No Cake, No Pancakes

To Sabbath School teachers: This story is for Sabbath, May 31.

By Andrew McChesney

W

hen Mafuang was 4, she was given an animal cookie. Grandma had bought the cookie at a mall in Thailand, and she gave it to Mom to give to Mafuang.

The little girl happily ate the cookie. It tasted so sweet and good!

But then something scary happened. Her eyes got red and puffy, and she couldn’t breathe.

Mom was very scared, and she rushed Mafuang to the hospital.

The doctor said Mafuang was allergic to wheat gluten. That meant she couldn’t eat any more animal cookies. It also meant that she couldn’t eat anything made with flour.

That was hard for the little girl. But her health depended on it. Before she ate anything, she had to check first to see if it contained flour.

So, after that, when Mafuang wanted a hamburger at a fast-food restaurant, she only ate the patty and the cheese. She couldn’t eat the bun, and she put it in the trash. When she ordered a pizza, she only ate the cheese and other toppings. She couldn’t eat the crust, and she put the crust in the trash. At birthday parties, she ate the frosting off the birthday cake and put the rest in the trash. Once she licked the frosting off a doughnut and asked her friends, “Does anyone want a doughnut?” No one did, so she put it in the trash.

One day, when Mafuang was 9, she decided to play a prank. She was sitting at the table for supper with Grandma and Grandpa in the dining room of their house in the city of Korat. Mom was in the kitchen, and Dad wasn’t home. On the table was a meal of rice, fried eggs, and thin, stuffed pancakes. Mafuang knew that her supper was only the rice and fried eggs. She needed to stay away from the pancakes because they contained flour. But she wanted to see what Grandma and Grandpa would do if she ate a pancake. So, she grabbed a pancake with her hand and bit off part of it.

Grandma and Grandpa were shocked.

“What are you doing?” Grandma cried.

“Don’t swallow it!” Grandpa exclaimed.

At that moment, as Mafuang grabbed and ate part of the pancake, Mom came out of the kitchen. She looked on with horror at what was happening.

Mafuang thought that her prank was funny. But she didn’t have a plan on what to do next. Suddenly, a strong desire overcame her to spit out the pancake. She had never felt that way before. She felt like the pancake was a disgusting piece of garbage in her mouth, and she wanted to put it in the trash.

Mafuang jumped out of her chair. She ran across the room to a trash bin in the corner. Standing over it, she spit the pancake out of her mouth.

Mom, Grandma, and Grandpa heaved a sigh of relief. They were so glad that she had spit it out.

“Never do that again because you could get really sick,” Mom said.

Mafuang didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what to say.

But she thought a lot about the unusual desire that had overcome her to spit out the pancake like a piece of garbage. She pondered it for a long time. She wondered, “What happened? Who gave me the desire to spit out the pancake?”

Then she remembered her school, where she was studying in the fourth grade. She had learned at the Seventh-day Adventist mission school about the God of heaven who created all people and cares for them. She had learned at the school to pray to God in the morning and in the evening. Mafuang had her answer. The God of heaven who created her and cared for her had filled her with the strong desire to spit out the pancake. God had saved her life.

“I know that it must be from God,” Mafuang said. “If I had swallowed the pancake, I might have been sent to the hospital. I think God is nice because He helps anyone who needs anything.”

Mafuang studies at Korat Adventist International School in Thailand, where many children, like her, come from families who do not know God. Part of a Thirteenth Sabbath Offering several years ago helped build her school. Thank you for your Thirteenth Sabbath Offering this quarter that will help other children in Asia also learn about God.