My Stay in Arkansas

This was the main reason I went to Arkansas….to help our friends bake over 6,000 pounds of nut cake. I ended up doing much more then bake and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! In late August I decided to go help the Ken Kauffman family for originally five weeks, (ended up being seven) baking their seasonal nut cakes. It was a time of stretching, learning and being totally out of my comfort zone but it was very rewarding and something I’ll never regret doing! My second Sunday there a quote was written on the white board that I thought fit quite well; “God has big plans for you, but those plans will most likely require you to expand your comfort zone-or leave it altogether”

My first week in AR was pretty slow. We were supposed to bake, but the company that the glazed cherries comes from, did not ship them when they were suppose too. Since that happened I was able to get the routine of the Kauffman house down, enjoyed the monthly sewing with the church ladies, took my first CLE road trip with the Kauffmans, helped give Nathanial a birthday celebration, enjoyed spending time with the church youth, and finally finished out the week with a test baking. It was a full week and after it went by so fast I decided I didn’t have time to be missing home; (and I really was that week) I would be back before I knew it :) In the picture above we are selling Christian Light Education (CLE) books in Clarksville AR. at a CLE teacher workshop.

And the next day after getting home from Clarksville at 10:30 P.M. we are up at 4:00 A.M. and on the road to Latham MO. to sell books at the next CLE workshop. Thankfully we stayed a night in MO but still had a late night breaking down all the books, and then an early morning to get home by noon. I really enjoyed the workshops, Latham Mo. was my favorite but that’s probably because after Clarksville I knew what I was doing :) It was fun listening to the different seminars; the speakers were really good and a lot of fun to work with. It was great having the same speakers for both workshop locations! I also enjoyed listening to Ken give teachers’ advice as we would sell the books; they know their CLE rep and come to him about everything.

My first week or so there it did nothing but rain, even in MO! The ducks enjoyed a ready made pond right out the back door.

Baking officially started my second week there. This was our “assembly line”…nuts, dates and cherries get weighted out and put in a large bowl, and then the batter is mixed up in a mixer. One of the guys would then mix the batter and nuts, etc. together and then bring it over to where they would put it in pans. As each pan was being filled it had to be weighed so it was at the correct weight (we made 4 different sizes), then it was passed down to be “pressed”. Each cake had to be pressed and smoothed out by hand; we had to get them tight so when they’re cut they don’t fall apart. This was a job that after a 400 pound baking day your fingers were very sore. As soon as you started again the next morning your fingers reminded you that this had already been done a long time the day before :) After the cake was pressed it was then passed down to be decorated, this was when the cherries and pecans were put on the top. Then it was off to the oven to be baked for an hour or more; depending on size. After they came out the cakes were dumped and glazed right away, then left to cool for a while. Once cool they were packaged, labeled and boxed up to go out. I did a variety of jobs during my time there, I started decorating but towards the end I pressed the cakes into the pans. I would also sometimes line the pans with cake liners, cut the cherries to the right size to decorate with and help label and box cakes. All of us would pitch in on clean up as that was a big job! Most days we would bake around 300-400 pounds, each batch was 25 pounds so the person who mixed up our batches would have to mix up 12-16 each day. One day we started at our normal time, 6:30 A.M, and did 450 pounds (18 batches); by lunch we had 14 batches in the oven! That was a record day for only five people working! Usually we had all the cakes in the oven by 2:30 P.M. but still had to package over 200 cakes and clean up from baking.

The nuts, dates and cherries before the batter is poured in.

The large cooler

Dishes, dishes, dishes! On this day we washed 225 pans plus everything else we used. This was one job that wasn't that enjoyable but we would always make it fun :)

My second weekend we sold cakes at a fall festival in Bella Vista AR. It was fun to sell the cakes we had just made that week!

This is the little girl Melanie and I took to church back in April, we also took her mom to work and heard a little more about her life story. Ever since then this little girl has been on my heart, she comes from such a sad home situation. I enjoyed spending a little time with her one Sunday evening; we took her and her older brother on a small hike in the state park.

Our first shipment of cakes going out!

Girls I was able to become friends with while I was in Arkansas. Carla Schrock, Kaylena and Lydia Bontrager and myself. I worked with Carla and Kaylena so we became pretty good friends.

This was pour day for the green tomato relish. While I was there we made relish three times. One day we would cut boxes and boxes of veggies and then the next we would cook them with spices and then pour it in jars. I preferred the nut cake but would have to say that after a cutting day I would feel very satisfied to have done all that work and it was finished :)

We would measure all the veggies out on “cutting day” into these buckets. On this day we did 37 batches and since I had to wash them I decided to have some fun stacking them to dry :)

Five weeks into my stay my family came over to see me and to celebrate Andrew’s 20^th birthday. I was thrilled to still be able to make and decorate a German chocolate cake for him.

Ellianna was enthralled watching Justin light the candles.

Sunday after lunch we drove up to White Rock Mountain, the views were beautiful!

A few days before I left we had a day off from work, some friends and I went out and enjoyed an afternoon together. Here we went into the Huntsville Harps store to see the cakes we had made. That was pretty neat! We could pick out which ones we did or didn’t do :) The cakes we made are in over 35 Harps stores and in other stores as well.

The church there in Huntsville just started a monthly bible club for community children, I was able to go to the first two and they were a good start! Here a class is making caramel apples while some of the church youth guys are playing scrabble on the fridge with about a dozen letters :)

This picture brings back many memories! :) This was the night Nathanial decided to “dress up” and be different things; I told him this one was my favorite :) When Nathanial’s around there sure to be laughter, he brightens any room that he’s in! There were a few times after lunch at the bakery I would wonder how I was going to get through the rest of the day; until Nathanial got there after school. He would brighten the whole bakery up and help get your mind of off how tired you were, or how much there was still to do. Nathanial also gave up his room for me to stay in, and with the help of his brothers could make the kauffman house quite entertaining. He would love to tease me and I actually was able to get him a few times. :) After living together for seven weeks we became like brother and sister. I miss him greatly and sometimes wish I could again hear a knock on my bedroom door, his nickname for me, and “just had to tell you good-night”

The Friday before I left there was a youth social and I would say it was my favorite. All the youth went to sing at two homes, I really enjoyed singing at the second place! We sang in a carport that was attached to the house and it had great sound acoustics for 25+ voices. Not to mention we sang some of our favorites so we really sang :) After that we went back to a family’s house for supper and to watch two skits. My favorite was “shadow surgery”; all of us could hardly stop laughing. This one above was rather entertaining as well. The arms were actually the men’s wives behind the curtain, and they gave the men their whole morning routine without seeing what they were doing. Yes we did get quite a few laughs over this one too :) I enjoyed spending time with the youth/church over in Arkansas! We did lots together and made many memories; some of my favorites were…going to Joplin to hear a group sing and then eating out at Chipotle, after a hymn sing sitting and talking over popcorn and drinks for a couple of hours, playing volleyball and the above; the last youth social. By the time I left they had become almost like another church family to me, I miss them all and well have to go visit them every so often :)

The day before I left we had a “family day” baking. It was only the Kauffman family including their married son and his wife. It was a normal baking day; though it didn’t feel like it, we made 400 pounds of nut cake and had all of them in the oven by 1:30 P.M.! As for it not feeling like a normal baking day, we threw in so much fun to the day I had to remind myself we were actually working. To top it all off we finished in record time, even with all the goofing off :) Mid-afternoon after all the cakes were out of the oven we had a late lunch, we did up a big meal even bring the grill out to grill chicken. I thought that was pretty neat, all these weeks we had been working hard getting as much done as quickly as possible, and here in the mist of cakes cooling we sat down and ate a full meal at the table we would normally weigh and pack cakes on. To me that baking day was the perfect finishing out day!