Category: Uncategorized

Across the Microwave

Today, I led a group of seven volunteers to visit a local shelter for people experiencing homelessness. The shelter’s volunteer coordinator and I had talked a few months back about providing a cooking class for the residents. There was one catch: The residents would only have access to a microwave.

I like to cook, but I mostly just cook for meal prepping. I do not use the microwave very often. Designing a recipe booklet with only microwaveable choices was difficult, but I felt up to the challenge. And, over the past month, I have curated a few recipes and tested them out.

I put together a recipe book for the clients. Feel free to download, try out the recipes, and let me know what you think. I have the sourcing for the recipes if you are interested.

The photo was taken today at the shelter. (I received permission for the photo.)

Cultural Competency Defined

Courtesy of Pixabay

Last Saturday, I had the privilege of facilitating a group on the topic of cultural competency. The group of about 50 people were completing the training in order to be qualified to volunteer at Kansas City, Missouri-area elementary schools. This training was developed to provide people with the opportunity to be open and vulnerable to learning new cultures.

During this two-hour training, we developed a definition of cultural competency based on words and phrases given in a group activity:

The open and appropriate engagement of others through awareness, sensitivity, adaption, understanding, curiosity, and compassion in order to be responsive to others.

I liked this definition because it does seem to encapsulate what the training was attempting to do: Be appropriate and open when engaging with others who are different. Put aside the implicit biases we may have about others. Understand, every person is different and unique; and, while stereotypes may be (sometimes helpful) cognitive shortcuts, they often cause us to make incorrect assumptions about others.

Researching history: The secrets surrounding the new church being built in downtown Kansas City

A year ago, I was approached by a minister to conduct some research on a plot of land located between 16th and 17th street, and McGee and Grand Street, in Kansas City, Missouri. My church, United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Downtown, had just broken ground on a new building. They were looking for information on the location–historical data–in order to find out neat, interesting details about this plot.

Accompanied by a fellow history-phile, I conducted research at the Kansas City Public Library’s Missouri Valley Room on this location. After hours of digging through archived documents, microfiche, and other sources, we put together a report of this information. Give it a read here.

The photo to the right is a picture of the current location at 1522 McGee.

The most interesting facts were things we didn’t find…what was the Kennedy House? What went on in the