Substitute Parenting and Empty Tomb Cookies

When Sylvia returned from Aniwa, she and David were delighted to care for Peter and Jenny's three wonderful sons - Bennett (12), Ennrich (Endy) (8), and Junior (4)!  We were much younger when we had our three little guys to watch after.  Each day Ben and Endy went to school at Jehovah Jireh School on the other side of town, and then needed to be picked up in the afternoon.  Sylvia had fun buying things like Twisties to pack in the boys' lunches.  We had a good supply of Aniwa oranges that came back with us from our time there for lots of healthy snacks. 

Once Ben and Endy had left for school, Junior got to color pictures and play with toys.  Boy are we glad that we didn't get rid of our boys' wooden train set!  All the time that Junior was coloring and playing, he was singing choruses.  They just seemed to bubble out of him, and David and Sylvia started singing along!

Uncle David had a great time helping Bennett learn his times tables.  We made flash cards which were reviewed at almost every meal!  Then, he got the white board out and drew a big times tables chart.  Endy started getting interested and would offer his answers to the flash cards.  Junior decided he would try, and that's when things started getting a bit confusing!

David and Sylvia hadn't colored Easter eggs for many years.  We weren't sure if the Isaac boys had ever had that experience, so Sylvia started planning to share that activity with them.  After much searching, she discovered that chickens only lay brown eggs in Vanuatu!  Not knowing if you could color brown eggs, she went ahead and bought a couple dozen.  They search for Paas Easter Egg coloring kits was completely unfruitful!  But, she had the great idea of using natural things to make the dye - like red and yellow onion skins.  She had some red hibiscus and red ginger flowers to add to the pot as well, but in the end found that food coloring and vinegar works the best!  The boys had a great time coloring their eggs and so did Aunt Sylvia!

Another thing she had heard of but never tried was Empty Tomb Cookies.  She found the recipe on the internet and Saturday morning before the boys' parents returned to Port Vila, she helped the boys to make these "meaning-full" cookies.  The boys beat the pecans remembering that Jesus was beaten and bruised in our place.  They tasted vinegar like the wine vinegar that was given to Jesus while he was on the cross.  They tasted the salt that represented the tears of the disciples who grieved for Jesus.  The sugar that we added reminded us of how sweet the name of Jesus is.  We talked about the eggs and how they represented Christ's purity as we whipped them into fluffy white mounds.  The next day when we took the Empty Tomb Cookies over to the boys, they were able to remember all the ingredients and how they related to the Easter story.

Beginning Sunday (April 18th), we get to be substitute parents for the Isaac boys again as their parents fly to Singapore for the Mission Strategy Training at our Asia Pacific Regional Office.  Please pray that we will be good parents for these precious boys with God's love and patience overflowing.