TobyMac vs JoFlav

TobyMac has been mass producing sharable instagrammy photos for over a year now.

Sadly, staunch Puritan writer John Flavel only had access to old fashioned "book" media.  But what would happen if Flavel had access to the far superior Instagram methods of today? 

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Thomas and the motorcycle

When I was a single missionary teacher in Peru, I was invited to free outdoor salsa classes by some fellow missionary teacher girlfriends. Afterward, we would go to a salsa club where we could practice salsa moves. We did not drink and moved in a group so that we would be protected from any creeposos in the midst. At the dance lesson there were a few guys who invited themselves to tag along with us. One of the guys, a half Peruvian half American, had an older brother (who we shall call Thomas) who he had invited to come along. Thomas had recently gone through a break up and was at home sulking. Why not bring him along to meet a whole group of single girls eager to dance salsa?
It ended up being a bad move. I left the salsa club early and remember seeing Thomas not dancing but rather drowning himself in pity and beer, boring two of my gringa friends with tales of his one lost love. The one good thing about it was that we were able to encourage Thomas, a lapsed Christian, to go back to church.

(Side note: when Wilmer and I were watching True Lies we found that Thomas looked just like the villain in the movie. The upcoming photos of Thomas are quite similar to what he looks like in real life).

Maybe a year later, when I was a newly married in Peru, my husband often would be contracted by missionaries to travel down to a very small town outside of Chincha to work on a church building. I sometimes traveled down there with him on weekends because I got bored going home to an empty apartment every night. Once when I went I found a short-term missions team was there to love on* the local disheveled street urchins**.

When I sat down to meet the group, I realized I knew the newly hired translator. It was Thomas.

 He apparently had shaped up since then and got involved in a church.
Our eyes met.Me: Hi, how have you been?

Thomas: Uh, you look kind of familiar, I think we've met somewhere, maybe at church, yeah it had to have been church.

Me: uh, yeah, I do know you from somewhere (not wanting to embarrass him I didn't spell out the shameful truth of his beer drinking pity party days for him).

Throughout the week the street urchins** realized that of all the short term team, Thomas was the most immature of the bunch. While female street urchins usually show their domination of affluent Americans on short term missions by using them as free transport by getting them to carry them as much as possible throughout the day, Male street urchins often prey on the weakest American. Once the weakest American is identified, a group of male street urchins will poke him, take objects from his person, and call him naughty words to try and get him to explode in frustration. The street urchins immediately identified Thomas as the weakest American on the team.

I would often hear Thomas' voice reach a girlish shreak as he would yell in Spanish "That's the last time I am gonna say it! Give me back my hat!"  They urchins squealed in delight every time he they got a response out of poor Thomas.

Later that day, as Wilmer was working on the church facade and I was hanging out with the Short Term Team, watching them love on* the children. One of the older children was cruising back and forth down the street of the small town on a motorcycle.

The poor, dirty-faced urchin on the motorcycle: Hey Thomas! Bet you can't ride one of these things!

Thomas: You bet I can!

Poor, dirty-faced urchin gets off the motorcycle: Oh yeah? Show me then!

Thomas then proceeded to get on the motorcycle. 

He revved the engine a few times and looked in the general direction of some cute, short-term mission high school girls. All eyes were on him. Wilmer peeked around from his work to see what was happening, I observed in amusement, a female street urchin smiling excitedly in my lap. The townspeople peeked out of their worn shacks*** to see the scene. Thomas looked forward and took off. This was his moment to shine. He took off and enjoyed feeling his curly locks of hair flying in the breeze. He was showing those street urchins who was boss. He went faster and fasted till suddenly, he realized he had reached the end of the street and needed to make a turn. But it was too late. 

The motorcycle slipped from under him and he flew into the plywood walls of one of the worn shacks***. The motorcycle, plywood wall, and Thomas were all sprawled out on the ground. The male street urchins were delighted. Their experiment had gone surprisingly well. 

*"love on" (verb) : how white affluent Americans often satisfy their emotional needs by giving their time and cheap prizes to lower class children of a different race than their own.

**"street urchins" (noun) : bored children in communities who often  enjoy observing white affluent Americans and partaking of their cheap prizes.

***"worn shacks" (noun) : homes of the parents of street urchins.

Favorite Online Recipes

I often use the page food blog, but when I want to make something not listed, I resort to the internet. Here are my favorite online recipes! Any that you would add?

Salty

Lasagna (I also do the Peruvian thing and add a few layers of deli ham)

Cordon Bleu (Mostly I just use milk and normal cheese but one time I actually did purchase the expensive/fattening ingredients and it was so good that I tried to steal some of Wilmer's when he wasn't looking)

Pot Pie (a recipe for delicious pot pie innards)

Pie Crust (I mess up sometimes with other pie crusts. This one has been faithful to me)

Bacon + Cheddar + Chicken (all that with a teriyaki sauce)

Oven Broccoli (I boil the broccoli it just a minute or two before zapping it in the oven so that it is both soft and crispy)

Fresh Green Beans (I used to like canned best but these fresh ones won me over)

Homemade Mayo (it is so much better than store bought but many people just don't get how to do it right. Make sure you add the oil in the thinnest stream you can with the blender already on high. Also make sure that you cover the blender as best you can while you pour or blots of mayo will end up all over your face and hands. Maybe poke a hole in the aluminum foil to make a makeshift lid with a small hole for pouring? I like to add a little bit of milk to thin it out when it is all done.)

Juicy Chicken (found this one thanks to Bethany. Now I feel like I can prepare a Christmas dinner with little work involved)

Peruvian Beef Stir French Fry (actually called Lomo Saltado. Wilmer is better at making this than me so I just usually chop up and he fries. What we usually make is pretty close to this recipe, but we don't add oyster sauce or whatever that is. We don't add aji amarillo but instead chop up a spicy red rocoto pepper, bath it in lime and salt, and add as much as we can handle to our individual plates).

ethnic/weird

Wilmer has eaten all of these and approved all of them (though he wasn't a huge fan of the thai pesto)

A Very Good Curry (quite authentic - maybe add less cayenne if spicy is too much for you)

Thai Pesto (so easy! Good with roasted bell peppers and chicken on noodles, also good on buttered toast)

Fish Tacos (First had these in San Diego. The white jalapeno sauce they have you make is my favorite part of this recipe. Also I really do buy a cheap can of beer to make it...without beer the fish batter isn't that great)

Peruvian 3 leches Hot Chocolate (Great because of the clove and cinnamon spices. I would avoid adding a whole can of sweetened condensed milk OR add more milk afterward so that the sweetness doesn't take over).

Sweet

Banana Bread (The crust has the best taste. I replaced part of the banana with chopped apple once and it was also really good. A nice flexible recipe)

Carmely Pie Filling (The extra step of creating syrup beforehand is worth it). 

Ice Cream with or without an ice cream maker (I made this many times in the summer months WITHOUT an ice cream maker. I just pulled it out of the freezer every thirty minutes to mix it up with a spatula till it became light and fluffy. I would love to get my hands on a vanilla bean but ended up using vanilla extract)

overseas 

some recipes are destroyed by humidity, unavailable ingredients, etc. These recipes were less picky.

Hot Fudge (good for when chocolate chips are so hard to come by)

Chocolate Chip Cookies (the only version that works for me with the ingredients I have)

Roll dough for cinnamon rolls (Other recipes didn't work in Peru. My first version of these failed despite all the positive reviews...then I followed mom's bread-making advice and eyed the flour rather than adding flour measurements and made the only cinnamon rolls that I have made successfully in Peru. Her frosting was too much, though I liked the coffee maple flavor).

Teriaki Sauce (You can't come by that cheaply overseas)

Aldi's brownies (the only recipe that compares to the prize winning box version)

Peruvian Fruit Beverage Recipes

Peruvians have developed ways to not let anything go to waste in their cooking. Here are some fun fruity options my husband taught me about...

Pineapple Skin Juice

1. Cut up whatever you didn't eat from a pineapple (in my case I didn't eat the whole thing because it was a juicing pineapple - no sweet flavor so not fun to eat all by itself)

2. Boil it with a bit of ginger or cloves or cinnamon, depending on what you like.

3. Use a strainer to separate the rinds from the juice.
4. Add sugar as needed.

5. Enjoy it hot, room temperature, or cool it down in the fridge.

Orange Skin Cider

*said that this helps with digestion and weight loss*

1. Take just the skins off the oranges. 

2. Boil them with a bit of cloves and cinnamon and remove the orange skins just after 5 minutes of boiling (if you let the skins set an overpowering bitter flavor will develop). 

3. Add sugar as needed

4. Enjoy it hot. 

Life's disposable animal

Above is pictured a mouse that I murdered with poison. I wanted an old fashioned trap as it seemed more humane, but couldn't find one anywhere.

The mouses mate (not pictured above) was wiser and became immune to the poison. But in the end the second mouse didn't get the cheese either, instead he got Wilmer's tennis shoe crushing down on his head. It squirmed there for a while till its death. I felt no pity. No one shall feel pity on our... horrifying planet.

Pick up Line of the Week

I decided to go out and buy what I needed to make supper in one of the stores on my street. A fancy car filled with young boys stopped in front of me and one asked, "Hey Gringasha! Do you know where La Parroquia (street corner) is???"

I shook my head no and hid my smile.

Gringasha is the true love of a young psycopath Gringasho who escaped prison to meet her. Their names are such because both are light skinned and light eyed Peruvians. After the capture of Gringasho, Gringasha let herself become a risque, Madonna-like celebrity here in Peru.

Mostly normal

My good friend Cynthia makes you think she is a normal, steady person. And then she surprises you with her out of the box weirdness. She made juice and needed the extra jug space.

What to do with old bus tickets

A small quick flower drawing I created using old bus tickets and a little bit of paint and pens. It was a going away present for my ex roommate Amanda. Here is a picture of the roomies when we met 5 years ago combined with one of us we took just recently.

Mere Christianity Illustrations: Faith

"Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason ’has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

"The first step is to recognise the fact that your moods change. The next is to make sure that, if you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious reading and church-going are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?"

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, "Faith"

Mere Christianity Illustrations: Hope

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. if I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, "Hope"

Crazy Dog Lady

Our landlady lives right beneath us and thinks of all dogs as her children. So I was not in the least surprised to open the door and see this sick stray tucked away in the corner of the garage.

Mere Christianity Illustrations: Let's Pretend

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

I made this one for you! Thank you for teaching us to pretend in the right ways! Can you recognize the characters?

"There are two kinds of pretending. There is a bad kind, where the pretence is there instead of the real thing; as when a man pretends he is going to help you instead of really helping you. But there is also a good kind, where the pretence leads up to the real thing. When you are not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we have all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. That is why children’s games are so important. They are always pretending to be grownups—playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time, they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits so that the pretence of being grown-up helps them to grow up in earnest."

C.S. Lewis,"Let's Pretend"

Rooftop View and the Parable of the lost coin

Horizontal and Vertical

I didn't make the artwork to illustrate this quote but as it turns out the quote illustrated ended up perfectly illustrating what I was trying to say. 

"The very essence of the new covenant is that Christ passes over the sins of his bride. His bride is free from shame not because she is perfect, but because she has no fear that her lover will condemn her or shame her because of her sin.

This is why the doctrine of justification by grace through faith is at the very heart of what makes marriage work the way God designed it. Justification creates peace with God vertically, in spite of our sin. And when experienced horizontally, it creates shame-free space between an imperfect man and an imperfect woman."

- John Piper

Peruvian Produce Mandala

This painting was inspired by my first month of married life when my cooking skills were forcibly rekindled and the house was overrun with summer flies. Pictured is produce most commonly found in the markets of Peru. Can you spot the fly I killed and drew into the still life?

Mere Christianity Illustrations "Charity"

"The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.'

[...]

"Some writers use the word charity to describe not only Christian love between human beings, but also God's love for man and man's love for God. About the second of these two, people are often worried. They are told they ought to love God. They cannot find any such feeling in themselves. What are they to do? Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, 'If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?' When you have found the answer, go and do it."

C.S. Lewis, "Charity"

Mere Christianity Illustrations "Forgiveness"

"[...W]e might try to understand exactly what loving your neighbor as yourself means. I have to love him as I love myself. Well, how exactly do I love myself?'

"Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently 'Love your neighbor' does not mean 'feel fond of him' or 'find him attractive'. I ought to have seen that before, because, of course, you cannot feel fond of a person by trying. Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either."

C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, Forgiveness)

Mere Christianity Illustrations "The Great Sin"

Wilmer and I have been reading "Mere Christianity" recently as I have both an English and Spanish copy of the book. I have been attempting to illustrate a few chapters as a personal challenge. This illustration was inspired by some sunflowers and rubble I saw in Chincha, Peru.

"Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good—above all, that we are better than someone else—I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.'
[...]
'"We must not think Pride is something God forbids because He is offended at it, or that Humility is something He demands as due to His own dignity—as if God Himself was proud. He is not in the least worried about His dignity. The point is, He wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble—delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life."

C.S. Lewis, "The Great Sin"

Train Games

I take the train to get many places now that I live much more south of the city. Here I am waiting for the train on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Few people were in the station to witness it. 

My other new nieces and nephews...

Here are my other new nieces and nephews... there are six other ones besides the two that my intermediate family have provided.

The cute girl on the left is Andrea and the boy on the right is Enson. Andrea is a sweetheart and Enson is kind of like the gopher of the family (Wilmer and his siblings are always telling him to go pick them up something from the store and he never has anything better to do than to assist and maybe get a tip for the work).

Pictured below is their older brother and his name is...

uh....er....I don't remember his name... though I love the creeper eyebrows and slouched back curving into me as he posed in my wedding picture.

This other nephew has a name that I don't remember either. I went to his birthday party and noticed he had a very gentle character...his mother forced him to dance with every girl in the room and he did it without complaining though it was obviously very awkward for him.

This is the oldest of the nephews I think. His glare says, "you are a horrible, horrible aunt for not knowing our names yet..."

And finally, here is a photo of one of my favorite girls...Kaley...she is way too cool for her age (which is like 10 months I think).