I was Right About Cheesecake, Wasn’t I? Same Deal Here

If, like me, you “collect” anointed teachers, you need John Gray. He spoke at Trinity Church again tonight. God said so much to me through him, I can’t even try to capture it here. If you get a chance to see him in person, don’t miss it. I know what it looks like when the Holy Spirit will not leave a person alone, and that is this guy’s situation.

Join his mailing list. He won’t try to sell you anything.

I’m pretty sure he won’t.

Join anyway.

Prop me Up if I Pass Out

Went to prayer group at 8 a.m. yesterday morning. Went to a gun show with one of the guys. Went to church at 6 p.m. This morning, I started making pizza and garlic rolls at 8 a.m. I left at noon and came home to clean up. At four, I’ll be back at church to serve as an armorbearer for our Rendezvous conference. I’ll be serving until Tuesday night, on and off, and I have also been asked to cook.

I’m thrilled to be asked to do stuff, but the laws of physics will prevent me from being in two places at once, so cooking is out. Two and a half days with no pizza or rolls! Unless someone takes my place for a while.

I have to take Marv and Maynard out, pound them silly, shower, dress, fill up the truck, and head back to Miami Gardens. Full day!

The rolls were incredible today. I’m really getting the hang of it.

What are YOU Doing Today?

Sometimes I have a fleeting realization of how weird I am. I am having one today.

I got up and wrote a long blog entry about how the Holy Spirit tells me stuff when I’m visiting museums. Then I realized I had to install an EZ-Ject kit on my Hornady Lock-N-Load ammunition press and see if I could machine the shell plates to make them work with it. I got started in the garage, and then I remembered I also had to freeze a gallon of pizza sauce and try a dough experiment. The dough was especially important. I have an idea for easy croissant-like rolls, and I have to test the recipe.

I got on Youtube, found a video of someone explaining the press upgrade (the way Hornady should have in its instructions). Then I made a big pile of dough, turned it into rolls, and put them on a pan to rise. Now I have to go to the garage and do my repairs and machining while the dough rises.

Who else has a life like this? I had to check four WordPress categories for this one post.

I’m considering writing a cookbook for my church. Not for publication. Just to help people who work in the kitchen. If these rolls work, they’ll be in the book.

I forgot to put chocolate inside them. I better fix that before they get too warm to handle.

Raiders of the Found Ark

I am going to try to cover more of my DC trip. I had too much to do yesterday. I had to go to church to test Grande 50/50 Italian Blend cheese (unsuccessfully), and then I had to drive a VIP to church from his hotel on the beach. After that, I served as an armorbearer at the Tuesday night service, and then we had a meeting, putting volunteers together for next week’s conference.

You could say I was busy.

Here is the verdict on Grande 50/50. It has too much of the funk of provolone, without enough of the sourness of good mozzarella. I can’t use it. Distressing.

It helped me understand how unlikely and remarkable my recipe is. The combination of cheeses I use seems to be impossible to imitate. Wonder who put the idea in my head.

Where did I leave you last time? It looks like Mike and I had attended the National Day of Prayer, and we were on our way out of the Cannon office building.

The nature of the event surprised me. It was very clear that the room was full of Bible-believing Christians. My best guess is that a big portion were charismatics. From what I hear of non-charismatic churches, I have deduced that any person who waves a hand or raises both hands during prayer or a religious speech is probably charismatic. I saw some of that at the National Day of Prayer, so my best guess is that charismatics were represented to a disproportionate degree.

The speakers did not come across as charismatic. They had a Catholic priest and a Southern Baptist congressman (Lincoln Davis, from Tennessee), and of course, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein spoke. Franklin Graham was the main speaker, and his message seemed pretty dry and works-based, leading me to figure him for a non-charismatic. Still, in the crowd, I saw hands.

If I recall correctly, speakers were allowed to pray in Jesus’s name.

I felt that many of the people in the crowd were sincere believers with personal relationships with God, and I suspected that God had drawn them to the Cannon building on this special day for a very important purpose. I suppose this may be why I ended up there. My prayer life has been going great guns.

Prayer is not a joke; it is infinitely more powerful than direct action. Elijah’s prayer prevented rain from falling in Israel for three years. Abraham’s prayer preserved two entire cities until the righteous could leave. Moses’s prayer saved the Jewish people from instant mass execution. If God drew powerful prayer warriors to Washington last week, even if there were only a few dozen of them–even if only one had shown up–it would be a very big deal for our nation.

We affirmed God’s place in America’s affairs, and we prayed that God would cause our leaders to rule in righteousness and faith. We were reminded that every Christian has an obligation to pray for his secular leaders. We prayed for God to guide America. Who knows what results the prayers will bring? I know this: God didn’t drag all of us up there to pray so he could ignore us.

After the event, Mike and I found a Five Guys, and then we made our way to the National Holocaust Memorial, to rejoin the group. I was disgusted to see Jimmy Carter’s name under an inscription by the door. All I can say is, “Remember Haman.” I’ll bet the people at the Memorial wish they could get some patching compound and fill in the letters and paint over that whole section of the wall.

Inside the building, we were taken to a special classroom. Each of us was given an “ID” booklet, with the photo of a Holocaust victim inside it, along with some information about that person’s life. My victim was a survivor. I don’t know about the others.

Archivist Stephen Mize came out and gave us a wonderful illustrated lecture about James G. McDonald, an academic and League of Nations official who tried to avert the Holocaust in the decade before World War Two. I wish I could recall all the details of the intricate “coincidence”-filled story that led to the recovery of McDonald’s voluminous diary; it’s one of those tales that has God’s fingerprints all over it.

McDonald was an American of partial German extraction. He was six feet seven inches tall, blond-haired, and blue-eyed. He spoke fluent aristocratic German, which he learned from his German mother. He looked like the very goal of Hitler’s perverted eugenics program. Oddly, he was chosen by God to meet with political and religious dignitaries all over the globe, to try to motivate them to provide the chosen with a way out of Europe.

McDonald met with the future Pope. He met with Hitler himself. Hitler sent him on a tour of Dachau, thinking McDonald would be impressed by the “medical research” the Nazis were conducting to “improve” mankind. McDonald became ill as he witnessed the atrocities. Hitler told him he would gladly release the Jews to other countries, including the United States.

That surprised me. I knew we turned Jews away, but I did not know Hitler had offered to give the entire Jewish population its freedom. If that is true, who is really to blame for the Holocaust? It’s as though Hitler were Pontius Pilate, and we refused his offer to let the innocent go free.

In negligence law, there is a doctrine called “last clear chance.” If you lie down drunk in the street, you are negligent. If I see you and somehow manage to back over you anyway, I am liable in spite of your negligence, because I had the last clear chance to prevent the harm. Similarly, it seems to me that the nations who refused to admit Jews had the last clear chance to help, and they are very nearly as guilty as Germany and Austria.

Mize said the Dominican Republic was the only nation that accepted Hitler’s offer. They admitted a hundred thousand Jews, for political reasons. The government wanted to “whiten up” the population.

As most Christians know, God has made numerous promises to bless those who are good to the Jews. Here is another familiar fact: the Dominican Republic occupies the green and relatively prosperous side of the island of Hispaniola. Haiti, where voodoo (demon worship and necromancy) is the national religion, occupies the other side. If you go to Google Earth and look at Hispaniola as seen from space, you will see that the DR looks pretty good, while Haiti is a brown and lifeless mess. The division is clear enough to permit you to identify the border fairly well just from the color change. The Dominicans may have had a bad motive when they invited the Jews, but they still did a good thing, and it appears that God noticed.

The Memorial’s staff has worked up some books on McDonald. I don’t know if they’re available yet. I think Mize said one would be coming out in a month or two. Well worth buying.

It was distressing to hear that McDonald had gotten nowhere with the Catholic Church. He went to the Vatican’s Cardinal Secretary of State–the Rahm Emanuel of the Vatican, you might say–and asked for Vatican visas to get Jews from the Saar region to safety. That was all he asked for. No money, no land, no trains, no ships. Just visas. The cardinal said he would take it up with the Pope. Nothing happened. Mize showed us a photo of him, as a cardinal, signing a 1933 agreement with the Nazis, intended to preserve Catholicism within Germany. It makes you wonder what was on his mind when he chose not to help the Saar Jews.

You can see that photograph here, on Wikipedia’s Reichskonkordat page. “Reichskonkordat” is the name of the agreement.

The Vatican eventually provided assistance, but only after McDonald promised that prominent American Jews would apply pressure to get Washington to work to protect church property in Mexico.

The lesson I took away from the lecture is that guilt for the Shoah is much more widespread than I realized.

The Memorial was moving, naturally. You can’t look at piles of decaying razors and shoes and eyeglasses or watch films of naked, emaciated corpses sliding into ditches without marveling at the permissible magnitude of the depth of human suffering. The shoes came near the end of the exibits, which are structured so you have to see them in a certain order. There were two areas filled with them, to either side of the walkway. The smell of the old leather was unavoidable. There was even a photograph of an enormous pile of human hair taken from murdered prisoners. Originally, the Memorial’s creators intended to have the actual hair on display, but survivors and their families objected. They did not want to wonder, as they looked at the pile, whether they were looking at hair taken from their own relatives.

Every time I saw a shoe or a pair of glasses or a kitchen utensil or a limp, naked body in a pile of corpses, I understood that God had an intimate knowledge of what I was seeing. He knew each body’s name, and that person’s thoughts, and their relatives and accomplishments. He knew their suffering. He knew who every item belonged to, and he knew where they were that day, whether on earth or in the afterlife. None of these people have ceased to exist. They still live, somewhere.

I remember looking at a kitchen strainer a Jew had left behind, and I knew God remembered every meal it was used to prepare. He knew who sat around the table every time, and he knew their fates. To the human eye, a pile of eyeglasses is just a pile, but to God, there is no such thing as a pile. He does not have to use that kind of cognitive shorthand. He knows every item in a pile for what it is, what it has been, and what it will be, at every instant of its existence.

I had a couple of odd experiences at the Memorial. On the way in, we were all in reasonably good spirits. We were enjoying meeting new people and talking about our time in Washington. As we entered the building and moved toward the elevators that would take us to the exhibits, however, I felt waves of grief pouring over me. I don’t think the grief originated inside me. It seemed to arise independently, with no obvious trigger. My suspicion is that what I felt was not my grief, but the grief of the Holy Spirit.

Later, I saw what proved to be the most disturbing item in the Memorial. It was a glass case full of desecrated and separated Torah scrolls. I could not believe Jews would permit it to be put on display. There are rules about the disposition of damaged scrolls. As I leaned over the edge of the case and looked at the Hebrew letters, I felt outrage rise up inside me, over the sheer profanity of the desecration and the unspeakable human pride that drove it. I felt I was looking at the very essence of sin. A symbolic depiction of the error Lucifer committed before the creation of the world, and the error Adam and Eve committed in the garden. The error of the first couple is the primary reason for war and suffering, so it makes sense to put these scrolls on display at a Holocaust memorial, which reminds humanity of the direst repercussions of rebellion, and that the repercussions may not even spare those who are most precious to God.

Here was God’s word–his undeserved, redeeming gift, which Jews traditionally revere and protect for the good of the human race–torn and scattered by the smelly paws of unlettered humans who were barely better than apes. In this parchment, I saw the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Tribulation, and perhaps even the Shoah itself. I saw provocation in its most extreme and vile and culpable form. I wondered how God restrains himself.

I stared at the letters and wondered which scriptures I was looking at. I understood nothing. I did not know which books I was looking at. That was fitting. The people who destroyed these books were blind to their meaning, too. Blinder than I.

I couldn’t stay by the exhibit and look at it for very long. I felt an intense, oppressive sensation when I looked. I had to walk away and come back.

Again, I don’t think the emotion or the thoughts came from me. In my own right, I am sure I would have been more upset by the concentration camp footage.

Near the parchment, there was a desecrated ark. This is a cabinet in which a Torah scroll is stored. Only the outer frame–like a doorway–was there. There was Hebrew lettering across the top, obscured by axe marks. This was the part of the cabinet on which the Jew-hater’s rage had been focused. It is extremely unlikely that he understood the letters.

The meaning of the Hebrew was “Know before whom you stand.” It is hard to think of a greater irony.

What have the Jews been, throughout history, if not God’s ark? They are the shelter in which the Torah has been preserved, and when you oppose them in hatred, whom do you really oppose? Before whom do you stand?

To Christians, the Jewish Messiah was the living ark, and through him, by the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the sanctification of tongues, each of us becomes an ark, with God’s law written on our hearts, just as the Commandments are stored on tablets in the original Ark of the Covenant. This is part of the symbolic significance of the Ark and its contents.

It occurred to me that it was ironic that the Torah was written on the skins of sheep. Maybe that’s because observance of the law, under the old covenant, is somehow external, like letters on one’s skin, compared to the indwelling of the Spirit experienced by new-covenant believers. What animal did Jesus compare us to, over and over?

I know now that the Torah is generally written on the skins of cattle, but that makes sense to me, too. When the Word is external to you, your relationship with God can be a little like the relationship a beast of burden has with its owner. The willingness to serve is there, but the understanding and the heartfelt sense of unity may not be. I have been told that, to Jews, obedience is more important than the state of mind in which you obey. Christianity is somewhat different, to put it mildly.

That’s all I have for now.

More

I guess I have a little more. After writing that, I wondered if ancient Torah scrolls were written on cowhide or sheepskin, since sheep were much more common in the ancient world. I Googled a little. It looks like sheepskin and goatskin used to be the standard materials, so maybe I really was hearing from God when I thought about the symbolic significance of sheepskin.

More

According to the Orthodox Union, “Torah scrolls and mezuzot are generally written on sheepskin parchment.”

And they also have some lamb recipes!

The Unlikeliest Pilgrim Speaks

I just got back from church. I was invited to the Monday morning staff chapel at ten a.m. On the way out, I checked the kitchen to see what kind of shape I would be in the next time I wanted to make pizza. While I was there, I got drafted to cook. I produced four pizzas and three dozen garlic rolls, and I ended up leaving at 2:30!

That place has a gravity well. You have to be careful about getting close to it.

I don’t know what to do about recording all the experiences I had when I was in Washington last week. They started weeks before I made the trip, which makes the problem even worse. I have too much material to deal with. God has been driving me crazy.

For weeks, I’ve been asking God to be bold and obvious in my life. It looks like he was listening. I am overwhelmed by the constant flow of remarkable events.

Let’s see.

In 2007 (I think), I got involved with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, an organization which funnels money to needy Jews and which provides aid in Israel. Virtually all of the money comes from Christians. Last year, the local field rep–Linda–called me and asked me to meet with her, and I went. Reluctantly.

It turned out she was a committed Christian who shared many of my beliefs and interests. We became friends. Last year she invited me to visit a Messianic synagogue in Boca, and I went. Since then, I have been trying to get my church involved with the IFCJ, and I have been trying to get people from my church–starting with my prayer group–to visit the synagogue.

We tried to set dates, but people kept cancelling. Finally, we managed to work it out. The leader of my prayer group–John–is the volunteer leader for my church (over 700 volunteers), and all of the guys who went to the synagogue are volunteers.

At the service, the congregation was singing about the jubilee. This is a special year observed by the ancient Jews. After seven weeks of years, on the fiftieth year, they cancelled debts and so on. Here is a passage from Leviticus 25:

And you shall number seven sabbaths of years to you, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty and nine years. Then shall you cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall you make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee to you; and you shall return every man to his possession, and you shall return every man to his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you: you shall not sow, neither reap that which grows of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of your vine undressed. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.

In the year of this jubilee you shall return every man to his possession. And if you sell ought to your neighbor, or buy ought of your neighbor’s hand, you shall not oppress one another: According to the number of years after the jubilee you shall buy of your neighbor, and according to the number of years of the fruits he shall sell to you: According to the multitude of years you shall increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years you shall diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits does he sell to you. You shall not therefore oppress one another; but you shall fear your God: for I am the LORD your God.

After the singing, the rabbi referred to Jesus (“Yeshua”) as “our jubilee.” And when the teaching began–the subject was the baptism with the Holy Spirit–guess what part of the Bible we heard? Look:

“The Spirit of Adonai is upon me;
therefore he has anointed me
to announce Good News to the poor;
he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the imprisoned
and renewed sight for the blind,
to release those who have been crushed,
to proclaim a year of the favor of Adonai.”
Luke 4:18-19; CJB

Jesus is the speaker. He is reading from Isaiah, in the synagogue at Nazareth. I don’t recall which translation the rabbi used, but the phrase I recall hearing is “the year of God’s favor.”

I knew, without knowing, that “the year of God’s favor” was yet another reference to the jubilee.

As I listened, I took out my driver’s license and showed it to John and to Jo-el, another friend who was sitting to my right. Why would I do that? Because I wanted them to know it was my birthday. My 49th birthday. The first day of my fiftieth year. The year of jubilee.

Coincidence, right?

Remember this: “And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee to you; and you shall return every man to his possession, and you shall return every man to his family.” I feel that I am experiencing a time of intense restoration. Things that were taken from me and my family are being returned. Telling this story disrupts the chronology of this blog entry, but I don’t see any way to avoid it.

A week or two before the service, fellow blogger Richard from It Baffles Science sent me a startling email, recounting his testimony. I wrote about it here. God is repairing his marriage and leading him out of his destructive habits. He is doing shocking things as he works to bring Richard and his family into the safety of obedience and faith. I was so amazed, I forwarded the email to three Christians. One was Linda. In her response, she asked if I was free to go to DC in May.

I called her, and she told me the IFCJ had some seats at the National Day of Prayer, and they were inviting some donors. There was also going to be a tour of the Holocaust Memorial, a dinner with Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein (founder of the IFCJ), and an invitation to the Ninth Annual Solidarity Event at the Israeli Embassy, where we would hear the ambassador speak to a small group!

I had no idea what the Naitonal Day of Prayer was, and I didn’t really want to spend money and go to Washington, but the invitation sounded like God’s favor to me, so I agreed. I figured there had to be a purpose.

I was not happy about spending money for airline tickets, but I got online and started looking. Fares were really cheap. And when I mentioned the trip to my dad, he suggested giving me the tickets for my birthday. Crazy.

Guess who happens to live in DC? Mike. I gave him a call, and he said he would be available during the week I would be in DC. He offered free lodging (that part didn’t pan out), and of course, he would run me around and find stuff for us to do. I let Linda know, and she got him invitations to the events! He has never had anything to do with the IFCJ. If you don’t think God does weird, obvious things to people, this should prove you’re wrong.

I’ve been trying to get Mike to try an Assemblies of God church near his home. I don’t know much about churches up there, but I found one with a nice website. Trinity Assembly of God, in Lanham, Maryland. Just happens to have the same name as my church. Mike and I made plans to visit Trinity on Sunday. The events took place on Thursday and Friday.

The night before the trip, I decided to dust off my MP3 player and put some more music in it for the flight. I added several albums and some Christian teaching (Perry Stone), but when I tried to add the last recordings, a Ricky Skaggs two-CD set, I found that the disks were missing. I had no idea where they were. I gave up and went to bed.

It was a little odd that I was trying to add Ricky Skaggs. I rarely listen to him, but on that night, I felt like it was time to rip his CDs.

I dreaded the flight. I hate the screening process, and I don’t like airline seats much, because they’re built for pear-shaped people with all their weight in their rear ends. But at the airport, there was no line when I checked in, the screening process was quick and painless, and I had the odd sensation that I was floating as I walked to the gate. Everything around me seemed clean and bright. When I took my seat, I found I had a whole row to myself. The trip was a breeze. The airport in Baltimore was another great surprise. It was quiet and clean, and it seemed almost empty. I had no delays at all.

Mike and I fiddled around all afternoon. We went to a Salvation Army thrift store to check out their cast iron cookware inventory, we visited his son’s school, and we tried Rita’s Italian Ice. This is a chain that sells gourmet ice and soft-serve ice cream. I couldn’t believe how good it was. I had a gelati made with strawberry custard ice cream and wild black cherry ice. At Rita’s, “gelati” means ice cream on the top and bottom, with ice in the middle. I fell in love immediately. I think we had Rita’s four times before I went home.

The next morning, at nine a.m., I was inside the Cannon Office Building on Capitol Hill. This is where they held the DC event for the National Day of Prayer. I would say the room held three hundred people. It was about fifty feet by a hundred, by my guess. The cable networks were there. Michele Bachmann was seated about ten feet away, in the row in front of me. I didn’t recognize all the Senators and Congressmen who were there, but I know there were at least two. And here I was. The nearly nonexistent guy with the tool blog.

I wish I could recall everyone who spoke. James Dobson and his wife were running the show. Gary Bauer was there. We heard from a Navy admiral and an army chaplain. The Cactus Cuties sang the national anthem and God Bless America. The main speaker was Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham.

They also had male musical performers. Early on, I had noticed an old hippie up front. He had long silver hair. At first, I had no idea who he was. I had him figured for an official from a liberal church. But I eventually realized I was wrong, because one of the speakers introduced RICKY SKAGGS, and the hippie got up on stage with his Martin guitar. Ricky’s curly red hair and his famous moustache are long gone!

I felt like grabbing him and telling him the story of the MP3 player and the missing disks, but I didn’t want to be tased and waterboarded so early in the day.

I’m pooped. More later.

DC Looms Before Me

Tomorrow I fly to DC. On Thursday and Friday, I’ll attend the National Day of Prayer and a dinner with Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. On Friday, I’ll be at a breakfast at the Israeli Embassy, and then I’ll tour the Holocaust Museum.

It’s an honor to be invited. Still, I wish they could hold these events somewhere else. Washington, DC is a hotbed of violent crime, and the Second Amendment does not exist there, and I won’t be able to carry a gun. The hotel where I’ll be staying sounds borderline dangerous. The events should be wonderful, but the city takes a lot of the shine off the trip.

Maybe they should meet in the IFCJ’s hometown instead. But wait. That’s CHICAGO. Arghh. Suddenly DC doesn’t look all that bad.

Here’s the main reason I decided to go: I want to walk by faith. This is one of those improbable opportunities God drops on people, and I want to stay in the flow of God’s will, so I accepted the invitation. I know there is a reason for it, and good things will result from my obedience. I hope that doesn’t sound ungracious. I’m extremely enthusiastic about the events. But how can anyone get excited about DC? It’s like visiting Fallujah. They should call it East Detroit.

Boy, that gun control works wonders, doesn’t it? Look how safe DC and Chicago are. I almost wish I were a gun-grabbing Congressman, so I would have heavily armed police, federal agents, and military personnel to take care of me.

I hope people will pray for my safety, and that I’ll accomplish whatever it is that God wants done.

I will not be afraid, though ten thousands of people set themselves against me, round about. Though an host should encamp about me, my heart shall not fear. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. No evil shall befall me, neither shall any plague come nigh my dwelling, for God shall give his angels charge over me, to keep me in all my ways. They shall bear me up in their hands, lest I dash my foot against a stone.

All the same, I wish I could take my Glock.

I am not a great fan of Miami, but the prospect of visiting DC helps me see the positive aspects of this place. I can carry a gun everywhere I go, including church. I am not very likely to need it. And I don’t have to spend much time in the decrepit heart of the city. This is not Tennessee or Texas, but it’s a huge step up from DC, New York, Chicago, LA, or any of the big eastern seaboard cities. Those places are like twenty years away from Soylent Green conditions. Detroit is already there. I think it’s where they filmed the outdoor shots for Battlefield Earth.

Safety is the only thing about the hotel that concerns me. I am not picky about accommodations. I’ll take ear plugs and decongestant spray, and those things should cover the most likely problems. I just want clean sheets and a temperature between 70 and 75 degrees, and I’ll be fine.

The food up there should be good. Miami is not a great restaurant town, and I cook better than any restaurant I know of, so I have no motivation to go out. DC has Indian and Ethiopian food, so I’m hoping to try a couple of places. I would love to have a big plate of beef or lamb bhuna and some terrifying appetizers. No one in Miami will use enough peppers; they’re abject cowards. Maybe the Indians in DC will take me seriously.

Plus Gun Stuff

Yesterday was pretty weird. It was a blast, but the usual speed bumps popped up.

I made pizza and rolls at church, and we also served apple pie and brownies I had brought to an event the night before. So it was pretty much like going to a restaurant in which I was the chef.

We didn’t sell much pizza. Why? No can opener, and not enough helpers. We keep buying cheap can openers, and they don’t like #10 cans much. One broke last week, and someone was supposed to replace it with a commercial can opener, but that did not happen, and I didn’t know until it was time to make sauce. That cost me the whole first service.

I had to attend the third service, so I couldn’t make pizza, and there was no one else available except for my eleven-year-old assistant. I can’t turn him loose without supervision, so I closed up shop. We sold six pies and six dozen rolls.

I have a problem with the people out front selling the rolls too cheap. I had to go out and remind them that the flour costs money. You can’t sell four rolls for a dollar and survive. The price is fifty cents each or $2.50 for half a dozen. I don’t mind making rolls if it will generate a hundred bucks for the church, but I’m not going to fool with them if the net is five dollars.

The apple pies were wonderful. The cream cheese crust I came up with is a dream come true. It’s flaky, it tastes and smells great, and it’s fairly tough, so it won’t fall apart when you’re making or serving the pie. It’s not tough in the sense that it’s not tender. It just doesn’t break up at the wrong times.

It gave me a fantastic idea for rolls. I make chocolate and strawberry/cheesecake croissants, but they’re a pain to prepare. The pie crust is somewhat similar to a croissant, and it has an even better flavor. I decided to add yeast and turn it into rolls. They were incredible. Better than croissants. They aren’t quite as flaky, but the flavor is magnificent. And they’re easy to make. Make dough in a food processor, roll it out, make rolls, let them rise, bake.

As dinner rolls, these things have no equal of which I am aware. Add a little sugar, and you have the perfect substrate for something similar to a strawberry or chocolate croissant.

I believe God drops these ideas on me out of nowhere. The Sicilian pizza still freaks me out, and so do the garlic rolls. I am not going to take credit for this stuff. That is a sure way to cause problems.

It’s wonderful having trained chefs to talk to. I’m not used to that. We exchange ideas about food, and we’re all pretty excited about cooking.

One of the chefs–Ruthie–told me men made the best cooks. That was surprising, but I think she’s right. The best cooks I’ve known have been men. I think it’s because we’re more aggressive with the food. We’ll try absolutely anything. After all, I’m the guy who made a casserole filled with doughnuts. And how many women will design a smoke box for a smoker, cut out the parts with a grinder, and weld them together?

These days, a lot of women disdain any type of work associated with housekeeping, so I suppose many women would feel silly bragging about their cookies and brownies. Hillary Clinton sneered at women who make cookies; we all remember that. This self-destructive and perverse snobbery is probably one of the reasons most modern women don’t cook well.

It’s very sad that we have so little respect for good housekeepers and child-rearers, because their work is more important than breadwinning. Think about it: in fifty years, will anyone care about your raise or the great Powerpoint presentation you did? Of course not. Those things chiefly affect strangers who don’t care whether you live or die. But the things a wife and mother does have direct and lasting impact within the family. Her job is to prepare the next generation and to create an environment in which the other members of the family can thrive. And besides, the preparation of good food is an altruistic expression of love.

Even a salmon understands the importance of putting the next generation first. Come to think of it, my pastor talked about that yesterday. Shoveling money at your kids is fine, but it’s no substitute for hands-on, traditional parenting.

One of the women at church started telling me I should open a restaurant. I waved my hands at the food, and I said, “I HAVE a restaurant.” But I appreciated the compliment. I have considered opening a pizza joint, but it has occurred to me that a gun shop might be more practical, not to mention much less expensive.

There are very few gun shops around here, and most of them are no good. The prices are generally bad, and most shops have poor service. When a good shop opens up, people go. And it’s a much easier business to run than a restaurant. You don’t have to come in at 6 a.m. and put yeast in the guns so they can rise. You don’t have to wash the guns or carry out bags of smelly gun scraps at 11 p.m. There are no gun inspectors counting your cockroaches or forcing you to remodel in order to conform to unrealistic codes. You show up, sell stuff, do the paperwork, and go home. It’s a nine-to-five job. You buy for x dollars and sell for x plus a profit. It is not rocket science. And you don’t need two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of commercial cooking equipment that breaks down when you need it most. Nor do you need a big staff of skilled people. Any honest person with a fair knowledge of guns can work for you.

On top of that, we have Barack Obama. The greatest gun salesman in history. This man has literally made gun sellers rich. While he’s in office, you can’t lose!

Sign a lease, get a license, put thirty grand into inventory and renovations, and you’re a gun shop owner. That’s how it seems, anyway. If things go sour, sell the inventory and go home. You won’t be like the failed restaurateurs on Craigslist, begging people to buy their dreams for twenty cents on the dollar.

South Florida needs someone who sells reloading stuff. If you buy powders and primer over the Internet, you get royally dinged on the hazmat fees. A local place that made a respectable effort should do well. I use Accurate No.7 for my .38 Super, and trying to buy this well-known product in Miami is like trying to score plutonium.

This week, I’m going to DC to participate in the National Day of Prayer and some events sponsored by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. I’ll be visiting Mike. I am distressed that I’ll be in a crime-plagued city without a sidearm. I’ve gotten so used to the security of concealed carry that it bothers me to think I’ll be unarmed up there. I decided to stay at a hotel, and while I was looking for good ones, I kept reading reviews referring to bulletproof glass and scary parking lots. What a failure that city must be, as a place to live. The Detroit of the East Coast. I want to get in and out, fast. I would appreciate prayers for my safety.

I don’t like Miami much, but I thank God I live in a place where I am permitted to take care of myself. When I get out of here and move to more rural setting, I think it will feel like paradise. Nicer people, less traffic, same gun rights, more room…that would be nice.

I look forward to getting some good food in DC. Indian and maybe Ethiopian. Mike is scanning the horizon for opportunities.

I didn’t want to go (still don’t), but it seemed like God’s hand was in it, and it’s wonderful to be invited to these events.

This might be a good day for some experimental cooking. I would really like to finalize that roll recipe.

Gallery of stuff I cooked:

First Shalt Thou Pull Out the Holy Pin

Having an incredible day. My prayer group met at Denny’s this morning, and as usual, God told each of us to say pretty much what the others needed to hear. Lots of “coincidences” and useful info.

Now I’m making food for my church’s cafe. I just stuck two trays of brownies in the oven. I’m going to take them to church and put them in the walk-in cooler, and then I plan to make a couple of deep-dish pies. I wanted to do pie a la mode, but ice cream might be too hard for the cafe to handle.

I thought I was going to make chocolate chip cookies, but the pies are more exciting. May do some pizzas.

I’m also making some experimental faux croissant things from my weird cream cheese dough. I added sugar and yeast and increased the salt. The rolls are rising now. Or they’re not. We will find out soon enough.

I am wondering if my usual brownie-baking temperature of 400 is too high. Sometimes they’re a little brown around the edges. I’m trying 375, in a gross violation of one of my firmest rules: never change a recipe when you’re cooking for a group.

Hope my new chef helpers are there tonight. We will rock that joint to its foundation.

The Internet Rocks

I found free horse manure on Craigslist! Am I wrong to be happy about this?

This has to be the ultimate win/win transaction.

Dough Keeps Rising

I wish I could blog everything that happened on Saturday. I can’t reveal everything, but I will tell what I can.

For weeks I’ve been working to get my prayer group to go visit Ayts Chayim Messianic Synagogue, in Boca. We finally made it on Saturday. Only five of us showed up, but it was a good start.

We were under the impression that sabbath worship would be preceded by an adult class concerning information provided by Sam Solomon, a former Muslim and professor of sharia law. He appeared at Ayts Chayim the week before and told the congregation and the rabbi a lot of disturbing things about Islamist infiltration in our government and our military.

It turned out the class was actually a discussion of people’s reactions to Mr. Solomon. You might assume people raised their hands and talked about their fear of Islamists and the need to crack down on them, but most of the comments concerned the difficulty of communicating with Muslim acquaintances the congregants wanted to introduce to Yeshua. These people were concerned less about their own security than they were with the welfare of unbelievers they knew.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Polls taken in Muslim countries show that a high percentage of Muslims admit hating Jews, yet polls taken in Israel do not reflect much Jewish hate for Muslims.

When we headed into the sanctuary for worship, volunteers offered my friends yarmulkes and prayer shawls. I turned them down. I’ve seen how I look in a yarmulke. Some of my friends accepted the headgear, and one even went for the shawl.

The service was excellent. This synagogue encourages demonstrative worship, much like any charismatic church, and the people were very involved. A group of women danced at the front of the room, and people were raising their hands and praising God. The music was very good. Less noisy than what we get at my church.

This day featured a double portion of the Torah. When they brought the scroll out, people touched it and showed reverence for it, and a man carried it around the sanctuary while people danced behind it. A friend asked what was going on, and I said Jews revered the Torah scroll more than we do our Bibles. I pointed out that they had had to work to preserve the Torah; for thousands of years people had been banning and burning it. I said what we were seeing was a bit like The Book of Eli. God’s word was to be preserved and revered.

When the Torah portions were read, I could not see the person doing the reading. Then someone pointed him out. I couldn’t see him because he was sitting down. He was in the front row, using a Braille Torah. The man was blind. I hadn’t known that when I mentioned The Book of Eli to my friend.

If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll understand.

Rabbi Brawer taught about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He went through Old and New Testament passages demonstrating that the power of the Holy Spirit had been with us since the beginning. In fact, he is mentioned in Genesis, before the passages about the creation of man.

My friend were overwhelmed by the warmth of the congregation, and so was I. And it was very moving, seeing so many Jewish believers, assembled to honor Yeshua in spite of the hatred and rejection it brought them from their own people.

I met an older gentleman–about my dad’s age–and talked to him about life as a Messianic. I told him there were three kinds of people I loved meeting. Conservative Jews, armed Jews, and Jews who believed in Yeshua. He told me he was all three. He’s an NRA member, and he carries! I love it.

One of my friends is the leader of all the volunteers at my church. The lady who introduced us to Ayts Chayim is a field worker for the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. He hit it off with both of them, and hopefully, he will develop relationships with them and help Ayts Chayim and my church bond a little. He has my pastor’s ear every day.

My father tried to make it to the class, but he got lost. That’s okay. My friend from the IFCJ showed us a disk containing Mr. Solomon’s lecture. We are planning to meet with her so we can hear it. That will give my father another excuse to join us.

We can’t get a copy. The material is not for public consumption. I’m thinking we should ask to be allowed to use my church’s cafe. That way, more of us could hear it, my dad would not have to drive so far, I would be able to cook, and my dad and my friend would get to visit my church.

That’s part of the story. I can’t get into the rest. Other things are breaking loose in my life, but this is not the time to disclose them.

On Saturday, I helped the cafe people make food for a weekly event called “Rhythms Lounge.” It’s mostly kids. People from church perform. They play music and recite poetry and so on. It’s very good. They asked if I could show up and teach people to make pizza. No problem!

When I got there, I found my three new assistants waiting. They’re all chefs! They’re graduates from Le Cordon Bleu, and they work in the big hotels on the Beach. Can you believe that? I learned how to cook, standing in front of a $300 stove in my housecoat, and I was showing these highly trained women what to do. Talk about favor.

It was pretty funny. The way I make dough is very unorthodox, and if you believe the pizza nerds on the Internet, it shouldn’t work. But the chefs wanted to see how I did it, and they were very impressed with the food. As I noted earlier, they said it was as good as Brooklyn’s best. That felt great.

I used to sweat and slave in the cafe, but more and more, I’m managing. I stand behind people and give tips as they work. It’s fantastic.

Of course, in the future, these women will be contributing their own material. That will be a huge blessing. And they know how to do institutional cooking. They volunteered to organize the kitchen. I can’t wait to see that.

They gave me a couple of useful tips. From now on, when I make cheesecake, I plan to line my springform pans with crust, from top to bottom, to hold the berry mess in. And they showed me I could keep pans from sliding around when I roll out dough, by putting damp paper towels under them. They also suggested I refrigerate unused dough. It works okay, but the rolls aren’t quite as good as fresh ones. Worth doing, anyway.

I’m planning to do a cobbler as soon as I can. Cobbler and vanilla ice cream. If we can figure out a way to handle ice cream. I suppose we could carve out portions and put them in the freezer and bring them out and add cobbler as people place orders. I also want to do hot cinnamon rolls with ice cream.

As volunteers, we are told to “reproduce ourselves.” That makes sense. Christianity is the same way. You accept Jesus, you make progress, and then you help others accept him. I haven’t been able to do much to reproduce myself as a cook, but God has handed me six helpers, so it worked out anyway.

In other news, I ordered a scope for my LR-308. On advice from reader Blindshooter and fellow blogger Jim from Smoke on the Water, I went with the Leupold VX-3 in 6.5-20x50mm. It may be ten years before I try 20x, but it will be there when I’m ready. One of my church buddies wants to shoot it with me.

Now you are all caught up on my life. I’ll be back if anything new happens.

Chin-Deep in It

I had three trained chefs assisting me tonight! Unbelievable! Two are from New York, and they know good pizza. They couldn’t believe the weird way I made my rolls and pizza, but they said the food was as good as Brooklyn’s best! What a night! They’re going to start working culinary miracles for Trinity Church, and I plan to be right there beside them.

Hook me Up to the Battery Charger

I am pooped.

I worked late making croissants to bring with me today for my prayer group’s field trip to Ayts Chayim Messianic Synagogue, and then I got up at 6:00 and hit the road. At 9:00 a.m. we found ourselves at a discussion of the Islamist threat, and then there was a very long worship service, and then it took me an hour to drive home.

The croissants failed QC inspection, by the way. I just destroyed some of the evidence. You really need two days to make croissants, if you plan to have any type of life during those days. I didn’t give them enough time to rest or rise, so while they are extremely tasty, I am not going to let anyone else see them.

The service was phenomenal. I am too tired to go into it, but it was like being God’s pate goose. Sit there, open wide, and wait for the funnel. God comes along with the bucket of holy goose feed, and then everything goes crazy.

Now I have been asked to help get pizza going for my church’s Saturday night project, known as Rhythms Lounge. I agreed, but it means I have to get my butt back in the truck shortly, so right now I am having a Coke and trying to regain my bearings. Marv and Maynard are behind me, grunting and whining, respectively. I have to take the out and pound them before I can go anywhere.

I would say it was an amazing day, but that would be so weak, it would not come close to describing what happened. I feel like I’m swimming in God’s favor like a fly trapped in a bowl of soup.

Maybe I’ll explain tomorrow. Right now I have birds to wrestle.

I met an old Jew who carries, votes conservative, and believes in Jesus! This must be how birdwatchers feel when they spot a pileated woodpecker. Or whatever that rare kind of woodpecker is.

We’re hoping we can get him and his friends to go to the range with us.

Snow Shovel Required

One nice thing about making croissants is that it makes me realize how easy and simple it is to make other baked goods.

I just slapped a batch of dough together. It left a crust of dough bits all over the stove top (my rolling surface), and of course, I made some mistakes and got flour into places where it should not have gone. But I managed to get the dough made and folded and stored in the fridge in foil, and the cleanup wasn’t all that bad.

I’d say it takes about half an hour of work to get croissant dough to the point where it’s ready for it’s pre-baking rest. But that’s only if you have butter frozen and flour chilled. You have to use cold flour and frozen butter. I make it worse by burning some of the butter and refreezing it, for flavor.

It seems to pay off. I ate some of the dough (for the children, mind you, not just wanton gluttony), and if the croissants are anything like as good as the dough, I am in for some fine eating.

I’m going to work on cinnamon rolls after lunch. I had the most hideous idea, I’m almost afraid to share it. What if I make cinnamon rolls using CROISSANT DOUGH? It should be illegal to do that. It’s terrifying. Imagine how good that must be. Then you dump a hot croissant in a bowl with some vanilla ice cream and extra cinnamon sauce. Oh, man! You know that has to be good.

I may buy a dozen bagels for insurance. I haven’t made croissants in four years, so I don’t know what’s going to happen. I give myself credit: I know how to write a recipe so an idiot can follow it. I think I’ll be okay.

I’m using GFS Primo Gusto flour. I assume there is some kind of official Vichy-approved croissant flour out there somewhere, but I Googled around, and it seemed like bread flour was the norm. I have gotten wonderful results with Primo Gusto, so I figured I’d give it a shot. And I just happened to have several bags in the freezer, which gave me a head start.

It’s incredible how things have turned out today. Originally, it looked like four guys from my church would show up at the Messianic synagogue, more or less to pay our respects. Then I got a call from my contact. She said that last week, Islamic scholar Sam Solomon spoke there. Mind-blowing information about terrorism and Islamist infiltration. He used to be a Muslim, but he’s a Christian now, and he is helping Westerners wake up and prepare. There will be a class before the service tomorrow, and it will be based on information provided by Mr. Solomon. And we’re invited to the class.

Now it looks like we may have six or eight guys, including some armorbearers. The security angle makes it a natural fit. Should be fascinating. And we can help the folks at the synagogue with their questions on firearms and security. This is wild. Any time you help Jews provide for their self-defense, you have accomplished something worthwhile.

Thanks to political correctness, Muslim nutcases have infiltrated our military; they have already murdered a number of our troops. From what I gather from today’s conversation, the situation is much worse than we know. Unfortunately, I may not be able to pass all the new information on via this blog.

Are tea partiers and conservative Christians crazy to be stocking up on guns and ammunition? Maybe it’s an overreaction, but depending on what the Islamists have prepared for us and how badly our defenses have been compromised, maybe gun nuts are on the right track.

Hope not. I hope that in my case it turns out to be a harmless hobby I can enjoy until I drop dead at 95 from eating too many croissants.

Breakfast Choice

I have a tough decision to make today.

Tomorrow morning, I will be visiting a Messianic synagogue with my prayer group. Before that, we’ll be having breakfast at the home of the lady who invited us. I asked if I could bring anything, and she suggested bagels.

That would be a good idea. BUT…why not make pain au chocolat and strawberry croissants with cheesecake filling instead?

It would be a lot of aggravation, but man, they’re good. The big risk is that something will go wrong, and then I’ll end up at her house with a dozen Krispy Kremes in a box.

I think I should go for it. How often do you get to make croissants?

Here’s a photo of the items in question. They’re not really croissants, since they’re not crescent-shaped, but I don’t know what else to call them. The real name for the chocolate jobs is pain au chocolat, but I have no idea what to call the other ones. Pain aux fraises et fromage?

If I’m going to make these things, I’ll have to hit the store pretty early. I need milk, butter, strawberries, and cream cheese.

More

On a more important note, reader Steve in CA says:

I have a request, my oldest daughter is pregnant and her water broke at 22 weeks. I am asking that she gets the strength and the baby the blessings need to reach viability for delivery. She has had a miscarriage before and I am frightened.

Free Cheese!

I am making strawberry goop.

Strawberries are extremely cheap, and they are at the peak of their flavor. I bought a load of them the other day, and today I realized I had to render them down into cheesecake-topping goop or let them grow mold and throw them out.

I have about 2 1/2 quarts of berries on the stove, heating with water and sugar. I think I’ll just get rid of the pulp, make two 15-ounce portions of goop, and freeze them. Without the starch. Best to add that when I make the cheesecakes.

Day after tomorrow, my prayer group is going to visit a Messianic worship service. I offered to bring something. I could bring bagels, but I am tempted to make strawberry croissants with cheesecake filling, plus pain au chocolat. This would mean putting in a lot of work tomorrow, however. Bagels might be the way to go.

I look forward to getting this stuff frozen. I already froze a bunch of Costco steaks, and I am eager to move on to something other than food.

Oh, man! The Grande cheese rep just dropped a couple of pounds of 50/50 blend off! Did I say I didn’t want to fool with food? Scratch that nonsense!