Peanut Butter and Cantaloupe Sandwich

On the last day of last year's mission, our food stock became very limited. Meals at the beginning of the mission are actually pretty good, but as we get to the point where there are more days spent than there are remaining, we begin to see evidence that the good meats and better ingredients are more sparse and that the ingredients that were acquired with some sort of planned coordination served their purpose and are spent.  

So, on the last day, we walked up to the table where the food is available and we saw what I would call a "hot mess"... Or cold mess, because most of it was cold food.  I basically stood there with a question mark standing over the top of my head wondering if something was missing. The staff at the mission house take so good care of us, but by the world's standards, we are so spoiled, us Americans, that we seem to feel the need for some FDA color-coded portion American meat and potato meal presented to us. Not on this day though.

Anyways, last year, I stood there and saw a small left-over mystery smorgasbord, of sorts.  I saw some dry cereal, bread, peanut butter, and cantaloupe among other seemingly random things. Then in true missionary style, I made do and the metiohorical lemons became lemonade. Well in this case, it was a peanut butter and cantaloupe sandwich with the bread toasted just a little to add a special crunch and dimension to the dicoverrd dietary delight.  Now, we did have some good food on the mission trip, but in reflection a year later, this is the only meal I can vividly remember and one that I can still taste in my mouth, and I think of it now with warm affection. 

In true fish story fashion, that peanut butter and cantaloupe sandwich meal becomes much better each time I think about it.  "Why is that?", I ask myself.  I've come to believe that it isn't the fact that I discovered gold by inventing the next best thing like pizza or a hamburger. It's because the meal symbolizes so many times on the mission trips where God empowered us to do so much with very little. Whether it is seeing Tony hammer a nail with a stone, because he hasn't received a hammer yet, or how a bag of rice and beans delivered to a dirt-floor garbage shack family had them glowing or digging that hole for the latrine with a broken-tip shovel, or grabbing large tree branches and nails to create makeshift water bucket carriers, or our Julie becoming a Honduran MacGyver with using some random piece of something as a makeshift finishing tool... All of those things... Are peanut butter and cantaloupe sandwiches. It just worked... By the grace of God... The job got done and someone was blessed in the process. 

My thoughts then go to all those who have donated this year. Some gave a little and some gave a lot, but every bit counts. Whether it is a suitcase or the school supplies that went in them or whether it was a monetary donation. Our missional partners' sacrifices of their money or possessions will be compounded in impact upon our arrival. Of that I am sure.  Like when Jesus fed five thousand with 5 loaves of bread and two fish, so does God meet the needs of the Honduran people with the donations of our missional partners. I look forward to sharing our journey this year through this blog so that others may vicariously see into the window of God's kingdom that is opened in the midst of missional works such as this. 

God bless,