Milk

Yesterday we hosted a conference for pastors’ wives at the house. There were about 30 women here to receive the seminar on inner and outer beauty that mama and I taught. I taught outer beauty through lessons on nutrition, hygiene and exercise, encompassing them all into the overarching theme that feeling like we are beautiful on the outside feeds our confidence to share our inner beauty with the world. Mama followed this lesson with a talk on inner beauty and how we as leaders can expound it. I will write more specifically about the lesson later today because I really enjoyed it (enjoyed yesterday as a whole, in fact) but for now I am going to talk about milk.

The women from yesterday were so appreciative. They offered monetary donations (its always such a blessing to receive domestic funding for Uzima work) and gifts from home such as chickens and milk and sugar. We received over two gallons of fresh milk and I am boiling some this morning.

The milk comes straight from the cow and it is dirty because the cows are milked with human hands. The women clean the milk themselves, but we still have to boil it before use. We boil it over a gas cooker, as that is where we cook all our food. I am boiling the milk this morning to put in Charity’s cereal. What a funny contrast, huh? Fresh boiled cows milk and Kellogg’s cornflakes.

We had some of the milk last night before bed. Typically, you drink it warm with sugar in it, but really you don’t even need the sugar it’s so sweet. It’s not overwhelmingly thick as whole milk often can be – instead it just tastes sweet and fresh. It was raining again last night as we sat and drank it and the power was out. In that dark room with my warm milk listening to the rhythmic rain, I could have been a baby again.