My mother-in-law and father-in-law’s 51st wedding anniversary was Saturday. They’ve been here in Brazil for 2 years ministering here at the camp (they were here in Brazil in the 70s’ as missionaries for several years too). They live in a small house (maybe 600 sq ft) that sits on a hill overlooking a small pond. Where their house sits is absolutely beautiful. It’s surrounded by jungle on 3 sides and overlooks the mountain range that borders the camp property on the other. It’s been a perfect place for a retired (yeah, right! haha!) couple to live. It’s got a perfect view and it’s nestled away “kinda” all by itself. It’s not far enough away though because you can still hear my kids screaming at our house (sorry Grandma and Papa). But besides having to endure all the racket coming from our house (across the valley) it’s very quiet and peaceful. They can sit on their porch in the early mornings and have their coffee as their hummingbird feeders are full of hummingbirds. They can hear the gentle rush of the waterfall that spills into the stream below. They can enjoy the clouds rolling over the mountaintops... it’s absolutely perfect. Well, perfect except for the fact that they’ve had to live with bats in their house for the whole 2 years they’ve lived here! That’s right bats! And I’m not talking about baseball bats either. I’m talking about nasty, rabies carrying, fang wielding, little disease ridden rats with wings... bats!
I remember the first time I heard them. It was freaky. Just to hear them scratching around in the attic like they owned the joint. It gave me the creeps. And the fact that my in-laws have lived with them (for 2 years) is crazy. They (the bats) usually just stay up in the space between the ceiling inside and the roof outside but sometimes they would actually fly around in the house and my father-in-law would have to try and kill them. They’ve tried getting rid of them by every means imaginable - Closing up all the holes around the roofline, fumigating, smoking them out, poisoning them, using ultrasonic sound to “annoy them away”... they tried everything.
But on their anniversary my father-in-law tried something new. He installed live exposed electrical wires that would fry the bats if they touched them. Kinda like an electric chair for bats. This was a desperate-last-ditch attempt to get rid of these super annoying house guests that just wouldn’t leave.
MJ and I went to their house to give them something that night, and from the inside of the house, I could see the bats swarming around the place that they normally liked to enter in at. The only problem is that it was now booby-trapped with high voltage electricity surging through these little wires: ) They (the bats) were mad and confused. It was pretty amazing actually. We finished our visit and went home.
The next morning I could hear our kids yelling from outside, “Papa killed a bat- Papa killed a bat!” Somehow they (my kids) were able to look across the little valley that separates our house from my in-laws and see a dead bat on their front porch (I still can’t figure out how they could see that far???). So we ran over to investigate and see the carcass to confirm that it was really dead. Yep, sure enough... a little nasty disease carrying bat, was dead. Praise God! Another useless animal, dead... yessss! I snapped a picture of it for you guys. That’s it up top. When I spoke to my father-in-law about it he was extremely happy about his “big kill” and the fact that he had finally found something that worked and my mother-in-law was pretty happy as well: )
So, long story short - I guess my mother-in-law got a dead bat for her anniversary, huh? Just what every woman wants, I’m sure. haha! But for some reason I think for her it was a gift that was perfect. Happy Anniversary Guys!
We’ve got a lot going on this week. We’re finishing a few little construction projects, doing some upgrades on the bunkhouses and designing a new ropes course for the camp. Please continue to pray for us. Good stuff.
Love Ya,
Jim
PS - the pictures at the top are of their house. You can actually see my father-in-law sitting on his front porch (which is a miracle because he never sits still) and the other one is looking out from their front porch.
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