Sepik Supply is what we call the place I work in. “Sepik” being the area and “Supply” being supplies. My main job is to get all the tribal missionaries supplied with all their needs.
A huge help in doing this efficiently is having a small store stocked with groceries and other things. For the amount of missionaries I serve, if I had to go to town to fill everyone’s order, I would go everyday, all day. When all our missionaries are in their tribal locations, I buy for a total of 36 missionaries. So you can imagine how having a store helps in this process. Can you imagine buying for all food supplies 12 months a year for 36 people? It is hard enough buying for our own family sometimes.
So one of my job’s is to stock the store up and pack orders for the bush missionaries. It is funny how the Lord used all my time working at Food Lion (a grocery store in Tennessee) to help prepare me for what I am doing today. I basically order food from a store in another coastal town called Anderson Foods (I know, we have that company in the USA). I send this company an order via email. They pack the order up, load it on a pallet, shrink-wrap it to prevent theft, and ship it here, to were we live. It usually works really well!
Because we live so close to the ocean, we have a wharf and I just pick it all up there and bring it to our center. I invoice it all through a computer program our mission uses. Then it is ready for resale to our missionaries! Although its sole purpose is for bush missionaries, all our center missionaries get the privilege of using it too. Just another tidbit into our world here in PNG!