How much could a little food possibly be????

So my new friend and helper here is Sister Moon. She runs the office and is half of a fantastic missionary team. The other half is Elder Moon. He does the finances for the mission (no small task) and is an amazing mechanical engineer who can fix virtually anything. Within minutes of getting to know them we loved them!  They sweetly and patiently help us find our way through all the complexities of the mission.

Elder and Sister Moon took me shopping for the first time. It was interesting to see how the pricing works. Since the value of the dollar fluxuates so much each item is marked with a letter and number. On the isles there is a price sheet which then identifies what that number represents as far as pricing goes. All they have to do is reprint the sheet with updated prices instead of remarking all the food.

Everything here comes and goes quickly and is never the same, so if you see something you want...BUY IT NOW. You may not see it again. It all comes from different places in the world like Belguim, South Africa or Brazil. Some things don't exist here so you might as well forget ever seeing it. In fact, don't even HOPE for it!  Regardless of what it is EVERYTHING IS ABOUT 3 TO 8 TIMES AS EXPENSIVE AS IN THE STATES!!!!!  I will cite some examples at the end of this entry.There is no fresh milk, but lots of cream and butter. There is powdered milk and boxed unrefrigerated milk. The couples here mostly live on chicken because they don't trust the beef. They have really great cheeses.

I started out just picking out a few things that I could build meals around. Right now the money system is a little strange so I wasn't sure exactly how much I was paying anyway. The items are marked in Congolese Francs but they only take American dollars at the checkout.

The small cart of groceries I got here was about $175.  Two days later Dad and I went to another store and for another 3/4 of a cart paid another $200.