.  There are a few in particular that have been a great encouragement to us!  About once a week, we get to hang out with Hope, Godfrey, Fred & Teresa at their house (which is about a 10 minute walk from us).  Hope is an American married to Godfrey (a Rwandan who does the administration for YWAM).  Fred and Teresa are from Kenya.  Hope, Fred, & Teresa run a ministry out of their home working with prostitutes and their families.  We usually cook a western-ish meal while we hang out: it is fun to hang out with people we don’t work with every day, and to cook and eat some familiar food. A few weeks ago Hope asked if we would be willing to teach some of the ladies a cooking lesson about once a month.  It could be a chance for them to learn a bit, to hang out in a positive environment, and be stretched out of their culture a bit (the food is VERY uniform here; its hard for us to imagine coming from such a multicultural home country).  So, we tried to think of something with cheap ingredients, that would be reasonable for them to cook at home, and fairly simple to teach to a group.  We agreed on a simple stirfry!  Here are some pictures:

Mike demonstrates slicing

chopping meat

Mike supervises slicing

Mike “It doesn’t matter to me how you measure the water for the rice. How do you usually do it?”

They were a little skeptical of the teriyaki sauce. “Where’s the sauce tomate?” (EVERYTHING here is cooked in tomato sauce.)

They got into a discussion about compost, so Mike explained how to start a compost heap. (And helped Teresa start one.)

Explaining how they would cook the vegetables & meat

teaching “stirring” and “frying”

I don’t have any pictures of the finished product: we were too busy serving and eating.  But it was delicious, and some of the ladies even said they were planning to make it for their families.  We’ll see.