On our Leon trip with the Canadian team we learn that Leon is significantly hotter than Managua. Enroute to Saturday night lodging, fifteen of us sweat together, windows open, in a van that would max out at nine passengers in the U.S.
The hotel owner, a North American, has given our reserved-and-paid-for rooms to others. We make do with a bathroom shortage and two persons per bed.
The window has a broken pane.
The ceiling fan fails to turn.
The toilet does not flush.
A pancake-sized welt on my arm—a gift from a tropical bug—stings and burns.
I bed down with a Canadian woman I met yesterday, throw off the stifling top sheet, lie still, and try not to scratch. I fight for sleep.
And I remember Nigerian missionary Robert Recker speaking to my Iowa Sunday School class when I was eleven. He showed jungle slides and issued a challenge: Maybe God is calling you to the mission field!
I was terrified. Please, God, don’t call me be a missionary to primitive and bug-infested Africa. Please. Please! PLEASE!
He didn’t.
He graciously called me to writing instead.
Now, fifty years later, he has sent me to primitive and bug-infested Central America.
Amid the Nicaragua night sounds, I think I hear Him chuckle.
--Written Monday, February 1, remembering Saturday night, January 30.
What a delightful confession--a nearly universal, Western phobia. . . BUGS! Thanks for giving us such memorable vignettes so we can journey alongside you (in spirit) in Nicaragua.
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