The kids come home to Cornerstone tomorrow, and we have promised them an "American" Christmas. We will have 1/2 the kids all down one night to spend the night with a spaghetti dinner and cinnamon rolls for breakfast. When they wake up in the morning, there will be gifts for each one. The next night we will repeat with the other 1/2...girls one night, boys the other. We are buying small containers for each child. They will get a toy, some candy and a package of cookies in the container. The container will be one they can keep treasures in in their rooms. (Pictures will be forthcoming.)
Bakery
Christmas Eve was an amazing day for the bakery: we ran out of all baked goods at about 1pm and had to start baking again. We had trouble keeping up with the demand, and when we ended the day, we had 2 cinnamon rolls and 15 Cornerstone Shortbread cookies left. We could have sold at least 10 Merry Christmas cakes if we had baked them...one person even suggested we go in and bake her a cake right then ("It only takes an hour to bake a cake. Please!!") We had made and sold 6 cakes and next year will remember to make many more which obviously will sell on Christmas Eve!
Abby had a great idea of putting together gift packages of our baked goods (see the picture of them on the table on the sidewalk outside the bakery). We hired Grace, one of the young women from Cornerstone Christian Centre, and she stood during the day and sold the gifts. They were shs2,000 and shs4,000 (75 cents and $1.50). They sold, but the best part was that it brought many customers into the bakery who got to know about Cornerstone...and bought us out of everything we had!
A new group of Peace Corps workers found out about us and came and waited 30 minutes till the cinnamon rolls were finished (but still warm!) in the afternoon. One of them, a young man from New York, said, "Laurie, can I give you a hug?? This is the best food I've had in 6 weeks!!" and he proceeded to hug me and thank me for having American food for him in Uganda.
So, Christmas Eve became our highest sales day to date. We were exhausted when we finally got back to Budaka about 9pm, but it was a wonderful feeling of having blessed so many with goodies from our bakery.
We've been told that New Year's Eve is also a big sales day, so we will bake several cakes ahead this Friday and Saturday to be ready for that day.
One funny thing in the midst of the busyness: I was teaching Gerald (our new bakery employee) to frost and decorate cakes. I would do one, then oversee him doing one. I did the "Congratulations Namale" because I the word congratulations is misspelled so many times here in Uganda. I left only one cake for him to finish when I went out for a couple of hours - it was the cake I bought for Rogers' family for our Christmas dinner. I knew "Merry Christmas" was easy and we had done 2 together already. So, when I got back, Gerald had left to go home and I opened the refrigerator to find our Christmas cake as you see it in the picture. Can you spot the mistake? Abby and I couldn't stop laughing...at least it was for us.
So, all is well here - we had a wonderful Christmas morning service at church (pics are on fb at Cornerstone Uganda Ministries).
I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas...and are resting during this great season. Thank you to all who have sent us Christmas greetings by email and on facebook...and even 2 Christmas cards by mail.
I leave you with one last picture - Hope (Rogers' youngest child) and our Moses sharing a laugh during pictures after the service. Enjoy!
Laurie
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