Central Eurasian Mission - Week 25 - Sept 4-19, 2017

This week we "finished" our mushroom project - "finished" in that all the work is done and mushrooms are being produced, harvested, marketed, cooked and eaten.  We went to do our final visit and take pictures.

This is Zhandoc (our champion....the one with the ideas who gets things done) who planned everything, and the other man is one of the deaf workers who will continue on with the cultivation of the mushrooms.



Bags of substrate with mushroom spores embedded into the substrate.



Dad with a bag (I know he wants to take it back to our apartment and try it himself)



Mushrooms growing out the end



Mushroom clumps in plastic wrap ready for delivery to stores/restaurants.



This is one clump that came from the end of the bag.  Zhandos gave it to us for our consumption



Here is the biggest "cap".  You can see my hand underneath



All the caps on the table just before I slice them and cook them.



In the pot to boil for 30-40 minutes.



So - - what do I think about them?  I'm undecided - need better recipes for what to do with them. Peter Nilson said he'd send me a killer recipe for mushroom soup.  They were kinda like cutting up clams - thick and rubbery.  I know, I know, I probably just don't deserve gourmet mushrooms.

We didn't have an official 'closing ceremony' with lots of on lookers, but Zhandos took us to a little  close by restaurant for refreshments - no crowds or newspaper reporters or cameras, just us.



While we were eating, Zhandos told us about his other ideas -he wants to do another mushroom project with a different NGO or with a consortium of 3 or 4 NGOs - he wants to develop a social cafe operated by and used by disabled people....a place where they can work and earn ...and a place where they can come and relax and mingle - he wants to develop a distribution center that has a big cooler where, "nearly outdated food" can be brought and stored and then distributed to single mothers and to other families who have many children but not enough money.  He has yet another project (which I am not too keen on because of my love for bunnies......) which is to develop a rabbit meat production facility.  Enough said..............I can only do so much repenting.



We shared with you the drama of getting new furniture for our bedroom. Well...now begins the drama of getting two twin beds for our second bedroom.  This took two days of looking before we finally found what we wanted.  Then sheets......you'd think this would be easy.....the bed place should have sheets, right? -wrong.  This seems hard to us because we have to take taxis or buses to these different establishments - rather than driving around in our own car.  But we finally got the sheets and mattress protectors.

 When finally done, we treated ourselves to dinner at a Korean chicken barbecue.  The chicken was great, but I didn't "get" the barbecue part.



The next day we took all of our old furniture that'd we been storing in the second bedroom, and put it in the lobby area outside our apartment.





That was on Thursday; we texted the landlord asking him to come and pick up the stuff; now it's Sunday and everything is still there.  I think the landlord may be hoping someone will come and steal everything.

The furniture was delivered and assembled, and we then prepared the room for future guests.



After District meeting on Friday.....it was the last time that there would be just four of us in the district, as new missionaries came later that day....we went to our favorite cafe to celebrate "The Best District in Astana".  The Shashleek is soooooo good!



I have been keeping a tally of the wildlife we've encountered while here in Kazakstan.  So far we've seen eagles (well....eagle) if you remember Fluffy, and Golden Pheasants (which seemed a lot like yellow cockatiels).  But today while doing my in the dark early morning walk on the track, I came upon the rare and endangered amphibious steppe frog!!!!



I tried to get him bigger so you could see how green he is.




Till next week