Pepperkakor and love in any language

It was the Sunday before the beginning of Advent.  Advent, especially the first Sunday of Advent, is a huge deal (as in huge!) here in Sweden.  Bring on the lights.  Bring on the candles.  Bring on the season of feeling cozy in your home space, because December brings long dark days with few hours of sunlight.  It was the perfect Sunday to bake pepperkakor (Swedish ginger cookies), make Mozartkrugel (nougat in the center of marsipan dipped in chocolate), and share Advent and Christmas traditions.

Now, if you know anything of how Steve and Barb have been involved in ministry among refugees in the past 12+ years, it has mostly focused around the ministry of our local church to the local refugee center in Belgium, and focusing on women and children's ministry.  But things shifted a bit when we moved to Sweden.  We have much fewer contacts with women, and more contacts with men.  A challenge, for sure, but we're up for a challenge at any moment.  It keeps us young!

Setting the Advent candles on ~ all about creating coziness!

Kavla ut degen and using cookie cutters ~ probably the first time ever for these guys!

Love in any language...

So, there we were, on a cold wet wintery Sunday afternoon, praying that everyone would find the home where we were baking and hanging out.  Everyone showed up, (thanks to Google maps!), and we learned a whole new set of Swedish vocabulary:  "kavla ut degen" (roll out the dough),  "Ta en liten bit nougat och täck den med marsipan" (take a small piece of nougat and cover it with marsipan),  "doppa den i smält choklad" (dip it in the melted chocolate).  The designs that showed up on the pepperkakor cookies with the icing sugar were quite special:  hearts, crosses, names of several of the new Swedes who were testing their baking skills, names of home lands, and the word "love":  in English, Swedish and Arabic.

Creative juices were flowing that evening!

Finally!!  A word that we can recognize!!

At one point in the evening, as I glanced at the cross that was part of the design on a cookie, I asked the artist what was that.  First, we had to both work on our pronunciation of the word cross in Swedish:  korset.  Then I asked another question:  what does the cross mean to you.  I guess I figured that I would add my own understanding and explanation of what the cross means to me later, but I was so stunned by his response that I couldn't even say another word.  "The cross, to me, means peace.  It's the hope of our world".  This from someone who is just for the first time in his life finding out what the cross really is about.

Our host for the evening shared in church a couple of weeks later about the cookie that she still has in her kitchen, the one on which is written the Arabic word for love....cookies and love in any language.  Oh, that we might always be a people who share not only about our culture and traditions, but may love be our language.  That's the language that Jesus would speak! 

Setting the table for our soup supper, which was topped off with our pepperkakor treats

How's your Swedish??