Cooking lessons

One of my favorite things about visiting other countries is seeing how other people worship, especially other Christian believers lifting up the name of the Lord in different languages. We've recently gotten the chance to do that, during morning devotions as well as Sunday chapel. Even when things are said in English, Laurel and I have a hard time understanding what's being said due to the heavy Indian accent!

Yesterday we got a rare moment in time with two ladies who cook for the campus. Mrs. M and (I can't remember the name of the other lady) cook delicious meals in mass quantities and put them in Indian lunchboxes called tiffins. We get four rounded metal containers with rice, chapati, daal, and some veggie or meat in heavier sauce delivered to the guesthouse dining room table 2 times a day. Well, we were curious to find out where the food was coming from, so we sauntered over to the kitchen building in the afternoon. The other lady (not Mrs M) was preparing chapatis, which was tortilla-like flatbread, by rolling out dough and cooking it on a large flat pan, flipping them twice before throwing them on a large basket on the floor. They make these daily for everyone on campus. Wow. Well, they both seemed surprised that we were in the kitchen with them. They figured that we were there because the power outage kept us from watching TV! Mrs. M made chai tea for us and then told us about her family--her newborn grandson, her daughter who is a nurse, and her son who is studying abroad. Her English was limited but we could still communicate quite a bit! Laurel and I sat on the floor while Mrs. M and the other cook chopped up vegetables, and we learned the Marati words for the veggies--aloo for potato, gobi for cauliflower, dorkeh for zucchini...and so on. Mrs. M then brought out a praise songbook which had both Marati and English, so we sang familiar praise songs together--she in Marati, we in English. When the power came back on, Mrs. M said, "you watch TV now?" She didn't realize that spending an hour with her was far more entertaining than any TV show! Maybe by the time we leave, they'll be kind enough to give us some cooking lessons!