Ministry Of A Sugar Cream Pie . . .

 "And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi,

Let me now go to the field,

and glean ears of corn after him

in whose sight I shall find grace.

And she said unto her, Go,my daughter."

Ruth 2:2  KJV

For this story we have to go back to the week of June 23rd - 28th, when I was up at Quaker Haven Camp (Syracuse, Indiana, USA) serving as a counselor for the week.

Sunday evening, after I had eaten my dinner I went up to the counter to get my dessert (a dish of ice cream) and was told by a staff member working in the kitchen that they had made 2 Sugar Cream Pies for lunch that day, my mouth began to water! I found out there was one piece left . . . but then the bad news that someone ate it! So not right. I gave the person who ate the last piece, a member of the camp staff, a bad time all week - as he knows how much I just love Sugar Cream Pie.

Well, Thursday night as I patiently sat in the dinning hall waiting for my table to be called to get our dinner, the gal from the kitchen came out and told me that she had a special surprise for me. Hummmmmm, wonder what that could be? I ate my dinner and went up to the counter to get my dessert and she asked me what I was doing . . . I was trying to decide which piece of cake I wanted. She reached behind the water pitchers on the counter next to her and pulled out a fresh Sugar Cream Pie! Oh, please don't tease me with that! I asked if I was going to get a piece and was a bit shocked to heard that the whole pie was for me! Seems someone, or a couple of someones, felt bad about eating that last piece on Sunday. WOW!



Slice of Quaker Haven
Sugar Cream Pie

She dished up a slice for me and I went back to my seat and enjoyed that slice of Sugar Cream Pie like I had never enjoyed one before! When I had finished, I went over and gave her a BIG HUG and thanked her. She asked how it was and I told her how it just slithered down my throat . . . you see it was still quite warm and hadn't quite set-up yet. I also thanked the other Friend, the one who had eaten the last piece on Sunday that I had given such a bad time to all week and gave him a hug too.I took the rest of the pie home with me on Friday and enjoyed every bite!



Quaker Haven Sugar Cream Pie

Now, what very few know, and I don't believe anyone at camp knows, is how much this Sugar Cream Pie meant to me that week. I had received a phone call from a friend that I serve on a Board with earlier that week with some information that I hadn't expected to hear. He told me a bit about what had happened at the meeting I had missed that evening, since I was at camp, and I was very upset hearing it. He called as he wanted me to hear it from him first and I appreciated that, but I had to put that aside and get on with camp.

So you see, the simple jester of that Sugar Cream Pie at camp was huge to me. It touched me very deeply. I felt so loved and blessed that night and still feel that way today. They had no idea about the phone call I had received earlier in the week and how upsetting that was to me, or how overwhelmed I was that they took the time to make a Sugar Cream Pie for me that afternoon. Their ministry to me was such a blessing!



Moyallon Sugar Cream Pie

Well, I just realized that was five weeks ago yesterday. And so yesterday, you could say, I continued that ministry and blessing as I made my very first Sugar Cream Pie with the help of my Friend, Margaret, who also loves Sugar Cream Pie. We used the recipe from Quaker Haven Camp, thanks for sharing it with us! We had to be a bit creative as we couldn't find a ready made pie crust to bake for it, or a pie plate, or any vanilla. So, we used a sheet of pastry - which had to be cut and spliced together in a square baking dish, used unrefined cane sugar (instead of regular sugar - since we didn't have vanilla). Several of us tasted the filling after I filled the pie shell . . . Yummy!

I called this Sugar Cream Pie the 'Moyallon Conference Center Sugar Cream Pie' . . . because it was made at Moyallon Conference Center in Northern Ireland. I so enjoyed being able to share it with the eleven Irish Friends who joined the six members of our Pilgrimage group last night for dinner and conversation. I did share what it was and where the recipe came from.



Me - taste testing Moyallon
Sugar Cream Pie

So you see, the ministry of that Sugar Cream Pie made and given to me five weeks ago continues on. I have now not only shared the whole story with all of you, but thanks to Quaker Haven staff, I was able to share a piece of my 'home' OR my heritage (my Great-Grandma Rummel use to make Sugar Cream Pie) with some of my new Irish Friends and my fellow Pilgrims on this journey.

For those who don't know it, Sugar Cream Pie is the State Pie for the State of Indiana.

And so goes the ministry of the Sugar Cream Pie . . .