“Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,” Acts 2:46
Since we will be meeting with families for tea/coffee every day this week, it is important that we prepare to be good hosts. In the early church, as well as Czech Republic and USA today, hospitality typically involves food. While we have stocked up on store-bought items, having something homemade is a hospitality staple. While we are well-versed in baking at home, here, there are some unique challenges.
Today, I made my first bublinina (Czech sponge cake with fruit) in the Czech Republic. I have made this more than once in the United States and have always had to do recipe conversions to use American ingredients and measurements. It is fun that this time, I got to use my recipe exactly as written in Czech. As an added bonus, I used fresh blueberries from the garden (yum). To see how to make bublinina at your house, you can visit my cooking channel by clicking here.
Anna’s specialty is baking American cookies. They are a favorite at home, and never last for long. She hopes to make white chocolate chip cookies, and espresso cookies (sorry, no recipes for these). Unfortunately, some of the key ingredients are different (all-purpose flour and salt both have slightly different textures), and some cannot be found altogether (chocolate chips, vanilla extract, and brown sugar). Making these home favorites will require a different strategy.
Armed with knowledge gained from Tiffany Short (a full-time Czech Missionary that Family Bible Church supports), we already knew of substitutions for brown sugar and chocolate chips. My cooking channel and a quick internet search provided solutions for vanilla sugar. Making these will be an adventure, but Anna is looking forward to the challenge.
We hope to continue the long tradition of sharing food with other believers in our “home” this week. And while we won’t be breaking bread together in the literal sense, we (hopefully) will be breaking fresh cookies and cake. We are praying that this combo of Czech and American baked treats will help express the sincere gladness in our hearts as we meet together with our Czech church family.
Prayer Requests:
- Successful and encouraging meetings with our Czech ministry partners, and friends.
- Health for the Sandys in the Czech Republic, and the rest of the team as they prepare for travel to the Czech Republic
- That Doug has no more painful flare ups and that he is able to successfully pass his kidney stone
- Success for the evangelical camp in Ukraine this week
- Remaining details for Czech English camp as we work together with the Czech team.
- That Christ would be glorified in and through the partnership between Family Bible Church and Církve bratrské v Českém Těšíně (the Czech church) this summer.