God said, “Let there be critters and creepy-crawlies” and it was good

Lomalinda was home to fascinating critters and creepy-crawlies—spiders, cockroaches, moths, flies, bees, mosquitoes, grasshoppers, fleas, scorpions, and creatures I’d never seen before and had no idea what their name was.

 

(Did you know all bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs? And that millipedes, centipedes, scorpions, spiders, and ticks are neither bugs nor insects? That’s why I call them critters and creepy-crawlies. (Click on Bug vs.Insect: Is there a difference?)

 

God created them, and when we recognized that, we marvel at His  handiwork—their beauty and strength and purposes and intricacy.

 

Many of Lomalinda’s boys collected them. My son Matt’s collection included a rhinoceros beetle, another beetle that looked like a peanut shell, and cicadas.

 

Lomalinda was also home to butterflies, and Matt and his friends enjoyed hunting them. Especially exquisite were Blue Morpho butterflies, with bright, shimmering blue wings spanning six or eight inches.

 

Their beauty always took my breath away and, looking back now, I’m sad the boys killed them so they could add them to their collections.

 

What can I say about fire ants? Yes, God created them, but it’s easy to question why He did.

Recently I discovered they can be beneficial: “Fire ants voraciously consume . . . fleas, ticks, termites, cockroaches, chinch bugs, mosquito eggs and larva, scorpions, etc.” reports Galveston Master Gardeners. In a place like Lomalinda, those are beneficial indeed!

They're “extremely effective in controlling plant-feeding insects and arthropods. . . . Under some conditions fire ants keep the pest populations below the level of economic loss. . . .

“Fire ants can benefit . . . crops . . . because they aerate and break up the soil, making more water and nutrients available.”

However, fire ants can inflict costly damage to agriculture, cattle, wildlife, and farm equipment. (Read more at Galveston Master Gardeners.)

 

They are tiny little red fellas—and aggressive! Before you knew what was happening, you could have dozens of them running up your legs and under your clothes and stinging you mercilessly—leaving you hopping around in misery, so desperate you might even strip off your clothes in public in order to swat them off your body. Fire ants have even been known to kill people and animals.

As anyone bitten by fire ants will attest to, “Fire ants interrupt our God-given right to walk barefoot in our grass,” say the Galveston Master Gardeners.

But in an attempt to see the glass half full instead of half empty, the gardeners also point out that “Humans are not at the top of the fire ant food pyramid as long as we keep moving.”  So true!

And then there were leafcutter ants, critters with sharp instruments for mouths. They were a common sight—long lines of them traveling to their underground nests carrying big chunks of leaves in their mouths.

Kurt Metzger photo

 

Leafcutter ants don’t eat the leaves, they bury them in order to grow a fungus, which they eat.

 

“After clipping out pieces of leaves in their jaws, the fragments are transported to an underground nest that can include over 1,000 chambers and house millions of individual ants,” according to Britannica.

 

“Deep within the nest, the ants physically and chemically cultivate subterranean ‘gardens’ of fungus that grow on the chewed leaves,” the article continues.

 

“The ants remove contaminants and produce amino acids and enzymes to aid fungal growth. They also secrete substances that suppress other fungal growth.”

 

Leafcutters can be beneficial for their surroundings. The Britannica article says “By pruning vegetation, they stimulate new plant growth, and, by gardening their fungal food, they enrich the soil. . . . A colony of A. sexdens leafcutters may turn over . . . 88,000 pounds . . . of soil in tropical moist forests, stimulating root growth of many plant species.”

 

However, leafcutter ants can also be destructive. According to the Britannica article, “The amount of vegetation cut from tropical forests by the Atta ants alone has been estimated at 12-17 percent of all leaf production.

 

“. . . One species, A. apiguara, reduces the commercial value of pasture land in Brazil and Paraguay by as much as 10 percent.”

 

In Lomalinda, we often experienced leafcutter ants’ voraciousness and swift damage to plant life.

 

Let me tell you about our first experience with them.

 

Beside our back door grew a shrub with delicate white flowers. One morning shortly after we arrived in Lomalinda, when I left for work the shrub stood five feet tall, but when I came home for lunch, I found only a few naked branches. Leafcutter ants had eaten all of that in four hours.

 

My friend Jon Arensen, working in the Colombian jungle for a few weeks, awoke one morning and found that leafcutter ants had invaded his duffle bag, chewing dime-size holes in his clothes—all his clothes—leaving them in shreds.

 

Jon said, “My underwear was so bad that I had to wear three pairs to be decent. For the rest of my trip, I looked like a badly dressed bum.

 

“Those ants even ate holes in my leather boots,” he said.

 

But on the positive side, 

leafcutter ants made great mint-tasting snacks 

for Lomalinda’s kids. 

(from Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: 

A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir, Chapters 11 and 19)

 

God said, “Let there be critters and creepy-crawlies,”

and that is what happened,

and He saw that it was good.

(Genesis 1:20-25)

 

I worried: Would my kids suffer for living in such a place?

Since arriving in Lomalinda, Matt and his little buddies had spent hours upon hours playing softball on the field below our house but, by mid-November, athletes switched to the school’s soccer team and Matt was thrilled—until he heard the crushing news: He couldn’t join them. Only those in fourth grade and older could play on the team. What a sad day!

 

But when Jim Miller, the dad of one of his friends, started a team for first through third graders, Matt’s joy bubbled over.

He also competed on a non-school team with his dad, older boys, teens, and men, often against local Colombians, in temperatures of 104 in the shade. How did they do it?

 

Back then, no one had yet invented sunscreen, and sometimes my fair-skinned boy got so sunburned that his face blistered, but he was having the time of his life.

 

Soccer filled Matt's thoughts and conversations. One week he talked non-stop about soccer shoes—he had to have the shoes with yellow stripes. The next week only white stripes were cool.

 

He wore his Seattle Sounders shirt to every practice and game. And for days on end, he talked on and on about the color and style of other soccer teams’ shirts.

 

One Saturday, Dave and Matt hitched a ride on a truck to Puerto Lleras with our school’s junior high team, and our team won. Matt was thrilled.

 

And then!—And then!—Dave took him to a little store in Puerto Lleras and bought him soccer shoes! He was overjoyed.

 

But it would get even better than that! Matt didn’t yet know about a secret. Mark Steen, one of Dave’s high school students, was soon traveling to a big city and while there, he’d buy a soccer ball for Dave to give Matt for his birthday.

 

One of my all-time favorite snapshots captured Matt after he opened his gift and found that ball.

 

The government allowed us to receive only flat parcels in small manila envelopes and my mom, a busy professional who also volunteered at church and in the community, somehow found time to buy, package, and mail us packets. She must have spent a fortune on the items and postage.

 

Matt got a kick out of the Seattle Seahawks sticker she sent, and when Karen received a picture of my dad at Hurricane Ridge, she squealed, “That’s my Papa Jerry! My Papa Jerry!”

 

My mom also sent books, games, toys, workbooks, and things for us to set aside for the kids’ birthdays and Christmas—and, it turned out, for their friends. One day Matt and Karen came home from school with invitations for a birthday party the next day, and I panicked. I wouldn’t have time to make gifts. What would I do? Then I remembered the stash of items my mother sent—Whew!

 

By mid-October, Miss Wheeler had moved Matt (a first grader) to second-grade readers and Karen (a Kindergartner) to first-grade readers.

 

Within no time, my kids picked up beginning Spanish, and Karen often sang little Spanish tunes.

 

She had trouble pronouncing the “R” sound but another teacher, Mrs. Gross, helped her for a few months until she said it correctly. To this day we are still grateful to Mrs. Gross for that special help.

 

It did take Karen a while to adjust to the way one classmate showed his affection—he placed a line of dead cockroaches across each girl’s desk throughout the school year. Perhaps that had something to do with her lack of interest in boys, but she had lots of sweet little girlfriends.

 

She also enjoyed climbing into our mango tree, sometimes with a friend, other times with her stuffed toys, teaching them to sing in Spanish, and sometimes alone, quietly enjoying worlds her imagination invented. In her own quiet way, she was settling well.

 

Before moving to Lomalinda, I’d worried

about my kids’ wellbeing.

Would they suffer for living in such a place?

The answer: No.

They thrived at school, at play, and at home.

And in their hearts.

I was deeply grateful to God for His care and provision for them.

 

(From Chapters 14 and 15,

Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

Surprise! Button AND Snoopy

I was heartbroken: I had no gift for my little Karen’s fifth birthday.

 

There in our new home in a missions community named Lomalinda, we had no way to buy her anything—except for something from our little commissary, like powdered milk or canned tuna or a loaf of very stale bread. And that just wouldn’t do.

 

But then—but then!—we heard someone’s dog would soon have puppies, so we spoke for one for Karen.

 

But then—but then!—a week or so before her birthday, we got word the puppy we’d chosen might not be available after all.

 

My heart broke for my girl. We had to give her a birthday gift!

 

But then—but then!—one of Lomalinda’s families called and asked if we would like a kitten.

 

“Yes!” I said. “Yes!!!”

 

But then—but then!—a couple of days later, we learned we could have the puppy after all.

 

Dave and I talked it over. Should we give Karen the kitten or the puppy?

 

In the end, we decided to give the kitten to Karen and the puppy to her brother Matt.

Karen second from left, back row

We had kept Karen’s kitten a secret, but after her party—sixteen friends, sweet and fun—Dave and I said to her, “We have a surprise for you.”

 

Our new five-year-old looked up at us, curious, eyes twinkling. “We’re giving you a kitten for your birthday.”

 

“A kitten!” she whispered, wonder all over her face.

 

“The kittens aren’t old enough to leave their mommy yet, but we can go to the house where they live and you can choose one.”

 

Karen jumped up and down, laughing. “Let’s go! Right now!” So we set out walking to look over the litter.

 

Karen chose a tiny gray and white striped one with white tummy and paws. “I’ll name him Button.”

 

Strolling away from Button’s home, we sprung another surprise, this time on Matt. “We’re getting a puppy for you—an early birthday gift.”

 

Our rowdy boy hollered, “Awesome!”

 

“Let’s go pick him out,” I said.

 

“What?” Wide-eyed, Matt stopped walking and talking—a rare thing for our son. “Now?”

 

“The puppies are too young to leave their mother, but you get to choose one today.”

 

“Awesome!”

 

We hiked to the puppies’ house, and Matt chose a cute reddish-blonde Welsh Corgi mix that resembled most dogs around our center. “I’ll name him Snoopy.”

 

Wow! What a surprise: Button and Snoopy!

 

I think of the way God showers us with blessings—grace upon grace (John 1:16), “spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing, favor upon favor, and gift heaped on gift” (Amplified Bible).

 

On the walk home,

Dave and I looked at each other and laughed,

knowing we had two weeks to brace ourselves

for the lively chaos those baby pets

would bring to our home.

(From Chapter 12, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:

A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

What kind of mother would overlook her little girl’s birthday?

We’d lived in Lomalinda for two weeks when we turned the calendar page to September.

 

September?! I silently wailed. Our little girl would turn five at the end of September and it hit me with a start: We didn’t have anything to give Karen for her birthday.

 

I felt like a thoroughly terrible mother.

 

What kind of mother would have overlooked planning ahead so she could give her little girl a birthday gift?

 

We’d had strict limitations on how much luggage we could bring into the country so we had packed only bare necessities—but still, I felt terrible. And desperate.

 

Our only store was the tiny little commissary where we bought food.

 

We had nowhere to buy books, clothes, toys, or shoes.

 

I’d just bought a little used sewing machine from one of my neighbors, but I had no cloth to make a gift for Karen.

 

We’d heard of a small town a few miles away, but we had no motorbike to get there and besides, people warned us we’d find minimal selection and poor quality there.

 

It would take a month or more for us to send a letter home to our parents and get a reply, so any gift they could mail us would arrive too late.

 

We had to do something for our girl!

 

A few days passed and I felt panicked

over what to do for Karen.

My heart was heavy.

 

But then—but then!—we heard someone’s dog would soon have puppies, so we spoke for one for Karen. I was beyond excited. My heart soared. To this day I still remember my joy.

 

Our first-grade son, Matt, must have overheard his dad and me worrying about how to find a birthday gift for his sister—and immediately Matt knew what he  had to do. His own birthday was coming up in a couple of months so he promptly sat down and wrote this to his grandparents:

 

Dear Nana and Papa,

Would you please send me a WW.1 and WW.II ship and plane model for my birthday. I also need model glue. Thanks.

 

A resourceful and bold six-year-old kid, that Matt.

 

But then—but then!—a week or so before her birthday, we got word the puppy we’d chosen might not be available after all.

 

My heart broke for my girl.

 

What could we do? We had to give her a birthday gift!

 

Think, I told myself. Think!

 

But then—but then!—one of Lomalinda’s families called and asked if we would like a kitten.

 

“Yes!” I said. “Yes!!!”

(from Chapter 12, Please, God, Don't Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger's Memoir)