kids Archives - Nancy Holte

Whenever we work with kids on a mission trip there are a few I just can’t get out of my head. That has proven to be the case once again since returning from Kenya a few weeks ago.

Most of our time in Kenya was spent helping with kids’ crusades and visiting orphanages. The crusades were incredible. As soon as we’d arrive at a church kids would start peeking in the windows excitedly waiting for the program to start. And in a matter of minutes lines full of enthusiastic kids would start forming outside the building.

First, let me define “kids’ crusade.” The crusades consisted of a 1.5-2 hour program two days in a row. They were held in neighborhood churches and each event had anywhere from 1000-1500 kids! Our team was put to work blowing up beach balls and balloons, handing out prizes, acting out the story being told (John and I didn’t exactly excel at this), demonstrating the actions to songs, and anything else we were asked to do. Jay, the missionary we were working with, did an amazing job providing the bulk of the program: illusions, songs, Bible stories, etc. Albeit loud, they were fun afternoons.

The church where the second crusade was held was in a very impoverished area. In the United States that neighborhood would be labeled a slum. There was one little girl at this crusade I couldn’t help but love. First off, she was adorable, but besides that she just seemed so genuinely enthralled with hearing the story of Jesus. When given the opportunity to invite Jesus into her heart her hand shot right up and as she prayed along with the others her earnestness was palpable. The picture I took of her didn’t turn out very well, but still, she will remain a sweet memory.

There were some other kids who stole my heart, also. They were at an orphanage/school in Nairobi. The kids we interacted with weren’t actually the kids who lived in the orphanage. Although we did get to meet them, they left for a field trip right after our arrival. The kids we talked to were some of the students at the school and we had so much fun hanging out with them. They were fascinated with our white skin.

Two little girls in particular spent their time with me. They were simply enthralled with the freckles and age spots on my arms. (I really hate the term age spots but I suppose I should call a spade a spade.) One of them thought it was super fun to push on my skin, making it appear even whiter than usual and then watch it come back to it’s normal color. She literally did that for about two minutes straight. It was hysterical.

The girls were also quite intrigued with my hair. At one point there were several little hands in my hair, and a few adult hands egging the little ones on.

I don’t know why it is there are certain kids I remember long after a mission trip is over. I suppose those are the ones God puts on my heart so I can pray for them through the years. Sometimes I picture myself seeing them again in heaven as we all stand before the throne of grace. How cool will that be?

The top image on this blog is courtesy of Susan Anderson, one of my teammates.

Several decades ago I decided it would be fun to make Gingerbread Men with my son, Paul, and the little girl I was babysitting, Missy. At the time they were four and nine-years-old, respectively. Everything started out pretty well but it didn’t take long before they started bickering back and forth, “It’s my turn to roll the dough! I want to cut out the cookie first this time!” and on it went.

Their little arguments quickly got on my last nerve and I lost my temper. In my firmest, possibly manic, tone I said, “Okay, stop for a minute! I want to know, are you two going to remember this as a happy Christmas memory or as a time of fighting? Because, if you’re only going to remember the fighting we’re just going to stop right now!” They looked at me with wide, somewhat confused eyes and said, “We’re having fun!” Who’d have guessed? (For the record, neither of them remember the day at all.)

It has taken me over 30 years to venture into another gingerbread men baking adventure – this time with my grandchildren. Fortunately, my expectations were low . . . really low. I’ve decided this is key to baking with kids. Just have fun. If the cookies don’t turn out, who really cares? It’s not like we NEED gingerbread men cookies.

My plan was to make the dough in the morning, refrigerate it, and do our baking after lunch and rest time. I thought it would be easiest to put Charlie (4) and Jane (2) up on the counter on either side of the mixer. Charlie had determined that he could be the one to pull the mixer head down into the bowl and I came up with the idea of letting Jane turn on the mixer. Obviously, I didn’t think that one all the way through.

After adding all of the liquid ingredients Charlie did his job of moving the beater down into the mixing bowl and I told Jane to turn it on. She’s two. Why did I not think to “help” with this? The speed options for a two-year-old are high and off. A little bit of liquid flew out of the bowl but I was able to slow things down quickly enough to deter any real loss of ingredients. It was at this moment that Amelia, her baby brother, and her mom, Erin arrived.

Amelia pulled up a chair to stand on and we all worked together to add the flour. We were about to add the rest of the dry ingredients when Jane decided it was a good time to turn the mixer on again – at high speed, of course. Flour went flying everywhere, which sent Erin and me into hysterics. Our laughter only got louder when Charlie said to his sister, “Now look what you’ve done!” Poor Jane, she just didn’t know what to think. She was covered in flour and probably expected to get in trouble but the only one scolding her was her brother. The two adults in the room did not seem to understand the severity of the situation.

We quickly wiped up the mess and guesstimated the amount of flour we’d need to add back into the bowl.

In the afternoon we rolled out the dough. They all took a turn and were amazingly good at it.

Knowing that gingerbread men take up a lot of dough real estate, especially when children insist on starting in the middle of the dough, I pulled out a couple of other cookie cutters to use on the smaller pieces so we wouldn’t have to re-roll so often. I thought a star would be very Christmasy and I pulled out the eyeglasses cutter because I’ve never really used it and wanted to see how eyeglass shapes would look as cookies. They were a big hit. Granted the bottom one looks more like a bow tie than a cookie.

As I mentioned earlier, the key to Christmas cookies and kids is not to care how the cookies look when the day is done. The Gingerbread cookies at the top of this post were made by professionals. Our cookies were FAR from professional but possibly more entertaining.

Let’s start with the one with the flowing red hair. As it turned out the cookies with the most red hots tasted the best so the “red hot hair” was a stroke of genius.

I like to refer to these next two as “the alien gingerbread men.”

The one on the left just screams “ET phone home,” doesn’t it?

About half of the cookie dough was used up when the kids decided to go play. Nobody said, “I’m tired of this,” they just ran, ran as fast as they could away from the table.

In the end we had rather a motley crew of Gingerbread cookies but no one seemed to mind eating them.

And best of all, I didn’t lose my temper once.

Sweet Little Faces

Run, Run as Fast as You Can!