St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 4 Food!

You may think this not fully serious, but food is an enormous consideration on a trip like this. Now, you can buy food in St. Michael. However at the "AC" (Alaska Commercial Store) you might want to be careful how much you pile into your grocery cart. For instance, one bag of your favorite flavor of Doritos corn chips (as long as your favorite is what is on the shelf) will set you back $9. Yep. That's one bag, not a case. That makes buying a gallon of gas in St. Michael seem a bargain at $8 a gallon. Since they all drive 4-wheelers and buy it a gallon at a time, it doesn't seem so bad. But I digress...

The generous people of our church provided the bulk of our meals. They were asked to pre-cook a meal, Lasagna, stew, stroganof or some other delicious meal to feed 25. Now we took 16 people to St. Michael. We did eat like kings, it was all very good, especially after working so hard each day. However, like magic, several of the village children would suddenly appear at meal times, it was amazing. There was no dinner bell, they just seemed to know. They were pretty hungry kids and you got the feeling they didn't eat as well as this most of the time. They really loved the apples and oranges too. Probably not something they get frequently. So, we usually had 6-8 kids show up to eat and often 3-4 adults that would also appear and be invited to join in. Sometimes they came in and ate and left without a single word, sometimes they would join in the conversation. It was all interesting to be part of the culture there.

Now the kids were really well behaved. They would wait patiently to be served - that is an important distinction to make as we served the meals to them. Some were so very grimy that for the sake of the possibility of ingesting something noxious we insisted on delivering the food to them. But they were polite and patient to get their food. They certainly would get squirrelly at times but a single instruction and they would comply, no back talk, no arguing no pouting. Great kids. Very curious and wanting to "help" you with whatever project you were working on.

I also wanted to draw your attention to the kitchen facility or the lack of such. We hauled the stove from the house over to the church so we could cook and serve food in a large enough area, which necessitated special wiring to make it work. The size of this little stove is important too. I think we could have put it in a phone booth (what is that?) with room left over to cook too. It was small which necessitated that all the meals be prepared in a careful sequence of heating and combining. The ladies did an amazing job with that. Notice their smiles, that wasn't just for the camera, they were always that way. Of course they were cooking for a captive audience. They could have served sawdust with cheese sauce and it would have tasted awesome. As it was we didn't have to eat sawdust because the food was soooooo good and there was enough for everyone. Hard to believe you could gain weight working in St. Michael.