Aaron, a friend indeed

Today after church we had a new friend named Aaron come over for lunch.  We owed him BIG time.   He's an American that works here in Angola every other month.  He goes home on his off months to be back with his wife and kids.  The kids here at church love him because every time he comes back from the states he brings fruit leathers, ring pops, and other candies to share with them.  My kids of course are beneficiaries of his goodness as well.  And last month when he went home for the holidays, he offered to bring us back “anything” we wanted.  “Seriously?  Anything?” I said.  “Could you do Tillamook cheddar cheese?”  We have missed really good cheddar cheese, especially Tillamook that we would get from Costco.  We also miss other Costco cheeses and a zillion other things from Costco (or any store for that matter) like the fresh (and frozen) blueberries, strawberries and other fruits as well as the large tubs of milk products like yogurt, sour cream, etc.    Things we’re surviving without, but would sure be nice to have!  Aaron pointed to the large suitcase by the chapel door and repeated, “Anything that can fit in there!”  

So Aaron, being the nice man that he is, brought us back two blocks of Tillamook cheddar cheese, a bunch of batteries that we needed (because you can’t ship them and our consumables had not shown up yet), and corn tortillas.  Corn tortillas are surprisingly difficult to find here.  I have seen a box of imported Ortega taco shells, like a pack of 10 or 12, for $13.  So corn tortillas was on our request list because online stores have been out of stock recently.  

My snack one day--Tillamook with my favorite gluten free cracker that I ordered in from Walmart.  One particular day I was feeling like "Old Mother Hubbard" with her cupboards bare.  My heart leapt when I remembered I had just gotten my new bag of crackers and had real cheddar cheese.  :)

Needless to say, we’ve been wanting to have Aaron over for lunch or dinner to thank him for his efforts to make us happy.  He of course offered to bring over Costco frozen sirloin hamburgers with him.  We tried turning him down and told him that we didn’t want him to bring anything…and then we changed our minds.  :)  We had a moment of weakness.  Weakness that crept in at the thought of having meat from a trustworthy American source.  Meat that we knew came from a cow.  We’ve had a few experiences buying beef ($9 per pound) only to cook it up and swear that it tasted like horse.  Yes, horse.  I’m not quite sure what horse tastes like, but it certainly tasted like the smell of horse and did not taste like beef!  We have found a smaller grocery store that has had a pretty good track record with us that we continue to go to so we’re doing okay.  But it was no surprise that when Aaron offered the Costco quality sirloin burgers, we really could not turn him down! 

We think our energetic and crazy kids helped to make him feel at home away from home.  But to make it even better for him, we watched an episode of “Little House on the Prairie” with him after eating.  It’s a wonderful Sunday family show, and we learned while talking and eating, that our family is not the only one on the planet Earth that ordered the whole nine seasons from Amazon--his family did too!  He even showed us a picture of his daughter dressed up as Laura Ingles for Halloween last year.  So as we ate ice cream, we watched an episode and then played almost a full game of Chinese checkers before his driver arrived.  It was a fun afternoon with Aaron and we loved getting to know him better!!