"Cafe-cards" and Spoiled Beans

When I was working as a missionary in Honduras, I had the equivalent of a cafe-card to keep track of how much I was spending on food. I was actually the one in charge of hole-punching every missionary's card at every meal: 15 lempiras (79 cents) for breakfast and dinner, 30 lempiras ($1.59) for lunch. A little over $3 a day if you ate every meal. Every once in a while, a missionary would want to know how much they owed the ministry. I always received a grim response in return. "Carolin, you owe around 1400 lempiras," I said. "¿Como?" That was basically the expression on her faces. And that's when things got extreme. "I'm going to fast for a week!" Easier said than done. She would've disappeared.

I fell into that plight myself. I was discussing with the president of the ministry that I could save x number of dollars that I owed the ministry in food if I were to just eat breakfast and dinner from then on. He hated the thought of missionaries skipping meals because of lack of money. I technically never should have had any conversations with people about how much money they owed the ministry for food because we were all supposed to pay in advance. But who had the money?!

Another experience I will never forget is helping out in the kitchen Friday afternoons. Every Friday we would prepare the food for Sabbath. Usually enough beans to serve 20+ people. This may not seem like a big deal, but there was no electricity at the mission station. We had to pray that the beans wouldn't spoil by the next day, and we used every trick we could think of to ensure that. Bring them to a boil in the evening and in the morning again before heading to church. Some Sabbaths we'd return from church and find a tasty pot of beans ready to put on our rice. Other Sabbaths we had to unfortunately dump the entire pot because it had gone sour. We'd mourn for just a moment and then try to keep in mind that God would provide for us. And He always did.

In Honduras I came to understand what Jesus prayed when He said, "Give us this day our daily bread." We'd sometimes worry that we might not have enough food to serve the guests that joined us on Sabbath. Or we might be told that we had no more money to buy groceries that week. We'd have to get it on credit from the village. No matter the challenge, none of us ever went hungry. God was, is and will continue to be faithful!