Do you prefer chocolate or coconut?
This month, we have a special focus on the Amazon, as our team gathers for the annual jungle pastors conference. The conference allows pastors from all over the Amazon to come and receive biblical and practical training that assists them in bringing the Gospel to some of the most remote and forgotten areas.
In that spirit, we thought it would be fun and fitting to share a recipe for a traditional Brazilian dessert called Brigadeiro. With only four steps, and 4-5 ingredients (depending on which flavor you choose), it’s a creative activity for Valentine’s Day that also serves as a sweet reminder to pray for the pastors and JMI team in Brazil. The two versions of the recipe can be found below.
This recipe comes from Kelly Minter’s cookbook, A Place at the Table. It’s found in a chapter where she recounts one of her many trips with JMI to the Amazon jungle, where she met a pastor and his wife with a miraculous story of God providing fish when they were desperate to feed their family.
Manoel, his wife, and children had experienced an extreme rainy season, leaving them with no food on a Sunday morning. Michele, his wife, told Manoel that they could not go to church, because she was worried about her children’s hunger, but Manoel insisted that they get in their canoe and make the journey to church. After the service, Manoel was asked to help with another service, which prompted even more worry from his wife. Finally, hours later, their family piled into the canoe once more to make the trip back home. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a fish that was over three feet long leapt straight into their boat, right at Michele’s feet! God had seen the need of Manoel’s family, and had provided a fish that fed the family for an entire week.
At the end, Kelly offers this encouragement to readers:
“As you cook these recipes and sit down to eat them, remember and pray for the countless image-bearers of God who are living in daily dependence on His provision in the Amazon jungle. Remember that we, too, live fully at the mercy of God, and that every meal we have on our plates is by His grace and from His hand. Whether we buy it from the store, grow it in our gardens, or it jumps straight into our canoe when we least expect it, our God provides, and He’s always on time.”
View the cookbook
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