Sunday, September 7, 2014

Pesky Pests

I get up to get a check on my "Squirts", before I leave for Guatemala with Estefania in the morning. They were up and down and all around.  It was Friday night, which means movie night.  They were excited and it was hard for them to focus.  Mr. Joe had come and they were excited about that.  Everytime I have to leave our mission of 33 girls, more than not Mr. Joe Reynolds our board president makes himself available to watch over the mission while I am gone.  He has done this for years and I can't say enough about how much we appreciate his ministry.   

So I decided before I took my shower, I would check and make sure everyone was in bed for the night  so I wouldn't have to get up after I finally got into bed.  So I walked across the kitchen floor in my bare feet and I feel, sugar on the floor.  The older girls had been working, doing the baking, but they forgot to clean up.  I decided I am not going to say anything and just clean it up myself, so I will have the peaceful the night before our missions trip. So I continue to walk.  


Arriving at the first bed check, I notice trash on the floor, so I get a broom, and I come back down the steps. I hear a noise in the laundry room and someone had left the food supply cabinet open, and I opened the door wide and there is big rat looking at me, so I slammed the door in his face twice, when I open it for a third time, he leaps at me and lands on my foot, and I just know I felt a rat toenail on the top of my foot.  I scream, and absolutely nobody comes to check on me. Everyone is asleep. I wonder how they can go to sleep that fast.

I calm down and remember I have some clothes in the wash. So I decided to do some of the never ending laundry. I put on a load and start gathering towels. Some were in the kitchen, some in the bathroom and some in the living room. The girls had been taking baths, drying dishes, and just had towels everywhere. My little velvet co-habitors who had been cooking and left sugar on the floor were either gone to their houses or sound asleep. Before I can sweep, I have to get the towels up and carry them back down the steps. I put them in the pilla and come back up the steps only to realize, I am walking on ANTS!!! I rush to the cabinet under the sink to get the new can of bug spray i bought the day before. Not there. So I run to the bathroom, again not there. I check in my bathroom and the medicine cabinet, under all sinks, and in the linen cabinets. Nothing... I throw Asisten which is a disinfectant household cleaner all over the floor to slow the ants up. They are everywhere. I run back down the steps to get the mop and I start feeling stings on my shirt and down my back and on my hands so I look to the source... one of the towels, covered in tiny ants and big ants. When I had picked up the towels they had gotten in my long hair I had just taken down to get my shower. The ants must have been having a convention, snorting sugar off my kitchen floor. So I race back into the bathroom to look in the linen cabinet and I see lighter fluid... hmm... might cause a secondary problem. I zoom to the medicine cabinet. I see bezocaine spray. I read the directions and see it is for procedures when you have to wrap material around a broken bone, but I found out it's secret other use, not listed on the can, is that it is really a dynamite ant killer. I spray the ants on the towels in the pila and they all die.  Bezoncaine is great stuff.

I am feeling stings still and I am feeling grossed out with the rat connection, so I decided to get my shower, before I go to bed. Did I mention I am going to Guatemala in the morning with Estephania? Crazy night. I am laying here, trying to go to sleep, getting my travel money together and checking my passport and my imagination is in overdrive listening for rats and checking for ants. I begin to laugh at how crazy the night became in a short second.  

I try to be thankful for the pests in life.  I struggle in that area.  We all have those 4 and 6 legged critters, but sometimes we have the 2 footed pests that we can't understand .  They just kind of appear out of nowhere.  I don't understand their motivation, but God commands us to pray for those guys.  I just want to slam the door and run or spray Benzocaine on them and let them be gone, but God has another way of dealing with them and with me.  Apparently it is hard to love your enemies if they never show up.  So God in His wisdom has all sorts of pests to challenge us to come up a bit higher.  We are to pray for our enemies.  Pray for me to be up for the challenge, to excercise wisdom, and praise The Lord through it all.  
Blessings, the Asistin slinging, Benzocaine spraying, but peace loving Honduran MOM

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