A Prayer by Thomas Merton

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,
And the fact that I think I am following
your will does not mean that I am
actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please
you does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire in all
that I am doing.
And I know that if I do this, you
will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death, I will
not fear, for you are ever with me
and you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.

Slovak Food

One of the things everyone is curious about is Slovak food, so I will tell you all about it! Overall the food is very good and not tremendously different than food I am used to. There are a lot of potatoes and meat, and the meat is usually beef or pork- very rarely chicken. Marcelka told me that potatoes have always been very popular, because they are cheap. When the country was really poor potatoes were the cheapest and easiest thing to eat, so potatoes were the main food. Now it’s mostly just a traditional food.
Breakfast usually consists of cereals, breads, yogurt, vegetables (like peppers and tomatoes), cheese, and sometimes salami and ham. Usually I stick to the yogurt and breads though. The bread here is absolutely amazing! There are so many different kinds and it is all so fresh- I love it. Lunch is the biggest meal, and it always consists of some type of soup and then a main course. The soups are pretty good- a lot of different kinds, usually with meat, potatoes, and onions. The main course is sometimes rice, or potatoes, and then a meat, usually beef. The national food is called halušky and it is like potato noodles- it’s hard to explain, because it looks like pasta, but isn’t pasta. It’s potatoes mixed with flour and something else, usually topped with goat cheese and bacon. It’s pretty good, but very filling and heavy. The bacon is really different here though, because it is sold in a block and they leave all the fat in it. They actually prefer to eat the bacon fat and that grosses me out a little bit. I try to steer clear of that. The other thing I am not crazy about is cabbage and that is really popular here also. Sometimes at lunch they have what is called a "sweet lunch", and this is great. It’s so strange to me, because it is like dessert, but they eat it for lunch! It is dumplings filled with fruit usually (apples, berries, jam, or poppy seeds) and then topped with chocolate sauce and powdered sugar. It is very, very good, but it is so strange to think of it as lunch.
Dinner is usually a small meal. Sometimes just some bread with butter, or bread with some cheese, peppers, and tomatoes. I never ate peppers before, but now I eat peppers all the time, and I realized that they are pretty good. Once we had pudding for dinner, and that was different for me too. It’s different having lunch being the biggest meal, and dinner being small, but I think it is healthier to eat more in the middle of the day, and I have gotten used to that now. The main drinks are tea and coffee- lots and lots of tea. Usually there is just hot tea with all the meals. But one of the unique beverages here is called kofula, and it is like soda, but with some added flavoring. It almost has a lemon and licorice taste to it. I don’t like it very much, but a lot of people do.
Hopefully that gives you an idea about the food here and I will try to post more about what is going on sometime soon!

This past Sunday at church one of the ladies from the village invited me to her house Monday afternoon to pick grapes from her garden. Her name is Pani (Mrs.) Markova and when I first met her I knew she was just the nicest lady- she is always smiling and laughing. Monday afternoon I went over to her house and she fixed coffee and had a plate of little cakes prepared. We sat and attempted to have a conversation, which actually went really well! I had my Slovak-English dictionary, which is a big help, and she is so patient with me. For some reason she is a lot easier for me to understand than some other people. She uses hand motions, and talks slower, and I don’t know what else it is, but we were able to communicate! She showed me pictures of everything- from when she was growing up, to her wedding, then her kids, and the church. It was great, because she was explaining things while showing me the pictures, so I could understand more about what she was talking about. And even when we weren’t talking or when we couldn’t understand each other- just sitting with her and drinking coffee was so great. Then we went out to her garden and picked grapes- she has tons of grapes, and she gave me a bunch to take with me. I realized how much her presence meant to me, how much joy she brought me, and how she ministered to me by just being with me. I hope that I can do for others what she did for me that afternoon.

I also realized that one of the difficult things about the Slovak language (of the many things that are difficult about it) is the words for yes and no. Yes is “Ano” and No is “Nie” which is fine, but people shorten it and will say “No” instead of “Ano”, so I am hearing them saying “No” thinking they mean No when they really mean yes! I have to constantly remind myself that no means yes…that is unless they are trying to speak in English.