"You can eat the paper!"

I have one last story to share from mom's time here, although their are many wonderful stories I could tell.

Mom and I made dinner one night for the Prestoncrest Girls house. They send me lunch every day at school, so I felt it was my turn to cook for them. Benjamin (house father) asked if we would cook at their house so they could see how Americans cook. We found chicken, rice, green peppers, onions, and tomatoes for the filling. Mom brought over fajita seasoning and tortillas from home. Ma Millicent watched avidly as we prepared the vegetables and chicken for the fajitas, and helped to roll all 30 of the fajitas. Of course the electricity went off while cooking. Thankfully its a gas stove. We made brownies for dessert (a foreign concept in itself). Some things are universal, Ma Milli and the girls licked the spoon and every bit of leftover brownie batter.

The electricity was off through dinner, so we sat down in the dark to eat by the light of a single flashlight. When we sat down to eat, the girls started asking if they could eat the paper. I realized they thought the tortilla was paper. They started saying in amazement to each other, "you can eat the wrapper!" like it was the weirdest thing they had ever heard. "You can eat the paper!" Some of them had already peeled it off and were eating the filling. The rest watched us to see how we ate it. They loved it, and ate their bulging fajitas and wanted more. I heard one little girl say, "This is my best food!" Benjamin was particularly enamored with the fajitas despite the fact that he could not pronounce the name. After devotion we served the brownies, the girls ate every crumb! Instead of bingo that night I brought wipe off world maps for them to play with. I heard one girl whisper to another girl happily, "Oh what a day!"