Hospitality Highlight: Frank & Caryl Sousa

This episode features a conversation with Frank and Caryl Sousa, who share their long history of practicing biblical hospitality by welcoming various guests, including exchange students, homeless individuals, and even professional athletes, into their home over the years. They discuss the blessings and challenges of this lifestyle, as well as provide practical tips for stretching meals and preparing simple, hospitable dishes.

• Automated Transcription

• Seth Weber 0:00
  Today on faith matters, a hospitality highlight with Frank and Caryl Sousa.
  
  Seth Weber 0:11
  I'm Seth Weber, and you're listening to faith matters, a podcast designed to help you think biblically in matters of the Christian faith and keep you updated on matters of faith, Bible, church.
  
  Jessica Horning 0:34
  Thanks so much for listening to the hospitality highlight on the faith matters Podcast. I'm so thankful that you're taking the time to listen. Today, we have wonderful guests today on the podcast, people that I am blessed to call grandparents in law. So I am so thankful that they get to share all the things that I get to hear at their dinner table we just get to share with you as well. Today we're going to be talking about a lot of different aspects of hospitality. But one specialty that I have been encouraged by with these two gems is having people in your home to stay for long periods of time. And so today I have with us Caryl and Frank. Souza, thanks so much for having me in your home once again,
  
  Caryl Sousa 1:16
  you are welcome.
  
  Frank Sousa 1:17
  It's your home too, my dear.
  
  Jessica Horning 1:22
  You I feel very welcome and very blessed. So we're very thankful we get to talk to you. So why don't we just back up a little bit and tell us a little bit about the history of your married life, and what are things that occupied your time in the early years and then on to now.
  
  Caryl Sousa 1:41
  We're both from large families, and so having a lot of people around is not uncommon. It's not uncommon. And so in our first year of marriage, I was seven months pregnant, and I had his family and my family over for Thanksgiving, and I lived in a small house, and we had to put the table in we had a big living room, so we put the table in there and put a eight by four plywood on it, and covered it with A sheet. And people brought chairs and dishes and silverware, and I had a little apartment size stove I could just fit the Turkey in.
  
  Jessica Horning 2:29
  Wow, you made that work, and it worked well, it did. It
  
  Caryl Sousa 2:32
  worked well. It's the first time I ever cooked a turkey. I didn't learn how to cook at home, but I watched my mom and and my dad when he cooked, and so was able to acquire some cooking skills just by watching for
  
  Jessica Horning 2:50
  you, Frank, are you also pretty natural in the kitchen? Did you learn along the way? What's your story with cooking for people
  
  Frank Sousa 2:58
  early on? No, I wasn't much of a cook, but I kind of acquired it along the way. One of the big joys for us has been cooking for groups, for family camps, for when, when they would have the Christian artists come in, like Mercy Me, or Michael Carter, people like that, Caryl and I got to cook for them, and mercy me actually gave us a standing ovation. Well, that's pretty unique, because they liked our lasagna. Yeah, I love to cook, but it's more than cooking. Hospitality is a whole lot more than just cooking a meal, exactly,
  
  Jessica Horning 3:39
  and that's what we want to want to share with others today. So were there people in your early years of married life, or people that you knew in your family circles that poured into you, were hospitable to you, that really encouraged your walk with Christ?
  
  Caryl Sousa 3:57
  You know, I would say a lot of that was after we moved to Spokane, we lived around the corner from a family that he was an elder in the church, and his kids invited our kids to church, and they became believers, and Then, I mean we, they had us over for holidays every now and then and then, we had a young man come and live with us. So us showing hospitality to him was a big key in us becoming believers, because him and our son prayed for us every night.
  
  Frank Sousa 4:42
  He lived with us for, what about a year, couple years, maybe, yeah, it was, it was great. And he was very instrumental in leading our gifts to the Lord.
  
  Caryl Sousa 4:54
  And we'd go on a trip and come back and there would be a bunch of guys sleeping on the couch. Just downstairs, and it was not unusual to get up in the morning and find somebody that I didn't know rummaging in my kitchen, in my refrigerator.
  
  Jessica Horning 5:11
  Was that the very first time you had a non family member live with you?
  
  Caryl Sousa 5:16
  No, no, we had had a couple through exchange he was there while exchange students were there. Before
  
  Frank Sousa 5:23
  that, we'd had a lot of exchange students that came in and stayed with us over the years. You know, from Germany, from Brazil, from Spain.
  
  Jessica Horning 5:33
  Was that during the time that you also had your children in the house, or had they moved on?
  
  Frank Sousa 5:38
  No, no, while they were still teenagers too, so they all went to high school together. Oh, awesome. And then after that, we had baseball players from the Spokane Indians come and stay with us. Wow. So, you know, it's always been an open house,
  
  Caryl Sousa 5:53
  and we've had several people live with us here in this house that we've been in for about 25 years. So we sat down just after we moved in here, and we were praying how God wanted us to use our house. And friend of mine who had talked to me about a young lady who wanted to stay in Spokane after she graduated college, and so she we no sooner got done praying and we looked out the window, and there they were. And so she stayed with us for a year, year and a half. I can't remember how long she was here, but it was, it was good. And then we've had other people stay with us that we're not baseball players.
  
  Jessica Horning 6:44
  That's just really encouraging and inspiring. And before Jason and I got married, the coons were willing to let me live with them for a few months, and that opportunity to let me live life with them to see how they taught their children and instructed them in the ways of the Lord, and to see how they dealt with conflict and how she prepped dinner. All of that was so instrumental for me to witness a godly marriage, godly parenting, and just having that everyday opportunity was different than if I had just come over for dinner even once or twice a week. And so I really believe that just by having people in your home, so many, so many different people from different walks of life, that was such a witness to them as well, especially once you started doing it as Christians.
  
  Caryl Sousa 7:38
  Yeah, the last couple of people we had were a couple of people who had been homeless, women who came to stay with us, and I had been at a women's event that was being held in various houses around the city. And so I got a text from him.
  
  Frank Sousa 7:59
  She got a text from me, all right, I said, make the bed, because I'm bringing somebody home that's going to be living with us for a while.
  
  Jessica Horning 8:08
  Is that usually how it went when you decided, no,
  
  Frank Sousa 8:10
  not really. But in this particular incident, she was sleeping in her car. It was cold. She had no place to go, and she called me up and I said, No, you're not going to sleep in your car. You're going to come and spend some time with us until we get things worked out.
  
  Caryl Sousa 8:32
  So I had this text, and came to prayer time, and I said, Pray for me. My husband's having somebody come stay with us for a while.
  
  Jessica Horning 8:44
  Oh, man, but, but what a blessing it was for her, I'm sure. And something that I wanted to bring up was just the passage in Matthew 25 where Jesus is talking about loving the least of these really. And in verse 35 it says, For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you welcomed me. And if you read Matthew 25 you can read the whole thing, and just see that we are called to love the least of these, and not just on the street corner or, you know, in downtown Spokane, but to invite people in of course, being wise, and I think being prayerful about it. But it really does challenge me to hear your story and to think, wow, would I be willing to do that in that moment when I heard her need, that she was cold, well,
  
  Frank Sousa 9:37
  that particular person I had known when I was volunteer at UTM so that wasn't quite so much, but one time, Caryl and I are driving home. It was Christmas Eve, and it was really, really cold outside. We were driving back from church. We'd had a church service, and there's this woman sitting in us. Store entrance, the store was closed, and she was freezing to death, absolutely shivering. So first thing we did, I stopped and I gave her a couple dollars, and I said, Hey, go get a cup of coffee. And then we drove home, and I started feeling really guilty, what a cup of coffee. Come on now. So I dug through Caryl, gave it to me, and we got a quilt, took a quilt down to her, and she's sitting there shivering. She says, Wow, I was just praying for somebody who would come and give me a blanket. Wow. And so I started to talk to her a little bit, and he says, Hey, wait a minute. It's Christmas Eve. You're coming home with us. And she says, Well, can I get my friend to come to Well, sure. Well, I didn't really know who her friend was. It was a guy, and he was staying over there at the Catholic Charities thing just a block away. And this kid, he was 24 years old, and he had been on drugs since he was 17, totally, totally fry his brain, but he was kind of a neat guy otherwise. So we brought them home with us. So she called up her mother, who she hadn't talked to for years. And bottom line is we got her together with her mother again. We took her over there, and she spent the rest of Christmas with her mother, which was so sweet, wow,
  
  Jessica Horning 11:41
  and I'm sure that obviously when you woke up that morning, you had no idea that any of this was going to be happening. And you may have had your own ideas of plans that you had to do, or people you had to see, or whatever your agenda entailed, but to have the willingness to drop the plan and follow the Lord's leading is what I think is a great challenge for us all. So you've shared a few examples of different instances where you decided, in that moment, to take people in what is a typical, I guess, way that you both decide or pray together, or whatever you do, tell us about that. What is the process of deciding, like when you had those people from the Spokane Indians, or whether it was exchange students, trying to decide, is this a season for us to do this? Because for a lot of families, either they have children or whatever their circumstances may be, they may, may need to try to be a little bit wise about the timing of it all. But I guess some insight on that might be helpful for people to see what it looks like in real life.
  
  Caryl Sousa 12:49
  A lot of times it was just his idea. It's good that we are both.
  
  Frank Sousa 12:53
  We both have, we both have the same spiritual gifts, I think,
  
  Caryl Sousa 12:57
  hospitality, yeah. So we're both gifted in hospitality, so I would be willing to go along with him, you know, I would give him the reasons why not? But ultimately, it was his decision that's
  
  Jessica Horning 13:13
  a great example for us women to be trusting of our husbands too.
  
  Frank Sousa 13:18
  I don't know I'm all that trustworthy, but it all worked out in the end, right? Grandpa? Oh yeah, it really did. Just going back to that one example, though, when I texted her and says, we're gonna have a guest for a while, that was the one time when I really didn't consult with her and talk to her first because I knew, I knew absolutely that she would go along with
  
  Jessica Horning 13:43
  it. You knew the heart of your wife, and that's absolutely, that's the, that's the, you know, I guess the difference it makes like when you are a team in ministry, you know the heart of the other and you know the prayers of the other. And it helps to be of one mind when you're making those decisions. That's
  
  Caryl Sousa 14:01
  because we've been married 56 years.
  
  Jessica Horning 14:04
  Congratulations.
  
  Frank Sousa 14:07
  56 okay.
  
  Jessica Horning 14:11
  You heard it here, folks, 56 years. Amazing. What are the biggest challenges that you've found in hosting and how has Christ grown you through them to where you are now.
  
  Frank Sousa 14:25
  Well, not all of these things worked out like we'd hoped they would. And that woman that's going back to the same person again that I said, it's going to stay here with us, that did not work out. We ended up kicking her out there. Don't need to get into all the reasons now, but we told her to leave. Yeah,
  
  Jessica Horning 14:48
  so there's a there's a point where the blessing of it becomes okay. Now we have to have wisdom in this now, but you you had the opportunity to have a witness in her life of what Jesus. Done and then having the wisdom to know when that season is over.
  
  Frank Sousa 15:04
  Yeah, it doesn't always work out like we hope to, but for the most part, it's been incredible, absolutely incredible. You
  
  Caryl Sousa 15:15
  know, we have grown in in many ways through doing this. And it's just, it's an a natural outpouring of our love for Christ that we do this. But hospitality, from the biblical dictionary, says to entertain a stranger into in one's home as an honored guest with food, shelter and protection. And it's to me, it's just a natural expression of brotherly love, which we are to love our neighbors as ourself.
  
  Jessica Horning 15:47
  And so what are the blessings that you have found, or the things that maybe the things that you have learned the most through this discipline of hospitality? We've
  
  Frank Sousa 15:59
  had a lot of a lot of good times with these people. Over the years, we've had exchange students. We have learned so much about other countries, about other people, and how they live, and a little bit of their customs and things. It was fun to watch them. We've had the homeless people. I mean, it's really, really fun. I've seen some of them go on to make something of their lives, and some of them haven't. You know, they get in their ways, and that's the way it's going to be. But we have enjoyed a lot of it, I can't really tell you how much it's meant to us to be able to do that.
  
  Caryl Sousa 16:46
  There were times when we'd have 12 people sitting around our table and with two or three different languages that were spoken, and it was normal. I mean, kids would invite my kids would invite kids over. The exchange students felt comfortable inviting kids over. And I, my sister in law asked me one time, after cooking meals for quite a few people for three or four days in a row, she says, How do you do this? And I thought, Wait, you taught catering and you do catering. It was just it's normal. Because, like I said, we both grew up in large families, his with eight kids and mine with nine. I mean, you're just cooking for a large group of people. Is not a big deal. How would
  
  Jessica Horning 17:40
  you stretch a regular meal? What are some tips that you have in stretching a meal?
  
  Caryl Sousa 17:46
  Well, some of that depends on what you're cooking, but a meat, you could always cut it up into smaller pieces, mix it with pasta and cheese or can of soup or whatever. And, you know, adding maybe you weren't going to make biscuits, make biscuits and have those, and getting your vegetable drawer and start cutting up fresh vegetables and just all kinds of things like that, you can do to add to the meal. Those
  
  Jessica Horning 18:19
  are great tips. Are there any other time savers or things that would help in preparation for hospitality? I
  
  Caryl Sousa 18:28
  would say, keep your pantry well stocked. You know, if you can, if you can, when there's something on sale, you know, buy a quantity of it. That wasn't always possible for me to do. I had a limited budget and couldn't do that. But, you know, keep your pantry stocked with things that you can pull out and make a quick meal, pasta sauce, cans of tomatoes, beans, chicken stock and various meats you might have in your freezer that can be cooked up, chopped up, like chicken chopped up and cooked with some celery and carrots and onions and add chicken broth, add a can of diced tomatoes, add a can of beans, you Get yourself a good soup. Yeah,
  
  Jessica Horning 19:22
  soup is a great way to feed a lot of people, especially if you have bread on the side. We
  
  Caryl Sousa 19:26
  were cooking for a college camp, and we had to do most of our cooking in the our prep work and stuff was our room, and it was set up as a it was set up as so they come in and get their food, but we were supposed to go to a go somewhere, and he was going to make a big pot of chicken soup, and he had to do it in the back of the U haul truck. Oh, my goodness, we could, because it was a sheet of ice. Out on the roads, and so we couldn't go anywhere, so he pulled it up under the overhang, and he made this big pot of chicken soup, and the kids called it u haul soup.
  
  Jessica Horning 20:15
  U haul soup,
  
  Caryl Sousa 20:19
  and they loved it. That's so awesome
  
  Jessica Horning 20:21
  to hear you made do with what you had in the times that you had it. That's great.
  
  Jessica Horning 20:34
  So Grandma, why don't you tell me what exactly is the dish that you have before us today? And this is a dish that you would normally serve when you're hosting guests. Yes,
  
  Caryl Sousa 20:44
  it's a dish I would serve. It's called Chicken Kyiv, but it's not your standard chicken Kyiv, which is pounded chicken breast with a frozen block of herb butter in this inside of it, and then you roll it up, and you dip it in your egg and flour, and then you deep fry it,
  
  Jessica Horning 21:10
  kind of like chicken cordon bleu, but just stuffed with different stuff, kind of, but that's not what we have here today. It's a deconstructed version.
  
  Caryl Sousa 21:19
  Yeah, I guess you would call it that a deconstructed version. I do fresh breadcrumbs and garlic and basil and oregano salt and mix it with the fresh breadcrumbs are just slices of bread, and throw them in your food processor and grind until they're nice and fine. And then you dip the chicken in butter, and then you roll it in the crumbs, and you stick it in the oven and bake it. It's very simple and easy, and it tastes really good. And then there's either wine, chicken broth, something like that, with more butter and green onions that you pour over the top.
  
  Jessica Horning 22:03
  That's great. And then what do you serve it with?
  
  Caryl Sousa 22:06
  Well, today I'm serving just rice and sauteed green beans, simple and easy, simple and easy. And what I like to do is do as much prep ahead of time as possible. I had pre cooked the green beans so that it doesn't take too long to saute. My rice is from Trader Joe's, and it's frozen, and it just goes in the microwave per package three minutes, and it's good, and it's simple, and so
  
  Jessica Horning 22:41
  each element cake. Oh, tell us about this cake. I think I have had it before in your kitchen, and I do remember loving it. I
  
  Caryl Sousa 22:49
  call it one pancake, and I think when I first found it, that's what it was called. But it's a depression cake, and it does not use eggs or milk.
  
  Jessica Horning 22:58
  Is that how people back in that era, would bake, yes,
  
  Caryl Sousa 23:02
  they didn't have access to eggs and and milk a lot of times, and so the vinegar reaction of vinegar and baking soda makes it rise. And it is so good. I could hardly get it out of the oven when I baked it when my kids were little, and they would, they would eat it just hot, right out of the pan. It was so good, it doesn't need frosting. That
  
  Jessica Horning 23:25
  is so awesome that you with a simple meal with simple ingredients, you can just pull things from your pantry and have cake, chicken, veggies and a starch. It's all in one meal together. So that's that's cool, to find new ways to use the ingredients that we probably already have on hand. I do always keep green beans in my freezer, just in case. Are these green beans also frozen, or
  
  Caryl Sousa 23:53
  these are fresh, fresh green beans? Okay,
  
  Jessica Horning 23:57
  and so you've prepped those. You you cook those first, and then now we're just going to saute them in butter,
  
  Caryl Sousa 24:04
  with onions, garlic, bacon. Bacon is the
  
  Jessica Horning 24:11
  key part here, and
  
  Caryl Sousa 24:13
  adds all the flavor. Little bit of nuts.
  
  Jessica Horning 24:17
  What kind of nuts
  
  Caryl Sousa 24:21
  I have some almonds that I'll put in.
  
  Jessica Horning 24:23
  Wow, I would not have thought to add almonds. She is cooking right in front of my eyes, so I get to see all the magic in front of me right now. But this dish is looking so good already. The chicken is pre baked and just warming in the oven. If you haven't given a try to this dish called Chicken Kyiv, I would encourage you to do so. The recipe is going to be in the Living Faith Magazine as well as listed online. And I hope that you all are inspired by today's conversation. So thank you so much for joining me today, and I hope that you all are blessed. You. Music.
  
  Seth Weber 25:12
  Before we end today's episode, there are some sad news I have to share. Jessica Horning, who has been the hospitality highlight editor for Living Faith Magazine and has been producing these podcast episodes, has moved to deer park with her husband and children, and they've joined a church there, which is a good thing, but it's sad for us because she will no longer be a part of our Living Faith Magazine and podcast team. I wanted to say a big thank you to her, because she has done an amazing job and put so much passion into this project for the past year, she had the vision for this section of the magazine and built it into something beautiful that perfectly fits with the vision of the magazine and podcast, and that's to reflect on God's faithfulness through storytelling, and then also to equip and build up members for living the Christian life faithfully. Jessica and her infectious enthusiasm will be dearly missed at our quarterly planning meetings for the magazine. While we're on the note of the team that creates this kind of content. Let me add that if you are interested in producing this kind of content, or maybe know someone who is please email me at sweber@fbchurch.org, we're always looking for more team members who are passionate about the art and craft of storytelling and communicating truth in beautiful and relatable ways, both through audio and written content. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not subscribed, please do subscribe so that you don't miss an episode. We're on all major podcast apps. Please also leave us a rating, review or comment. This helps make our podcast easier to find. We'll see you next time you.

Jessica Horning

Former Living Faith hospitality editor Jessica Horning is a wife and mother of two boys. She loves baking—specifically sourdough.

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Seth Weber

Seth is the Communications Director at Faith Bible Church and loves anything to do with design, video, audio and tech. He and his wife Kaitlyn have four children.

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