For those who prepared this meal...

In our communities, we often pray before supper "and for those who prepared this meal."  We're usually talking about the cook or community members who provided the food for the evening.  We often forget those who toil in the fields to grow the crops.  Here at Bahay Pag-asa, we are on an agricultural island and we have fields that provide food for our table.  The boys here will spend, when it's not raining, between one and two hours a day tending their gardens.  Each of them will proudly show visitors their plants and point out, at lunch, that the vegetables in your soup were produced by their efforts.  In this photo, our volunteer Franklin, is getting gardening lessons from one of the residents.  It doesn't take long to get an appreciation for the effort that so many workers on this island put into the production of sustaining foods.  In addition to providing vegetables for our meals, the boys are also growing fresh herbs for the Institute of Culinary Arts at the University of Saint La Salle,     The ICA, in turn, helps Bahay Pag-asa and provides opportunities for the boys to get culinary arts training and certification.