Emma, Brad, Andre, Norbert, Lewis and the Missionaries

 This warm and humid day was comparatively easy as Mondays go. 

SK got up and trotted (actually drove) off to one of the super grocery stores on the edge of town. He filled the car with gas and shopped for dinner thig evening/ I mulled over what we should serve for Family Home Evening. I knew we would have few here, and it has seemed like we have been eating a lot of sandwiches and wraps. I have several recipe collections in the flat. There is a large binder overflowing with recipes from way back.

There is my own personal collection on my ipad and there is Melissa's collection in my email. I perused them all and just couldn't come up with much that excited me. Finally, I decided that we should have something that would use what we have here in the flat. After all, we don't know when the new couple will be here, or what they will like to cook.

I finally opted for White Chicken Chili, because we have a lot of beans. It was tasty but an odd choice for a warm day. By late afternoon, we figured that we might have five here, so I didn't make more than the large pot full. It wasn't really full, but perhaps 3/4 full. With the seasoning I had, I could easily have put a couple more cans of beans. There were more chicken pieces in the chili than I normally have. 

Before seven in the evening Emma came, with two of her room mates. They are both American young men. If my daughter were living in this co-ed arrangement, I can't think there could be two nicer young men. They live in a sort of apartment with six bedroom/baths and share a tiny kitchen and living area. Neither is a member of the church, and I am not sure how much they know about it, but are relaxed and comfortable with all of us - especially all of us who are wearing missionary name badges.

Brad has been with us before for Family Home Evening in the church, and Andre joined us for the first time tonight in our flat. However I had seen them both on camera way back a few months when Emma was participating in Zoom call cooking classes. Typical young men, when they smelled the food, and saw Emma cooking, they curiously stepped into the kitchen to see if help was needed. 

Both are tall, slim and nice looking. Andre is perhaps six three and Brad 6 feet. They thoroughly enjoyed the chili, the salad and the desert. It was cute to see them enjoying the simple meal so much.

As it turned out, we had 9 young adults around the table, and would have had 11, but Madeline and Adam got pinged! That means they NHS app told them they have been exposed to someone who has tested positive for the virus and must stay home. They stayed home to be kind to the other young adults here. 

I had barely enough to feed everyone with one recipe of the chili. SK and I politely didn't eat, and no one really noticed because it was so crowded and noisy. The food was all eaten, and it was marvelous to see and hear all those young people enjoying themselves.

Afterwards, we played a word-search game, put together 40-piece wooden puzzles and finished the evening with a rousing game of Skull-King. All three were well received. The Books of the Bible Word Search is quite difficult but a lot of fun, and they stayed with it until they found every one of the thirty names.

The puzzles were interesting. The Americans were great. They loved the little puzzles, and worked with them til they were done - and some had the really difficult ones. The two non-Americans hardly knew what to do with them, because they were not raised putting puzzles together. And those particular little wooden puzzles can be quite a challenge.

The Skull-King game was great fun. The young people got such a kick out of bidding and trash-talking to each other. I haven't met anyone yet who didn't love that fun card game.

The last one to leave was Norbert, a great young man who will leave this week for an internship in London/ He is from Ghana, and we saw him sporadically over the last year since we were all in lockdown and he was working so hard to graduate. He told us how much he enjoyed the evening, and reassured us that he would return to Oxford before we leave to say goodbye.

I thoroughly enjoyed every young person here tonight. And with that number, there was time to talk to every single one.

Tomorrow is one month til our release date. I think we will be saying a lot of good-byes in the coming weeks. It has been an incredible blessing to get to know these young people.