Bless This Food

Praying before mealtimes in America is a fairly widespread tradition, especially amongst church goers. I'm not sure who started the idea, but whoever he was probably had visited Papua New Guinea at some point in his life. Because here, sometimes you literally are asking God, "Bless this… what was it called again? Flying fox? Umm ok… bless this food… What I mean is… God, I am stepping out in faith to eat this thing, and I am BEGGING you to be merciful on my digestive system tonight." I'm guessing that's where the phrase "Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies" came from (nourishment rather than puking your guts out).

Thankfully, our mealtime experiences haven't been too bad so far. The most different thing we've had here up 'til now has been freshly fried fish from an open-air market that was caught that morning and cooked just before we bought it. And we've only had one throwing up episode so far. Yeah, not super exciting.

But I know the day will come.

So where do we actually get our food? And what do we eat? Good questions… thanks for asking. Believe it or not, there are actually small grocery stores in town here. The NTM base that we are living on is only 20 minutes from town (it would be shorter if the road didn't have so many potholes). Every other Thursday, we drive (on the left side of the road) into town with a few of the other new missionary families to buy our groceries for the next 2 weeks.

One of the grocery stores where we shop. Yes, those are security guards at the entrance :)

When I say grocery store, I mean just that. They are much smaller than American grocery stores, but you can get almost anything that you would get in the States… for a price. Everything (except fruits and veggies at the market) is at least 2 or 3 times the price of what it is in the States. Meat, dairy, eggs, and pretty much anything "Western" are the most expensive. Things like rice, canned tuna and mackerel, fresh tropical fruit, and vegetables are fairly cheap because they are more of what the people here eat. We try to buy more of these kinds of things, especially the fruit and vegetables because they are absolutely delicious! Yay for going organic without hardly trying. :)

The open air market where we buy fruit and vegetables

We're grateful for the ability to buy groceries and not have to eat grubs or flying fox, or any of those kinds of things. I'm sure we might have to try some at some point in time, but for now, our digestive troubles are mostly related to an overdose on papaya or coconut. :)