BAKER- Majors David and Susie Erickson

As Hurricane Ida made landfall on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Salvation Army is prepared to meet immediate needs of food, clothing, cleanup kits, and emotional and spiritual care. Emergency Disaster Services Director of the Salvation Army Southern Territory Jeff Gellitz said, We are positioned to provide immediate assistance to those in the path of the storm and have access to a substantial network of resources which can be activated as soon as it's needed. Right now, the best way to support response efforts is by making a financial contribution. This allows necessary items to be purchased and ensures disaster survivors and first responders receive assistance quickly. For more information on the Salvation Army's continued response, visit salvationarmyusa.org. To make a financial gift to support Hurricane Ida relief, donate online at helpsalvationarmy.org or call 1-800-SAL-ARMY.

That's 1-800-SAL-ARMY. Hi, I'm Megan Hoffer. And if you're enjoying Words of Life, I want to invite you to check out another show brought to you by the Salvation Army. Heartbeat is a one minute show about real life. Heartbeat touches on topics ranging from finances and prayer to dating and mental health. If you're looking for a short message of hope to challenge you and brighten up your day, subscribe to Heartbeat wherever you get your podcast or visit salvationarmysoundcast.org. Welcome to Words of Life.

I am Chris Benjamin, the producer of Words of Life and director for Soundcast. And finally, welcome back to the studio, Bernie Dake. Man, it's good to be home. Thanks, Chris. You're doing okay over there.

I am happy to return the reins to you. So welcome back, Cheryl again. She'll be with us in a few weeks in our next series. Yeah.

But right now we are in the middle of a series called Crafted. And each week we've been interviewing different artists of all types of mediums, learning about their passion, their history and how they found this art, and then also how they use their art as an act of worship. And today? And today we are hanging out with our friends, Salvation Army officers, David and Susie Erickson. And you'll recognize her voice because she was actually with us in a previous series called Barefoot Cinderella, and this was based on a book that she had just written. So they welcomed Steven, who's our media editor, and myself to their house to bake us some delicious bread and make us lunch.

Jealous. So what we're talking about as far as their art is, I think it's probably a little more David's passion than Susie's, but baking as a craft. But even more so specifically for them, and I know you can vouch for this. Absolutely. Hospitality they have taken to an art. Whenever you want someone to feel like they're welcome, call Susie Erickson.

She knows how to make people feel like a million bucks. Yeah, absolutely. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation with the Ericksons, and join us again next week. Well, for me, it actually began with the science project for our daughter in sixth grade. She had chosen, I don't know why, but she had chosen what different reactions or what different reactions yeast has to different feeders for food. And so I helped her on that project and we tried things like sugar and grape juice and apple juice and orange juice and just the yeast without anything and compared the results. So that got me a little bit interested in yeast. And then I just started from that to just starting to apply it to bread. And I learned so much as I went through that process with her and those first attempts at making bread that it just kind of hooked me on the science of it.

The precision of it that is needed for bread making. We really define ourselves as a scientist and an artist in the kitchen because we cook that way. That's really our personalities. And I learned how to cook with my mom in the kitchen and then in a farmhouse. And so we cooked with a little bit of this and a little bit of that. So that is really our personal styles. So I try not to do anything with yeast and he does everything with yeast. I've recently over the last six years began experimenting with sourdough and only really recently in the last two years, two and a half years, had much success at it.

And so it's been a lot of fun. But one of my favorite ones to make is a brioche bread simply because of the design and the pan that it comes in. It comes in a floret type pan that you make it in and it's just a pretty bread once it's made. Well, I think that for me, I see every time we gather people at our table as a recreation of what I believe the wedding feast is going to be like when we all gather in eternity. And so I try to, when people sit at my table, I want them to feel that sense of love that we will feel when we are there with Christ at the wedding banquet. And so I want every little detail to be intentional and special so that the people that sit at our table know how much they are loved.

Not only by the Eriksons, but by God himself and how special they are to him. And for me, it's really just that making people feel special, giving them an unexpected gift. I usually bake a loaf of bread usually every Saturday that we're here because that's one of my Saturday habits is baking bread, either Saturday or Sunday. And Sunday or Monday, I usually give at least three out of every four loaves away. And it's just a way of making people feel special. Very often I don't, when I'm baking it, I don't know who I'm baking it for.

I'm just baking it to enjoy the process of myself and then to give it away. And many times those individuals were just blessed. You know, there's a billboard out there that says the secret ingredient is caring. The truth of the matter is even our grandchildren know the secret ingredient is love. And everything we bake, everything we do, when we host people in here, it's just a gift of love from us that we are able to give back to people and share with them.

And so for us, the secret ingredient is simply sharing Christ's love many times through hospitality and food. This is a lamb. It's basically a razor blade.

This is called a UFO lamb. This is where you score the bread in order to allow it to expand. And you can do decorative scoreings, which I'm going to attempt to do as we do this. The big score will allow it to expand more.

And then the decorator. Rest is really renewal. And however you find that renewal, you find the rest that regenerates you from time to time for the days that you have ahead. And I enjoy baking bread and the experimentation of it.

Yes, I'm the scientist, as she said. But the experimentation of different recipes and different techniques in the bread baking is relaxing to me. It takes my mind off of the problems of the world. It takes my mind off the task I have to do. It just allows me to just rest my mind. And that in turn renews me for all the aspects of what God has called me to do. The creativity of it is also renewing in the sense, again, that my creativity is not in the bread itself, in the mixing of the dough.

That is fairly straightforward. But in the final touches of when I'm making a sourdough, the scoring of the top of playing with different designs to see how they come out. And many of them have been very beautiful.

Some of them have been failures. But it's just been the fun, exciting time of seeing how it's going to develop, because when you cut it, you know what you've cut. But until the bread expands in the oven and really reveals the scoring that's been done, you don't understand how it's going to look. I guess you could say the joy in baking bread is that a failure still tastes good. And that, hey, we're going to have failures along the way. And that's OK. You can still enjoy it.

You can still come back from it. As a matter of fact, the last couple of sourdoughs haven't risen as much as I would have liked to and have been a little bit flat. But hey, you keep at it. Keep trying different techniques to make it better.

And it will improve as you go along. And then to give it the good, shiny crust on top, you take butter and rub it all over it. Well, I'm inspired by the way Jesus did life around the table. And He ate with every person you could even imagine.

Sinners, Pharisees, and He engaged with people. And so I've really learned that we can learn a lot about people when we invite them to our table, people that maybe we wouldn't necessarily find in our circle of friends. But food has a way of bringing us together and brings cultures together. And so I've learned to be more accepting of people outside my culture and to bring people to my table that maybe I wouldn't invite necessarily into a closed circle of friends. But that shared meal and shared experience really, I've learned to embrace people and all of who they are. And I think that food has a way of doing that. And people really open up their hearts when you break a loaf of bread. It's the shared experience around the table. And that might take several meals around the table before you get to the real heart of what's going on with people.

But that's okay. We all like to eat. And we've gotten to know our neighbors that surround us in our home here simply by having meals together, either whether it be just crackers and cheese or having a sit-down meal around the table and just fellowshipping and talking. And it is evangelism because you are showing somebody that they are loved, that they're cared, that their story is important to someone else other than themself. And we try to live the life that we share in the sense that we may be the only Christ some people ever see. And that's just one way that we can live that Christ is through hospitality, through the gifts of food and bread, and just loving on people. And they don't have to have a crisis going on just in everyday life.

It's a lot like golf in that I'll have several failures in a row and about ready to give up on a recipe, and I'll have a success, and it keeps me coming back. The Salvation Army's mission, Doing the Most Good, means helping people with material and spiritual needs. You become a part of this mission every time you give to the Salvation Army. Visit salvationarmyusa.org to offer your support, and we'd love to hear from you. Email us at radioatuss.salvationarmy.org, call 1-800-229-9965, or write us at P.O.

Box 29972, Atlanta, Georgia, 30359. Tell us how we can help. Share prayer requests or share your testimony. We would love to use your story on the air. You can also subscribe to our show on iTunes or your favorite podcast store, and be sure to give us a rating. Just search for The Salvation Army's Words of Life. Follow us on social media for the latest episodes, extended interviews, and more. And if you don't have a church home, we invite you to visit your local Salvation Army worship center. They'll be glad to see you. This is Bernie Dake inviting you to join us next time for The Salvation Army's Words of Life.