One of the things I don't like

I don't like snakes. The other day, I heard a first person snake story that made my skin crawl. Andres, one of the first kids that became a Christian several years ago, told me what happened to him a few days before. He and his mom watch houses for people that are on vacation or are absentee landowners. Right now, they are watching a farm up in the mountains. Andres was out working the other day, gathering bamboo with a couple of other people that live at the farm. He was walking through grass that was about shin height. All of a sudden, he felt something hit his heel from behind...hard. He turned around and saw a terciopelo (fer-de-lance) thrashing around with it's teeth stuck in the heel of his rubber boot. Reflexively, he swung his machete and cut the head off about the same time he saw it. The body was flopping around behind him. He started freaking out at this point and tried to pull off his boot. One of the people that had been working with him yelled at him to stop. When he stopped and looked, he realized that the fangs had gone all the way through the boot and there was venom dripping off of them. If he had pulled his boot off, he would have been "bitten" by a dead snake and would have suffered the same reaction. They ended up having to cut the boot off around the head of the snake to get it off cleanly.


One thing you should know... The fer-de-lance has been called "the most feared snake in the western hemishere" both due to it's aggressive nature and the potency of it's venom. I would have passed out. Anyway, it gave us a good opportunity to talk about God's plans for our lives. I told Andres a long time ago that God had a plan for him. This reinforced it for me. Hopefully, it reinforces it for him.

In other news, it has been pretty crazy with just Amy and I trying to keep up. We are talking with a soon to be couple from Texas that are very interested in moving down to partner with us. We are excited about that. There are some other opportunities as well and we are praying (and ask you to pray as well) that God will provide.

I also just finished several days of meetings with our director from the States. Those meetings went well and I am excited about future possibilities within Alternative Missions. We have a long road ahead as we gear back up after the loss of Whit. There is no way we can do it all...especially in our own strength. Please pray that we'll get the temporary help we need while others are preparing for the long haul, through language school, etc... We will continue to look for God to provide opportunities to share Him with those around us.

I'll write about Makena's soccer game later. It was one of the funniest things I have witnessed since we moved here. Cool and funny.

"The crazy one" has us all laughing most of the time.



One last photo...we added palm leaves to the front of the house for about $100. It came out looking pretty cool and provides the protection we needed from the rain for our stairway.