APPLES OF GOLD

Betty Huizenga developed the Apples of Gold program as a way of sharing what she had learned over time with younger women. It actually began in my home town of Holland, MI and now is a nation-wide program. The two passages of Scripture the mentoring class is based on are:

Proverbs 25:11 "A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver."

Titus 2:3-5 "Bid the older women likewise to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be sensible, chaste, domestic, kind, and submissive to their husbands, that the word of God may not be discredited (RSV).


Apples of Gold is a 6 week study that I personally took in February of 2002. Each week, a different mentor teaches the lesson. The 6 lessons that come from the Titus 2 passage are:

1) Kindness
2) Loving your husband
3) Loving your children
4) Submission
5) Purity
6) Hospitality

A secondary purpose of the program, is to teach practical application of these principles through the following:

1) Cooking skills
2) Relational skills
3) Homemaking skills
4) Sharing hospitality with others

The 6 weeks of teaching include an hour of a cooking demonstration, a 50 minute Bible study and then 50 minutes of enjoying the delicious food prepared in the first hour. At the end of the 6 weeks is a celebration dinner with the husbands. We also received a free gift, whether it be a book, a candle or whatever each week that we attended. It truly was a time of being pampered and loved on by older women in the church. They deeply cared about us and their desire was to teach us to be the women God called us to be.

My personal testimony is that this class changed my life when it came to being a home-maker. A love for cooking and entertaining came out of this class as well as a new way to look at my marriage and being a mom. My dream is to someday host a class like this one for women in my community. By sharing this, I hope to inspire someone out there to check out this program and possibly do one in your community. The whole thing is laid out step by step in the Apples of Gold book. It's a great way for anyone who loves cooking and being a home-maker to fulfill the command in Titus 2. Check it out for yourselves!