No snakes, but...

I’ve been asked a few times since returning from Africa, “Did you see any snakes?” Before I left on my trip in January, it’s true that I did worry slightly about snakes and spiders. And not about simply seeing some. But more importantly, if I should see any, would they be a safe distance away?

My grandpa had a couple of trepidatious encounters with snakes in Africa (see early blog stories), and I remember my dad telling me about gigantic spiders in Africa. (He usually mentioned these when he thought I was carrying on ridiculously about some tiny house spider.) Well, the good news is that I didn’t see even one snake or scary-looking spider during the entire trip! The bad news is: there were a couple of stressful encounters with big, black, ugly bugs.

One of these bug meetings was on Tuesday night in Yagoua. I had already had two nights in my room at the Catholic mission with virtually no bug sightings. But on this particular evening, when I entered my room to settle in for the night, I saw a large, black, nasty looking, twelve-inch - I mean two-inch - thing near the wall by my bed. I momentarily froze and thought “This is it…my moment of truth. Will I be brave, trusting God for victory over this enemy? Or will I behave as expected from my, mostly ridiculous, life-long fear of insects?” I knew it was time to rise to a new place. I would conquer this fear!

I grabbed the broom that was sitting in the corner of the room, surely for such a time as this, and was thankful for the long handle. My mind quickly approximated how distant I could remain and still be able to clobber the thing, and I moved to that distance and prepared to assault. I took a swing with the broom and…just as it was about to hit my victim, the victim moved. He didn’t just move though, he jumped. Now, Wisconsin has grasshoppers, but he didn’t look like those – they are green, for one thing. But he could have passed for a larger, distant, higher-jumping cousin, perhaps. A cousin who had now, safely (for him, anyway), jumped out of sight.

I remained calm... He must have jumped under the bed (because he could jump so high, of course). No worries, I’ll just look under there and hit him again. (With this thinking, I was completely overlooking the fact that I had missed him the first time.) Well, it appeared there was to be no “next time” because he was nowhere to be found. This was extremely disconcerting to me, but I willed myself to remain calm and to continue getting ready for bed, while praying fervently that he hadn’t snuck into my bed.

When I was finally ready to hop (word choice intended) into bed, I carefully checked under the top sheet, and then decided to read a bit from the Bible that was on the small table next to my bed. Now the Bible was sitting sort of sideways on top of another book, and when I picked it up from that pile of two, I almost screamed. There on the table right next to the head of my bed, sat the awful, high-jumping black monster bug!

I had only a fraction of a second to think, as he was certain to jump when he realized his cover was blown. I calmly, steadily, raised the Bible over my head, and...SMACKED HIM DEAD WITH THE WORD OF GOD!

Oh sweet victory... His death was instant – no suffering involved on his part. And me? Well, let's just say I had discovered a whole new reason to love God’s Word.