Apologies and Cookies

I'm so sorry it has taken me so long to update once again. Now that I'm fully set up with internet, I just put off updates because I can do them whenever! So I just realized how long I've put them off. I'll try to be better in future.

Tonight I tried baking. Im not sure how well it went. I mixed up the recipe, attempting to make up my own--which is never a good plan in baking. The cookies are a little iffy looking, but fabulously yummy. Nutella Chocolate chip from a Hazelnut Chocolate chip recipe. The measuring here is entirely different--no cups! And I only have a pyrex liquid measuring cup in ounces...as well as a very ghetto oven, with no actual numbers on it anywhere...But I was inspired. Too many Jamie Oliver cookbooks floating around my life! I now totally have a mini-crush on him, and I'm watching Jamie Oliver's American Roadtrip as I type.

The cookies are indeed for a purpose, as well. Tomorrow night begins the hopes of a sixth form (11th and 12th grade) youth group event. We invited a bunch of sixth formers to my house for a night to hang out and eat cookies. Therefore, I am making the cookies.

Friday starts the younger group-- the year 7s (6th grade) plus some others. We're doing an American dinner night! Philly Cheesesteaks and Apple Blueberry pie (out of Jamie Oliver's American Roadtrip cookbook, in fact...). I've met some of the year 7s at school, so we'll see how friday goes!

In response to Kristen's question on the last post, the Rome trip doesn't mean I'll only be talking in terms of Catholicism, but faith in general. The kids here know very very little about Christianity at all. I got told on Friday that Jesus was most definitely a pimp--by kids who were not at all joking. The first week of GCSE (kind of like AP, but not at all) classes, we asked the kids to stand around the room depending on what they believed about God-- Believe, Not Sure, and Don't Believe. We run about 6 classes, ranging from 6- 15 kids. The total number of kids who claimed a belief in some god was less than 10 among all of the classes. Since they don't believe in God, they figure there's no point in learning anything about any religion. It poses a challenge to teaching them about everything.

Today Mr. Laffan told me that our goal in the community is simply to try to get the kids to not hate those with beliefs. Currently, there is a sense of hostility towards those who do believe, and we're hoping to foster a more open environment simply through knowledge and time spent together. Most of the time, people consider the purpose of a youth worker as conversion--we're here to convert the kids to Christianity. Not at all. We're simply here to make them not hate believers and show them the love that we have for everyone.

This is quote long, so I'll end here, but promise promise promise to update more often from now on!