“Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.“
~ Leviticus 2:13
Hi James and Ellen,
Do you like to eat bread? Has your ma ever made bread for you to eat? Your grandmaa helped to make bread with the wives of the guys who were students at the rural resident leadership training center that was located in Concepción, Ñuflo de Chávez – in Bolivia. The wives of the guys who were studying at the Centro de Capacitación made bread at least once a week. Centro de Capacitación is what Bolivian guys called the training center that was located in Concepción, Ñuflo de Chávez. The Centro de Capacitación students’ wives using a beehive oven made enough bread – or small rolls, that would last for three or four days. Your grandpaa’s desire was to always have each year six married and two single guys begin studying at the Centro de Capacitación. Each married guy was to take his wife and kids with him to Concepción, Ñuflo de Chávez. Each Centro de Capacitación or rural resident training center student, his wife – if he was married, and their kids – if they had kids, would live in a small room that was on the Centro de Capacitación property – which encompasses a quarter of a square block, during the two years of the six blocks of thirteen week trimesters. The Centro de Capacitación students would be taught by different teachers in six consecutive two week module classes and one one week module class during each thirteen week trimester. Each module class was taught over a three hour period each workday morning – totaling thirty hours for each two week module and fifteen hours for each one week module. After the thirteen weeks of classes were completed, almost all the Centro de Capacitación students, their wives and kids would return to their villages and extended families where they would stay for four weeks before returning to the rural resident training center for another thirteen weeks of module classes. For a guy to graduate from the rural resident training program, the guy had to – over a two year period study, through the six series of thirteen weeks of module classes with the last trimester of module classes ending not long before Christmas. Two days of graduation exercises would be scheduled for the guys and the wives who completed two consecutive years of studying at the Centro de Capacitación.
Two classes of eight guys each Centro de Capacitación class year, the wives of the married guys who were studying at the Centro de Capacitación and the kids of each student who was married – if he and his wife had kids, meant that there were sometimes at the rural resident training center sixteen guys, twelve wives and over thirty kids. Each guy, wife and kid for every meal was to get a roll. Each time that the wives of the Centro de Capacitación students made rolls, they made hundreds of rolls. Each time that the wives of the Centro de Capacitación students made rolls, the gals really appreciated your grandmaa’s help. It took a lot of time and work each time for the wives of the Centro de Capacitación students to make literally hundreds of rolls. The gals would have to mix the correct portions of flour, water, lard and yeast to make the hundreds of rolls. The gals would let the dough rise a couple of times before they – and your grandmaa, would begin making small balls of dough with their hands which they put on long, homemade sheets of tin where the small balls of dough were left to rise again. After these small balls of dough had risen on the homemade sheet of tin, the gals would put these sheets of tin with the small balls of dough on them through a small opening into the beehive oven which the wives of the Centro de Capacitación students had gotten really hot inside by first filling the inside of the beehive oven with firewood, lighting the firewood on fire and then when the firewood was completely burned to just ashes, a wife of one of the Centro de Capacitación students would sweep the ashes out of the beehive oven. Your grandmaa and grandpaa really, really enjoyed eating the freshly baked, warm rolls that had just been taken out of the beehive oven.
God wanted a type of bread given to Him as an offering each time that His specially chosen guys and gals made a burnt offering, a sin offering and a fellowship offering. The type of bread offerings that God’s specially chosen guys and gals were to make to God was like a cake or wafer that was made in a pan or in an oven or on a griddle. When God’s specially chosen guys and gals made their special bread offerings to God, they were to make these bread offerings using fine flour, olive oil and salt – and even sometimes some incense. They were not to make per God’s mandate these special bread offerings using honey or yeast. Both honey and yeast were symbolic of sin. God did not want anything offered to Him as a sacrifice from His specially chosen guys and gals that was symbolic of sin. Moses scribed in Leviticus 2 what God expected in the grain offerings – which were the flour and specially prepared bread offerings, that He expected His specially chosen guys and gals to make to Him – together with each burnt offering, sin offering and fellowship offering. As salt was probably hard to get and expensive at the time when God’s specially chosen guys and gals first received these worship mandates from God 2450 or so years ago, adding salt to a bread or grain offering was a very special gift to God from His specially chosen guys and gals. Verse 13 states, “Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.” Your grandmaa and grandpaa will never forget a service that they attended in a Newark, New York church where bread and salt were given to each guy and gal who was in the service for each guy and gal to eat the bread and salt together. God today wants you to be like salt to other kids – and guys and gals, so that when you are with them that they will know that your lives will add a special spiritual flavoring to their lives.
Leviticus 2 (387)