Meeting with and through food
Series: Stories
Categories: Stories
We met a Kurdish guy, A, and his Hungarian wife, B, a couple of years back. They opened a Kurdish restaurant in Loughborough and so we committed as a community (as many of us as possible) to trying to get along there for lunch once a week (the food was cheap enough for this to be possible).
We did this for about a year. Over time we were beginning to get to know them a little bit although the relationship still felt a bit forced as were their customers. We were praying that we would get a chance to meet them outside the restaurant context. Shortly afterwards they had to close the restaurant as it was not making any money. We were gutted, having invested so much time in going there, but then we wondered whether this might be God's way of bringing the relationship out of the restaurant.
We had found out where they lived from one of the chats with them and so Jonny dropped in one day and said hello. He ended up having a long chat and heard that they were considering moving to Glasgow. We prayed like crazy that they wouldn't. That was over a year ago now. They're still here and they are now very good friends of ours as a community. We play football regularly with A. They have had a baby girl and the mums in our church have been getting alongside them to help with parenting her. We have had lots of chats with them over the years about the gospel.
Part 2
Our relationship with A and B has led to meeting other people. One day, we invited A and B for kebabs and we wanted to get some halal chicken. We bought it from a local shop owned by M, a Bangladeshi man.
We got chatting to M and explained why we were buying halal meat. After we had cooked the kebabs, we brought a couple back to the shop to give to M. He was surprised and delighted at this gesture and we ended up going upstairs above the shop to eat them with him. The shop is on my way into work and since then, I have stopped off in the shop to say hello probably two or three times a week.
This in turn led to our meeting T. I told T that I'd love it if he showed me how to cook a proper Bangladeshi curry from scratch. He came round and we cooked four curries together, then later on a bunch of his friends came to join us and eat them, along with some folk from church. The food was amazing and we were enjoying some fun conversations.
Then M (from the Bangladeshi store) started to explain that he had recently had trading standards come visit to check the calibration on his weighing scales. He said that he had been really worried because if the scales had been wrong, then he would have been cheating his customers. And he said that in Islam, the worst sin is cheating your brother because Allah can't forgive you — it's between you and the other person only.
So we shared the story of David and Bathsheba, and how David had cried out to God in the Psalms, "Against you, and you only, have I sinned". This opened up a discussion of all sorts of Old Testament stories, showing the failings of the prophets but the greatness of our God. We were also able to explain how Jesus was a different prophet (and more), perfect in every way.
Part 3
Our Bangladeshi friend, M, invited us for dinner. This was the first we had been invited into their home, and we were particularly excited about meeting M's wife, S, and getting to know their five kids a bit too.
We turned up at theirs a bit before dinner. We were happy when our 1 year-old, Jacob, played quite happily with their kids. But then we sat down to eat together. Fairly early in the meal, Jacob starting crying and screaming. Everyone turned to look at him and started asking if he was all right. He didn't settle, and Emma took him out of the room. After screaming for about 10 minutes, he eventually did the most enormous burp we've ever heard. To our relief, this seemed to calm him down.
So the conversation was able to get up and running again. We enjoyed the rest of our dinner and moved onto pudding. Tea was served too. All was running smoothly until suddenly Jacob vomited all over their kitchen table. He started by bringing up the milk he'd just had, then came his dinner, and finally his lunch too. It went everywhere!
Thankfully Emma and I had prayed before we went to their house: we were feeling conscious that Jacob might not eat or sleep that well as he can be a bit funny in other environments. By God's grace, neither of us got stressed out about it. M and S were amazing. They were totally relaxed —obviously used to such things happening having five kids themselves!
I held onto Jacob throughout the whole process — I cleaned him up, bathed him afterwards, and put him to bed. M was really struck by this. He couldn't believe how much of a 'hands-on' dad I was.
After we put Jacob to bed, M's kids noticed the children's Bible that we read to him. Emma then had an amazing opportunity to read them some stories from it. They were so excited to see that our Scripture is made into child-friendly versions with pictures! In the end, Emma was able to read them stories from the Old and New Testament for about an hour! It was very exciting!
After they went to bed, we carried on chatting to M and S until quite late. The conversation turned naturally to Christianity and Islam. We talked for a couple of hours. Among other things, the conversation touched on the difference between Sunnis and Shias, Catholicism and Protestantism, what is at the heart of the Christian message, why we love getting to know people from different cultures, despite both coming from quite traditional families who don't generally forge relationships with people of different nationalities. We also had the chance to explain why we needed a mediator between us and God.