Trout

A few days after we arrived in New Zealand, we bought a bright orange 1949  Vauxhall. We called it Amazing Gracie as we paid only $120 between the five of us for this old car. Little did we know how often it would earn its name.

We prayed our way all around New Zealand. We prayed for Amazing Gracie to keep going despite an ongoing oil leak and other problems, we prayed for fine weather, for vacancies in motor camps for us to spend nights . . .

One day we visited a trout farm.

‘Aren’t they beautiful,’ Peter commented. We five Aussies gazed at the trout swimming gently in the water beneath the little stone bridge.  We admired their delicate colouring, their graceful movements.

 ‘Where can we buy some to eat?’ Peter asked the guide.

‘You can’t,’ he told us.

‘Well, can you buy them as fresh fish and cook them yourself?’

‘No. The only way you can get trout is if you’re lucky and you’re given some. Only licenced people catch them.’

We all groaned. Then a few of us exchanged glances. I guessed the others were thinking what I was. Let’s pray for that to happen! God had brought us safely this far around New Zealand in our dilapidated old car, providing for our needs regularly as we looked to Him.

Father, it would be wonderful if someone gave us some trout, I prayed silently.

That evening we unpacked our backpacks in a small hut in a caravan park. Margy slipped outside in the darkening dusk and soon a jar of colourful wildflowers graced the table. Jenny laid out basic cutlery from the cabin.  But where was the food?

‘What’s for tea?’ Rod asked. I was unofficially in charge of the food. We were all hungry. All I had to offer was a little bit of leftover mince and some tinned food. Baked beans probably.

Rod resumed his mournful guitar strumming.

I frowned. We hadn’t stopped to buy food and were planning to use up these few leftover bits. I realised the two boys would not be impressed.

I told them all, ‘Bits and pieces’, while we five stood around bathed in the mixture of yellow electric light and late New Zealand twilight.  We were all tired and hungry.

A knock sounded at the door.

Peter opened it.

An unfamiliar man stood in the dimming light, holding out an enamel dish covered with lightly floured fillets of fish.

‘It’s trout,” he told us. ‘We had more than we needed and we saw you young people come in. We’ve already cleaned and filleted it. All you have to do is cook it and eat it. I reckon you’ll like it. Maybe you could give us the dish back!’

We all gasped with excitement and delight, removed the trout to a dish from the cupboard and rinsed the enamel one, thanking the man.

Phew! I’d been rescued.

Trout for dinner!

We smiled about our latest answer to prayer. God was teaching us to see Him as an extravagant Father and Provider on this holiday.

The trout was delicious.

Photo by Unsplash.