Handicapped accessibility questioned

I want to assure the SD&G Fire and Emergency services that all my smoke detectors are in great working order. They have recently been tested under realistic conditions. I was cooking.

After decades of trying, I am now pretty certain that my talents, whatever they are, do not lie in the area of the culinary arts.

This is unfortunate, as the one thing I take great delight in doing is eating. Italian, French, Asian, Southern…well, I have yet to meet a style of cooking that I couldn’t love. And think home made bread, think butter tarts and squares, flaky crusted pies and cakes with exotic names like Black Forest and Rum Baba. All of them lovingly made – by other people.

Actually, I think about food like that all the time. I never think raw broccoli.

I honestly mean well in the kitchen. I have several cook books given to me by friends who have experienced dinner at my house. I have two pots. I have a meat thermometer, just as soon as I remember where I put it four Christmases ago. (Might still be attached to that unfortunate turkey that got left in a 500 degree oven.). I have a single roasting pan, lid missing, and one glass pie plate with something stuck around the edges that resists all known cleansers. I have a knife, but it’s broken.

So, all the essentials. I also keep a quick list right beside the stove with helpful hints such as the phone number for Poison Control and the 800 number for Ask-A-Nurse/Practitioner.

Honestly, things just seem to go wrong when I cook.

Who knew yeast had a life span? You could have anchored a yacht to that particular loaf of bread.

Who knew that you don’t pour an entire mickey of rum into a single Christmas cake just because the batter still appears to be absorbing it?  (You don’t want to know the condition of my guests following dessert.)

And apparently there is considerable difference between four tablespoons of soy sauce and four tablespoons of tabasco sauce. Just ask the people invited for that particular tuna casserole.

Back to the smoke detectors.

I wasn’t actually in the kitchen. Instead I was out on the patio, directly under the open kitchen window learning to use my new barbecue. As it was cool out, with a fairly stiff breeze, all other windows and doors in the house were firmly shut.

I gather, now, that burgers may be slightly over done if there are huge columns of smoke pouring from them, and they have become the size of briquets. The other thing that didn’t register was the wind was blowing all that black smoke from the grill through the open window. It was quite a lot of billowing smoke. 

I finally got all the smoke detectors turned off. However, I’m told the odour of charred beef is going to take somewhat longer to disappear. (We went out for dinner.)

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The pandemic is already stressing out parents of school-aged children beyond what anyone imagined. If parents needed something more to be concerned about, we have something for you. How about bringing back the school closure […]

My wife and I have just returned from a Missions trip to Malawi and Kenya in Africa.

According to statistics that were given to us on the plane as we flew, we were some 9,000 miles away from home, approximately. We discovered just how significant that was when we arrived back home in Canada having to adjust to a seven hour time difference.

However, that adjustment was minor to our having to deal with what we experienced.

I want you to know, I’ve seen television programs that show the poverty and the hungry children, and for most of my life I’ve been exposed to missionaries who have been there. I’ve heard their stories and have seen their slide shows, but I was not prepared for the real thing.

I think what got me the most is how very little most of the people there have, and yet, how very pleasant they are. I ate some of the food that most of them depend on for their survival. Day after day, it’s the same bland diet.

I realize that I have far too many choices, but I am real thankful that I have a better choice than that.

In Kenya, I was privileged to attend a school in the slums where the children get one meal a day, a mixture of beans, corn and rice if it is available. However, because of cutbacks of support from Canada, that meal is now only served on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. As far as can be known, these children have little or nothing to eat on Thursdays, Friday, Saturdays and Sundays.

I have to tell you, I wept when I heard that.

These kids, by the way, are as smart as any of our children. They are getting a good education, and good Biblical foundation as well. These children are the hope for the future of their countries.

Out of the worst possible conditions, God is raising up young people whose lives are being changed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In Malawi, I was privileged to work in a community that has been built, and funded still, by Canadians. There are 66 orphans being cared for there by women who have lost their husbands to death, one way or another.

James 1:27 says, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father, is this, to care for widows and orphans in their trouble.”

This is the model that the “Village of Hope” is built on.

I, along with four other men from Canada, and Stephen from Malawi, prepared another home to be occupied, in the near future, by more children and another widow. I can tell you, it was difficult to work in 39 and 40 degree heat, but it was one of the most rewarding things I have ever been involved in.

I want to finish this today with a heartfelt ‘Thank you’ to all who made it possible for us to go there, and for the financial support we received that enabled us to provide school supplies, paint and money to furnish this new house so that the orphans, who otherwise would have no hope, can now be cared for, loved and educated and, I believe, make a difference in Malawi.

Malawi is called “The Warm Heart of Africa” and without a doubt that is true. But they need Help. The kind of help many of you gave to me to take to them. I can tell you, God knows who you are and He will bless you.

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