Quesadillas, ¡ricas quesadillas!

After more than 25 years in missions and most of that in Mexico, you don’t always have the opportunity to do something new. However on October 3 & 4, we had one of those experiences. At Jubilee Church during our recent campaign, 40 days of Community, each cell planned and funded a community project. Our cell decided to give sweat suits to a home for abandoned youth here in Pachuca. To pay for the sweat shirts the cell participated in two fund-raising projects. One was a raffle of Mary-Kay products and other was to sell quesadillas on a street close to where the cell meets.

Dee took Rosy, our lead cook in this project, to the market, and Rosy spent a day preparing the fillings for the quesadillas. Potato with chorizo (a Mexican sausage), pumpkin flowers, mushrooms, huilacoche (corn fungus known in the United States as “corn smut”) and cheese.

We all met at Rosy and Clemente’s house and moved a few tables, chairs and a gas stove to a corner where Rosy had asked permission to set up for two evenings. Up went the hand-made signs, and the stove was lit. Though sales were slow at first, we eventually were working hard to keep up with the orders. Rosy would take the corn dough, roll it into a ball, put it in the press and when it was flattened, she would drop a spoon full of the requested filling, fold it over and seal the edges and then drop it in the deep fryer. One of us then would watch the quesadilla deep fry, take it out, punch a hole in the crust and then add sour cream, cheese, lettuce and green sauce. We then handed it over to be eaten right there or pack it up for take home.

The result of the sale was a lot of fellowship and laughs as Dee would yell out “Quesadillas, quesadillas, ricas quesadillas!!!” Several families from the church came to support us by buying our product. And of course, we ate a few too (which we paid for!)

We also were excited that we reached our goal for the sale those two nights. We hoped to collect $1000 pesos (about $100 dollars) and we did that. With the raffle money, also about $1000 pesos, we were able to buy 40 sweat suits for the kids at the youth center.