Trimmed Mange Tout

As I was preparing dinner tonight- I looked in the vegetable drawer for the snow peas I had bought at the grocery store a few days ago. I had a great mental menu planned; a sort of America-stir-fry with beef tips, rice, snow peas, and Soy sauce for flavor. I had no actual idea how to cook the meal, but figured it couldn’t be too hard. Although, you wouldn’t believe how challenging I have found it to cook for myself again, after having lived with the luxury of having food prepared for me by skilled kitchen staff for the last 2.5 years (while on the ship in Africa and in Bolivia & Chile).



Anyhow, I have embraced the cooking challenge and I am giving cooking my best shot. I cannot rely on the American staple of peanut butter, the peanut butter here in London, England, tastes horrible! And I have yet to find a grocery store that sells grape jelly. No more PB& J sandwiches. But, back to the point, I had all my ingredients lined up on the kitchen counter and was getting ready to open the snow peas when I looked at the wrapper they were in. It read “trimmed mange tout, grown in Zambia.” I thought, “Oh no, what did I buy? I thought I bought snow peas. What in the world is trimmed mange tout?” At the grocery store, I was so focused on figuring out the conversion rate between the British Pound and the American Dollar that I didn’t look closely at what I had purchased. I stared at the mange tout on my counter for a few minutes trying to decide how adventurous I was feeling and if I wanted to figure out how to cook mange tout.


My adventurous spirit won and I got online- using my newly acquired dongle (which was a new thing to me as well. A dongle is an amazing device that you stick into your computer and immediately you have internet. Apparently these came out in the last few years when I was living in Tim-buck-to away from modern technological advances). I typed in “trimmed mange tout” and found about 9,790 websites that featured “mange tout.” Although I was oblivious to the concept of mange tout, the world wasn’t. To my surprise, but relief, I found out mange tout is another name for sugar peas, sugar snap peas, or snow peas. I wondered why in the world- they couldn’t have just written snow peas on the package. Oh, well, it is all part of adjusting to my new home and the culture here in the United Kingdom.


Speaking of adjustments, I am doing well. I do feel like I have been living in a jet-lagged whirlwind these past few days, but that is almost normal for me at this stage in my travels as a missionary nurse. I arrived in London September 13 after encountering an overbooked flight, a change of flight pattern from Salt Lake City ->Chicago -> London, to Salt Lake City -> Dallas Fort Worth -> London. After 21 hours of travel from Rupert Idaho, I reached London, England, totally stinky, tired, exhausted, and super excited to begin this next chapter and adventure in my life.


My adventures started almost the moment I landed at Heathrow airport. I tried to get into the right side of the car to head to my new flat with my Mercy Ship’s friend from South Africa that now lives in London who had graciously picked me up at the airport. I stood by the door for a few minutes waiting for my friend to unlock the car doors so we could get in and zip off toward London- my new home for at least the next 4.5 months. I wondered why he wasn’t opening the doors, but couldn’t be bothered with asking and I stared off into space, like a proper jet-lagged individual. A few moments later, I heard my friend’s voice behind me as he politely reminded me, he would be driving and I needed to go the left-side of the car, which is the passenger side of the car here in the UK. Oops- I forgot things are opposite here in the UK. I experienced more of this reality as we drove down the free-way and I kept ducking and flinching, feeling as if cars were going to hit us, because I felt they were coming at us from the wrong direction.


I experienced another level of a shock when I opened the door to my new flat and found the place absolutely filthy. The carpet was dirty. The walls were layered with scum, there were soiled dishes in the kitchen cabinets, the stove was a nightmare covered with layers of dried grease, the cupboards were filled with expired food from the year 2007, the fridge was manky (one of my new British vocabulary words- meaning rotten-slimy, sick, manky), there was moldy linen in the bedrooms, and I could have written my name in the dust on the kitchen counters. I was slightly disappointed with the situation, but figured I would make the best of it. It wasn’t exactly a situation I expected to find myself in considering the UK is a developed country, but I just chalked the situation up as another missionary experience and figured I would have plenty cleaning to keep me busy in the middle of the night when jet-lag wreaked havoc.


Two days after I arrived in London. I found myself seated in a lecture theater at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. With eagerness and excitement I sat in the seat and listened to the director of my course, the Diploma in Tropical Nursing, introduce herself. One of the first things she asked was “how many of you have heard of the book titled Where There Is No Doctor...” Many of the 65 of us enrolled in the course raised our hands. The professor went on the say, “that is why we are here. We are going to prepare you to live and work…Where there is no doctor…”


I sighed deeply and a smile spread across my face. I am in a new country, my flat situation was less that desired, although it is cleaning up nicely with elbow grease, I didn’t have a phone line or internet as promised; things are expensive here, especially since I have no incoming income considering my nursing license application has yet to be approved even though I started the application process this past April, the peanut butter irritates my taste buds, and fancy words are used to describe simple things such as snow peas. Despite all of that, I know without a doubt, I am right where I need to be, in the center of God’s will, learning how to live and work…Where there is no doctor…so that I can bless the nations with the gift of God’s healing love through my nursing care. I couldn’t be happier!