Tamalitos with the Neighbors

We had a great corn harvest from our backyard this year and decided to try making tamalitos.  Matt's become really good at growing corn, but then again, he always was a bit corny!

I had never made tamalitos and asked my neighbor, Noya, if she would teach me how.  So she invited me into her kitchen to learn.  Tamalitos are only made with new fresh corn that still has some "milk" in the kernels.  It's a simple food of ground corn and a little sugar.

Noya and her husband, Alexander (above) and I had a little corn shucking party on their front porch.

The corn is not shucked in the usual way of simply pulling off the tulsa, or husks, but rather by first cutting around the base to preserve the "tulsa" for wrapping up the tamalito.

Here's our bucket of "tulsa" ready.

Noya was so fast as she cut the corn off the cob.

We had to go across town (~4 blocks) for our next step to grind the corn. The woman in the blue shirt has a little home business of running a big electric grinder.  She charged me 50 cents, which is the normal rate.

The grains of corn were passed through twice to be extra fine for making tamalitos.

Back in Noya's kitchen, we put a little sugar into the ground corn and then put a spoonful of the mixture into the "tulsa."  Noya made it look way easier than it really was.

Basically, each tulsa gets a big spoonful of very liquidy corn glop.  The big trick was keeping the corn glop in the tulsa as I rolled the edges around the glop and then turn up the end.  Trust me, it takes practice... or maybe being born Honduran.  :)

After each tulsa is filled, rolled and closed off on one end, it's put in a pot.  This is another skill that's very easy to take for granted as they have to be placed together just so in order that they don't fall over in the pot.

Here's our full pot almost ready to be put on the fire.

Here you can see the pot with the wood fire behind it.

The final step before cooking was putting a few more pieces of "tulsa" over all the tamalitos and then carefully pouring in about an inch or two of hot water so as to steam the rolls.  After the lid was on the top of the pot, we wait.  The tamalitos cooked for about 45 minutes, until they were firm.

Here's a picture of a cooked tamalito (right) alongside a tamale (left). (Tamales are made with corn, too, but a completely different recipe.)  Often our Honduran friends will make a meal of just tamalitos. While we do well to eat one or two because they are so filling, our friends will eat four, five, six or more in one sitting!

A week later, Matt and I decided to try and make them ourselves.  Halfway through, we had Noya come over to check on us.  She was excited to see "her students" practicing their new skill set!

¡Buen provecho!  (Enjoy your meal!)

Missions is Kids Play

We've received a lot of great comments and questions from our August monthly email newsletter and because of the interest in our trip to the orphanage we decided to expand on the trip with a blogpost.  There will be a little redundancy to the newsletter, but also a little more info and more photos.

2013 Maryland Team

We joined a team of 34 to serve at Orphanage Emmanuel in Guaimaca , Honduras for 10 days  This is the same orphanage we lead several teams to before becoming full-time missionaries.  You might not think that orphanage work goes in line with community development, but we firmly believe that the best way to reach a community, or change a country, is through reaching the children.  So, whether they are youths in the community or orphans at an institution, we desire to show the love of Jesus and share the truth of God’s Word.  Maybe this is how we can best put into practice today Jesus’ words to, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Mt 19:14-15

Our first team was 2007 and only consisted of 10 folks including the 4 Zells

We started short term mission trips to Honduras in 1996 with Dr. Sam Maldonado, a dear friend and co-worker from my previous life at the FDA, and ten years later we started leading our own teams to Orphanage Emmanuel in 2007.

2009 trip, Zell family with orphanage church in background

The team that we started taking to orphanage Emmanuel was taken over by a couple, Dan and Joanne Andrews, who had been part of our last team.  They had a team scheduled for this year and invited us to join their team and help out with translating.

Balloon wars are always a blast!!
We had several during the trip.

Orphanage Emmanuel is home to about 600 kids ranging from just delivered and still in diapers up to young people in their early twenties about to head out on their own, and the orphanage has been operating now for 22 years.
 

This is Friday morning "Big Circle" where all the kids
gather for praise, prayer and a teaching.

In our normal use of the term orphan we think of children whose parents have died.  At Emmanuel that strict definition would apply to about 10% of the children and the other fall into a wider category of children without parents to care for them.  These are children whose parents are living but may have abandoned them on the street for lack of funds to care for them,  or maybe their mother has taken a new boyfriend/husband and he does not want to support the children from another man, or in the worst cases they may have been the victims of abuse in their home.  Whatever the case, the Lord has brought them to a place where they are well provided for and get to hear about Jesus often.

The "Small Boys House", made up of about 30 little boys,
recited an entire chapter from the book of Isaiah for Big Circle.

Here's a couple of those future Bible scholars close-up. 

Small boy's circle.  They are a riot!

Monday through Thursday each house has it's own small circle for praise, prayer and teaching.  I was able to give the teaching a couple times at the small boy's house in Spanish and without a translator!  It's so fun to talk to these little guys about living for Jesus!

One of the projects was to put the team's native English
speaking skills to work teaching English.

While we were at the orphanage the team had prepared and brought materials for several projects.  Several folks measured all the kids for clothing sizes to go on the Christmas list, a couple of folks gave hair cuts to hundreds of kids, they brought lots of crafts to do with the kids, they had materials for decorations and cooked an Hawaiian dinner to bless the staff, several folks helped at the school in the English classes, people shared at the morning prayer and worship circles, and many of the men shed pounds in sweat digging a 160' trench for a sewage line for a newly constructed house.

Power Toddlers getting a little custom hair styling attention;
If that's possible using just one cutting tip.
Ellen's brother, Matt Jones, is the one wearing the hat.

There were probably many other things done, including being with the kids in their respective yards playing soccer or making balloons and the like, but that's a good list to let you know what kept us busy for 10 days.

Field day planning.  In the center looking straight at the camera is Dan Andrews
 who is the current team leader with his wife, Joanne.

One of the biggest single events, that we did with four different groups, was a Field Day followed by a hot dog meal.  There were seven different stations including face painting, water guns, sack races...

We wanted to make sure that all the kids had fun!

Ok, I'm a big kid too!

"Gee, I'm pretty thirsty" has never come to my mind looking at a plunger.
Honest, the game was just to move the water with the plunger and not to drink it!!

The Hawaiian dinner for the staff was another major team activity.  This was a real blessing to the staff, the food was delicious, the tables were decorated very nicely, and child care was provided.  Ellen served as hostess while I was a waiter.

Ellen and her brother, Matt Jones, before the guest arrived.

Teens on the team going Hawaiian.

One of the ways that the orphanage is supported is by sponsoring a child.  It's been a joy and a privilege for Ellen and I to sponsor Ruth since our first year to the orphanage.  She is growing into a wonderful Christian young lady.

Playing "Qwirkle" with Ruth at the ice cream shack.

Our first year with Ruth in 2007!

Ruth and Matt 2008

We do have a couple other pictures we could post, like 900+, but I'll have to keep it short do to our internet limit.

We're looking to go back in September to share with some of the staff about heat retention cooking!

Blessings!!  Matt

No Water in Humuya

We live in a pueblo or maybe it's more of a  'pueblocito' which is little town.  One of the most amazing things is that in our little town is that we have electricity and water pretty much every day.  The electricity goes out occasionally but is normally restored pretty quickly, and the water is shut down about once a month to clean the tank but otherwise we have water every day.

Our water is not potable, that is, it's not drinking water, but it's fine for washing clothes, doing dishes, taking a shower and watering plants.  This is because the water is piped directly from a river into the community tank that serves the town.  They pipe the water from a long way off, like 4 miles, so that it's coming from a cleaner part of the river.  To do that they run 4 miles of four inch white PVC pipe over ground to the tank.  That's a lot of pipe!

About six days ago someone, or some people, not living in our pueblo decided to take a machete to the pipe and destroyed several sections.  It was a lot of work to fix because they had to walk the pipeline to find the broken sections.  They fixed the first section not knowing there was another area cut until they tried to refill the tank.

In all we had five days without water.  One advantage to such a crisis that the people here have over how we live in the states is that they all have a pila (pronounced 'pee-la') which is a large concrete tank to hold water that is part of their kitchen.  They use this water for cleaning clothes and doing dishes.  So, they have a ready reserve of water at their house that can normally carry them through a short water crisis.  How long will that water last?  It's apparently about four days.

On the fourth day without water the containers of water we keep on hand for just such a time had run out and so we started what turned into many trips down to the river to bring up water for ourselves and several of our neighbors, especially the elderly.

We only took a couple photos and videos of our water delivery.  The people were sooo grateful to get dirty river water that they gave us big hugs and even kisses on our cheeks, and we told each one we were happy to be able to give them water in the name of Jesus Christ.

After fetching and delivering water we were rather beat and when you consider the weight of water, it's actually pretty understandable.  Each gallon of water weighs 8.34 lbs.  We were moving about 32 gallons of water with each trip which is about 267 lbs and we did many trips!  Our muscles are sore, we're sunburned, our knuckles are scraped up from the plastic containers, and we feel great to have loved on our community!  Thanks so much to all of you who make it possible for us to be here! 

"Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”  By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.  John 7:38-39

"He (Jesus) said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.” Rev 21:6