Roper Fijian Crusades: Baking Cookies at the Dorm

A few weeks ago, the dorm mom asked me if I could teach the girls how to bake cookies. That's not something they do here in the South Pacific. So of course I said yes. But in talking with the assistant principal over the dorms, we decided it would be best to involve the boys and do it as one of our Friday night activities. So two weeks ago, we prepared and set up and taught all 54 of them how to bake cookies. What a crazy night but oh what fun. And of course, they loved the cookies. We made 8 batches of cookies so maybe 24 dozen which is about 288 cookies. AND EVERYONE OF THEM DISAPPEARED at the end of the night. No one was allowed to eat any until they were all baked. We took our portable oven over and got the portable oven out of our old apartment, since we still had the key and no one is living there. That gave us 3 ovens which made the baking go faster.

They hadn't made cookies before and despite what I thought was good verbal instruction, and a video demonstrating how to make the dough and written instructions, they didn't quite completely understand. Some just took all the ingredients and dumped it into the bowl and mixed them. Some beat and beat and beat the butter and sugar until it was almost liquified. The dorms are not air conditioned so the cafeteria was sweltering in the heat. The butter was already soft to begin with. Needless to say most of the dough was pretty soft. We added extra flour, which I hate doing, but we didn't have time or the place to put them in a refrigerator and cool the dough down. They rolled their dough into balls and baked them! And surprisingly enough, they turned out pretty fabulous. They made oatmeal raisin, peanut butter, snicker doodle and chocolate chip cookies. The place was a mess. The clean-up went smoothly and the eating was extraordinary. A Successful Evening.

The following week, the dorm mom told me the girls were baking cookies on Thursday for a bake sell. Some of the girls needed to earn some money to pay for the YW Camp coming up soon. She asked if I'd come over and help since she didn't think she would be of any help to them and they'd only made the cookies that one night. They eat dinner at 6:00 so we were told they'd start baking at 7:00. On Tuesday, one of the girls came into my office and we made a list of ingredients that they would need to purchase and how much. On Wednesday, another girl came into my office and told me they had taken orders for 400 cookies. Oh my gosh! That's a lot of cookies.

Thursday, Kim and I rounded up the ovens again and some of the equipment from the week before and went to the dorms. There wasn't a soul around. It was quiet. I knocked on the dorm mom's apartment and she politely told me, "oh, they have all gone to do baptisms at the temple. They'll be here soon." They finally arrived about 7:30. They all went into their dorm area and had their nightly devotion. Then at 8:00 we were able to start baking cookies. None of the boys were helping and only about 12-15 girls were working. Which is much better then 54 kids or even 32 girls. I put them in pairs, gave them their recipes and set them to work. I wasn't as organized as the week before so it was a little more confusing....but after awhile every thing seemed to be going smoothly. But we had the same problem with them over-beating the butter and sugar and the room being super hot. Hence, soft cookie dough. They wanted to make some of them LARGE and some of them SMALL. We worked and worked and at 10:00 Elder Roper was ready to head home. I didn't feel like I could desert them. They only had about 200 cookies and were starting to run low on ingredients!!! YIKES! At 10:30 I instructed them how to time the cookies on their own as I had been doing the timing. I gave them all big hugs and well wishes and I took my sleeping husband off the couch and went home. We saw them the next day at the City Track Meet and were told they were up baking until 1:00 a.m. BUT the cookies turned out great and the customers were very happy. I never heard if they made enough money to call it good though. What a great activity for them to learn and grow from. I love these kids.

So I just have to add....The next day was Friday. On that day there was a City Track Meet. Half of the city of Suva was involved. It started at 8:00 a.m. and went until 7:00 p.m. The students were required to attend. There were no classes at any of the participating schools. It's a huge event. The plan for the dorm students was to take them to the park after the event to have their dinner. The traffic would be bad and it would be easier to just go to the park. We were asked to come to the park and do our Friday activity there. It was the last Friday of the month which is our birthday celebration for all those that had birthdays that month. They thought the track meet would be finished before 5:00. It was super hot all day. We went for a little while to the meet. Was that ever an experience! The students sit in the stands by schools. They all wear their school uniforms and they are all yelling and cheering! Many of the students who are running are running barefoot. It's 88 ° F and 70% humidity. There's no shade except for over the stands. Thank goodness for that. We didn't buy tickets before hand and the stand seating was sold out so we had to sit on the grass slopes where there was NO shade. Talk about hot! We didn't stay very long. Long enough to understand what was happening. So... At 7:30 pm they finally show up at the park. They're exhausted. We decided to just eat and send them home. They were happy with the plan. We finished eating, sang happy birthday to 6 students and ate birthday cake. It was shortly after 8:00 by then.. Maybe close to 8:30. The bus wasn't there yet to take them home so one of the boys hooked his phone up to the speaker and turned on the music. You'd never guess that 5 minutes earlier they were tired and lifeless. They all came to life and DANCED the night away. They danced for almost an hour when the bus finally came. It was lots of fun and I'm sure they slept good that night.

Here's pictures of the cooking baking activity.