Muffin Madness

2 nights before Christmas we were on a mission to prepare 200 gift packs for the Church's Children Christmas Party. The party was on Sunday, the next morning.

The game plan was to distribute 200 of these muffins, plus drinks, cookies, cream puffs & jello...

... into 200 of these boxes.

Yes, it was almost mission impossible. If it was only up to the two of us, we would have ended up like this:

But we knew we couldn't pull it off ourselves, since Nee has been baking for the whole day, and both of us were flat. So we called in our cell group friends for backup.

We had Eng Hean & Doreen, Alvin & Alvina. And we knew we needed extra hands. So we pulled some kids off the streets to help out.

We had Heather, a Vietnamese boat girl.

There was also Jordan, a Cambodian boy who escaped the Polpot regime.

And finally Emma Jane, from the poppy fields of Cambodia.

All they needed was a little bit of orientation & training, and they were ready to roll.

And this little bunny could really work fast.

And guess what? We started at 8pm, and we finished the whole thing, with the boxes closed & sealed & packed into larger boxes by 8.30pm. That was some effective production line there.

And we even had time to decorate Heather's birthday cake. Or rather, she did the icing designs herself.


And then something happened. Alvina decided to try the extra muffins that were lying on the table. And we realised that all of them tasted funny. It was as if the sugar was replaced by salt!

Oh, by the way, Nee didn't make them. We got them from who we thought was our trusted friend (who's a baker & trainer as well). It was horrible. All 200 pieces of them! The kids didn't even want to eat them. So we knew it would be a disaster tomorrow with 200 salted muffins.

And we knew we had to get the 200 boxes ready by hook or by cook. So we drove over to UNACO to get extra snacks & biscuits tp replace those ridiculous muffins.

We got another few hudreds of these biscuits & also some Chipsmore.

They were not exactly healthy, but they'd work. We asked Heather if she'd eat something like that. She said yeah. So that was it. It should work with the other kids.

Coming back, we had to remove all the 200 muffins from the 200 boxes, and refill each of them with the new goodies. This was what the workflow looked like.

And this is what the final gift pack looked like.

There were some discrepencies in the number of items in some of the boxes. But by then, we didn't care anymore. If God had a hand in it, the naughty children should get the cacat ones. It's a funny thought cos Nee has been teaching the kids at Sunday school that God loves all children 101%, no matter who they are & what they've done. haha.

Special thanks to Eng Hean, Doreen, Alvin, Alvina & the kids for helping out! It was an unforgettable experience. Hope you guys had fun!