If you see red eyes above the water line . . .

 

Sometimes God makes me chuckle—like now, when I think back to what a prim and proper young lady I was when I landed in Lomalinda. And when I recall what a protected, comfortable suburban life I’d led until then. And how God sent me there, planning to awaken me to altogether new ways of thinking and living.

 

I think back to what God seemed to say when He finally—finally!—convinced me to move to Lomalinda.

 

You see, a lot of people, especially my mother, had expected me to color within life’s lines—and that had been my plan, too.

 

But instead, I sensed God saying, with a big grin, “Color outside the lines, and don’t even think about using pastel colors. Use exotic, pulsing, dancing colors, shimmering, out-of-this-world colors.” (Chapter 2, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

Getting acquainted with Lomalinda’s wildlife—and the people who enjoyed those creatures—offered me opportunities to color outside the lines. Believe me, there was nothing like it in Seattle!

 

I’ve already told you about bulls that roamed through Lomalinda, coming right up to my kitchen window and eating my hibiscus, and about the parrots that shared our neighborhood with us.

 

I’ve told you about swimming with stingrays—and with piranhas. And with anacondas.

 

And I’ve told you a story you won’t soon forget about my friend Mardty and a boa constrictor. And another story about a boa constrictor’s smile.

 

Today I want to tell you how we humans also shared our territory with caimans, related to both alligators and crocodiles.

 

Caimans open their jaws “aggressively,” and “seize their prey and drag it underwater to drown it” (Wikipedia).

 

Lomalindians hunted caimans in the lake,

its outlet, and swampy areas.

And what stories they could tell!

 

We heard that one of the men brought home a baby caiman late at night and put it in the bathtub—much to his wife’s dismay when she got up in the night to use the bathroom.

 

Another young man invited a girl to go caiman-hunting on their first date and, believe it or not, she later married him.

 

Sometimes Lomalindians initiated newcomers by taking them on a caiman hunt and telling them tall tales—exaggerating a bit to terrify them.

 

While a few adults hunted caiman, teens had more wild-eyed stories to tell, and they now admit their mothers would’ve had a conniption if they’d known what their kids had been up to.

 

It seemed that the teens went hunting after dark when their parents thought they were doing homework with friends. Others confess they snuck out after bedtime.

 

Sometimes they set out in a canoe, but other times they waded into the water, often barefooted--! Their tools of the trade were a .22 rifle, or sometimes a machete or bow and arrow, as well as a flashlight, which helped spot the caiman’s red eyes above the waterline. When the kids saw the red, they aimed and shot between the eyes.

 

Russ Meehan tells a story about wading through a swamp when he and his friends spotted a caiman nearly four feet long. Russ wrote,

 

“I was getting up my nerve to hack it with a machete when Rick yelled, ‘No, wait!’ He wanted to grab it by the neck.

 

“I watched as he began clearing debris away. Then he plunged his hand down on the neck and pulled up. The caiman began thrashing, and it was too much for Rick, who had to let go.

 

Russ continued, “It landed in the water and began running on top of the pond with Rick chasing it from behind.

 

“Then Benny, who had a pistol with him, began firing at the fleeing caiman!

 

“Later I heard Benny say, ‘That boy is crazy, chasing a caiman like that,’ and I heard Rick say, ‘That guy is crazy, shooting a gun like that; he could have killed me!’”

 

Jim Wheeler, one of my husband’s students, still talks about a friend who brought home a baby caiman—which his mom flushed down the toilet. A few months later when the family had plumbing problems, they dug up the septic tank and found a five-foot-long caiman.

 

Jim also tells this story of hunting with a .22 rifle and flashlight, shining it over the water, searching for red eyes, the wider the gap between them the bigger the caiman.

 

Jim says, “David Mansen and I were at one of the marshy ponds at night. We spotted red eyes that looked at least four inches apart—so it was a big one.

 

“David fired the rifle. We heard a splash, then quiet. Now what?”

 

While you keep reading, below, keep in mind that caimans “may observe a potential prey, swim away, submerge, and return to attack” (Wikipedia).

 

“David, you shot it,” I said. “You go find it.” He waded into the knee-deep water while I stayed about ten feet behind, holding the flashlight.

 

“Several feet before the place we’d seen the caiman, David started slicing his machete through the murky water to locate the hopefully dead beast. After several minutes, he connected with his trophy—a sixteen-inch baby caiman.

 

“After getting over our disappointment, neither of us said much.

 

“This isn’t the one we saw earlier.

This is just a baby.

Big mama is still around somewhere. 

Let’s get out of here!”

 

A boa constrictor’s smile

 

We soon learned that Lomalinda’s young people were truly remarkable—they possessed a zest for life and were keen for adventure.

 

And living in rural South America gave them a number of opportunities kids back home in the States seldom had.

 

One of the high school kids, Chris Branks, told the following story about a time he and his siblings lived in the dorm for a few weeks while their parents, Bible translators, worked in an indigenous village:

 

“Hector's boa constrictor had thirty-two babies, and he said anyone that wanted one could have one,” Chris said. “There was a stampede as we all rushed over to pick out our boas.”

 

Now, let me interrupt Chris here to remind you that boa constrictors squeeze people and animals to death. And then swallow them whole. Granted, we’re talking about baby boas here, but still. . . . (If you missed it, click on A boa constrictor story you won't soon forget.)

 

“For the next couple of days,” Chris continued, “the dorm sounded like an industrial zone as we hammered together cages. Not all of them were very secure, and there were some long faces on the kids whose snakes escaped.

 

“There was also a lot of horse-trading going on. Boys traded Swiss Army knives and other treasures to accumulate more snakes.

 

“For weeks, every boy in the dorm wore a snake around his neck or arm or had one squirming in his pocket.”

 

Even at school! Can you imagine?! Read on . . .

 

“Eventually, the school principal banned the boas—

they caused too many distractions

for both students and teachers,

who more than once found a smiling boa

in their top drawer.

(If you look closely at a boa,

you’ll see they’re always smiling,

which is how you know they're friendly.)” 

(From Chapter 13, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:

A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

We were only beginning to realize that

Lomalinda’s teens lived with gusto, pizzazz, and few fears.

 

What an example they were for me—cowardly, wimpy me.

 

A boa constrictor story you won’t soon forget

 

In a quiet jungle valley in Lomalinda, our friend Mardty raised chickens in a little red barn, but she was troubled—she was bringing home fewer eggs and counting fewer chickens than usual.

 

Then one day she spotted a boa constrictor inside the barn—with a chicken just disappearing down its throat.

 

Boas grow up to thirteen feet long and can weigh a hundred pounds. Rather than poisoning their prey—sometimes as big as a deer—they coil around, squeeze them to death, and swallow them whole. Lomalindians took boas seriously.

 

But Mardty, determined to save her hen, dropped to her knees, seized that snake below the chicken bump, and held on. I’ll drag it up the hill to get help, she told herself.

 

Before long, though, the snake’s cold, scaly body had wrapped around her legs, winding ever higher, locking her in its grip.

 

She put up a good fight, but the boa toppled her to the ground.

 

Mardty knew it intended to wring the breath out of her.

And swallow her.

Whole.

 

She let go of the chicken bump—she had more important things to do. “I need a weapon,” she told herself.

 

Scanning the room, she saw nothing but a feed barrel.

 

But it had a lid!

 

“I stretched up and was barely able to grab it. I held the boa with one hand and rolled the lid back and forth with the other, trying to cut its head off.”

 

Lying there in the chicken poop and its stench, Mardty must have looked like she was rolling a giant pizza cutter over the snake’s neck.

 

“But the rim was rounded and smooth,” she said, “and I had to give up.”

 

Knowing she was in a life-or-death situation, Marty yelled, hoping someone up the hill in the dorm would hear—the house parents, Rosie and Dan, or one of the kids—but no one came.

 

Sprawled on the ground, Mardty wondered if she was taking her last breaths.

 

The boa continued winding ever upward on her body.

 

But she was not a quitter—she kept hollering until she heard the sound of feet pounding down the jungle path.

 

Rosie burst through the door brandishing a machete.

 

Dan followed, wielding a shotgun—but Mardty saw a problem. “Don’t shoot! If you shoot the snake, you’ll shoot me, too!”

 

Once Dan lowered the gun, Mardty and Rosie pointed the machete at the boa’s neck and stabbed, sawing until they nearly cut off its head, leaving it almost dead.

 

Dan unwound the snake and dragged it to the chicken yard and finished it off with a shot.

 

“We carried that big long body up the hill to the dorm,” Mardty said.

 

“He measured more than eleven feet. After skinning him, we opened him up in the kitchen. The hen was intact but dead, and so many of her bones broken.

 

“And we did, by the way, start getting more eggs again. We're sure the egg thief was that boa.” (from Chapter 13, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

At times like that,

I’m tempted to question God’s wisdom

in creating creatures like boa constrictors.

And yet, He said:

“Let there be critters and creepy-crawlies,”

. . . or something close to that

(Genesis 1:20-25).

Even boa constrictors.

 

Swimming with anacondas: they eat monkeys, dogs, cats, calves—and sometimes people

 

. . . And then there were anacondas, also called water boas, which live on land and in water—including our lake at Lomalinda.

 

Anacondas eat monkeys, dogs, cats, calves, and sometimes people.

 

They can grow to thirty feet long and weigh over five hundred pounds and, like boa constrictors, they squeeze their victims to death, open wide, and swallow their prey whole. (See photo below.)

 

Lomalindians admitted to fearing anacondas, but they went swimming anyway.

 

(Are you noticing a pattern here?!?  . . .

If you missed recent posts, click on

Swimming with stingrays and piranhas

and

Our lake: A place for high adventure.)

 

At night, if anyone on the lake or swamp spotted green eyes glowing in the dark, they were looking at an anaconda—which meant they’d better turn and run.

 

People liked to tell the story of workers at a nearby farm who, hearing a pig squeal, ran to investigate. By the time they arrived, they found an anaconda with a pig-shaped bulge so big that the snake couldn’t slither through the pen’s slats.

One day a friend of mine, driving her Honda 90 motorbike to the lake for a swim, came upon an anaconda stretched across the road, so long she couldn’t see its head in the grass on one side of the road or its tail on the other.

 

Knowing she couldn’t stop in time, she drove right over it.

 

The snake probably wasn’t even fazed. My friend was, though, and suddenly she wasn’t all that interested in swimming.

 

I just couldn’t understand it—I mean, swimming with stingrays, pirañas, and anacondas? That was just too much adventure for me.

 

We lived in the llanos, a vast low expanse of steaming plains with an azure sky stretching to eternity, clean and searing and clear. It’s one of the world’s most lush tropical grasslands, an immense savanna in the Orinoco River basin.

 

The llanos hosts “an alluring combination of pristine biodiversity and traditional ranching culture seemingly lost in time.

 

“Anacondas, howler monkeys, capybaras and crocodiles live alongside ranchers, farmers, and thousands of cattle. . . ” (You can kiss your cell phone service goodbye).

 

You don’t want to miss my story about

boa constrictors.

Next week!

It’s a story you won’t soon forget!

Anaconda photo by Tim Lambright (used by permission)

 

Swimming with stingrays and piranhas

 

Lomalinda’s people admitted their fear of stingrays, but they went swimming anyway. (If you missed last week’s post, click on stingrays’ stingers could slash a swimmer’s feet, leaving him writhing in pain while someone pulled out the venomous knife-like barb. Recovery could take months, always painful and slow.)

 

And pirañas (piranhas) lived in the lake, too. Yes, pirañas!

 

With powerful jaws and teeth like razors, pirañas have a reputation for tearing apart and eating a man in a couple of minutes, leaving only a skeleton—but Lomalinda’s pirañas didn’t bite unless they smelled blood, and thus the need for those with an open sore to stay out of the lake.

 

Swimmers admitted their fear that pirañas might chew on them, but that didn’t keep them out of the water.  

 

Lomalinda’s John Waller tells of a harrowing experience he had one day at sunrise while getting his daily exercise by swimming to the island and back.

 

“After swishing a stick in the shallows to be sure no stingrays lurked there, I waded in and started swimming as soon as it was deep enough. (I didn't want to be in contact with the bottom any more than necessary!)”

 

“ . . . about halfway back to the dock I felt something brush my leg.

 

“Now, at Lomalinda's lake you don't take that kind of thing lightly.

 

“ . . . I cranked up the speed a bit and even altered my course. Maybe, just maybe, whatever it was would keep going 'that way' while I continued 'this way'.

 

“But then, just a little further on, something again touched me!

 

“I was used to the minnows nibbling, but this was different.

 

“I thought I was far enough out to avoid the lairs of the caiman (alligators), and I had heard that the pirañas always attacked in mobs. So what could it be?

 

“Needless to say, I kicked and stroked harder and started evaluating my options.

 

“A third time was too much. Something must be after me! I knew I was a good-size meal, but I always thought the manly 'smell' would ward off any takers. Now I wasn't too sure.

 

“. . . I swam as fast as I could. It wasn't too far to the dock. Maybe I could outrun this predator. And so the race was on.

 

“I felt its nudge a couple more times but now I was near paydirt. The dock was just ahead and I wasn't going to wait for any invitations to get on it.

 

“As I quickly pulled myself up and cleared the water, I happened to glance down. There, hanging onto my leg, was the culprit! A partially attached bandage which had been moving back and forth in the water, had come loose. My race with destiny was over. The 'enemy' was none other than a little bit of cotton and adhesive playing games with me!”  (Thanks to I Was A Stranger for sharing John’s story.)

 Come on back next week. 

I have even more critters to tell you about.

Here's a photo of Matt with a piranha he caught in 

Lomalinda's lake:

 

Our lake: A place for high adventure, pranks, romance, and even tragedy

 

Last week I promised to tell you more awesome (and sometimes scary) stories about living in South America’s wild open territory in the middle of nowhere.

 

Today we’ll take a brief walk from our house, through a low jungle area, to el lago, the lake. (See photos below.) Countless escapades happened there. Renowned as the venue for high adventure, pranks, romance, and sometimes fear—my, oh, my, if that lake could talk, what stories it would tell!

 

El lago, the site of swimming, sailing, water skiing, and washing the dog.

 

A place of canoeing and hunting for orchids and monkeys, a place for fishermen to reel in pirañas (piranhas), dogfish, and silver dollars.

 

A backdrop for sunrises and sunsets in bronze, pink, gold, and purple.

 

A setting for skinny dipping in the moonlight.

 

At el lago, howler monkeys yowled high in palm trees and frightened little boys and girls. And full-grown boys and girls, too. Howlers let out eerie, loud calls, and their bulging eyes spooked a lot of people. For most of us, howler monkeys were unseen creatures that woke us up at sunrise. They didn’t live near our house, but we could hear their calls which, in the distance, sounded breathy, breezy, whooshy.

 

The lakeshore hosted birthday parties, picnics, campouts, school parties, baptisms, and glittering Easter sunrise services.

 

It was a place of sunburns and mud fights

and rope swings, of squawking parrots

and chirping frogs and singing birds

and palm fronds clattering in the breeze

and symphonies played by countless insects.

The lakeshore would one day witness a murder, but it would also witness a wedding for a lovely bride and one of Lomalinda’s young men, all grown up.

 

Matt, Karen, Dave, and everyone—except for me—cooled off in the lake despite the stingrays that lived there. Yes, stingrays. Big stingrays.

 

Before entering the water, swimmers slapped the lake’s surface with a board or tree branch to drive the critters away.

 

But if humans forgot and invaded their territory, those monsters defended themselves with their stingers—slashing a swimmer’s feet, leaving him writhing in pain while someone pulled out the venomous knife-like barb.

 

Deep, long gashes became infected quickly in Lomalinda’s heat and required a thorough cleaning, pain meds, and antibiotics. Sometimes patients had to fly to Bogotá for medical treatment. Recovery could take months, always painful and slow.

 

People admitted their fear of stingrays,

but they went swimming anyway.

 

I don’t understand it—

that’s just too much adventure for me—

but then again, you already know I'm a foot-dragger.

But a lot of people went swimming,

and they’re still alive to tell about it.

 

C’mon back next week for more adventure stories!

 

The joys of living among South American wild critters

 

For boys—of all ages, including grown-up boys—living in that far-flung outback, Lomalinda, was like living in paradise.

 

All kinds of wild critters lived alongside us and Matt and his friends roamed at will for hours searching for them. He was only beginning to discover the adventures of fishing, chasing iguanas, making earthworm farms, collecting exotic fish for aquariums, making walk-in cages for tropical birds, and sharing our plot of earth with ocelots and anteaters. (See a photo, below, of Tommy Gardner holding an anteater. Also, click on this link to see a fascinating video of an anteater and her baby.)

 

On one of our first afternoons, Matt came running through the screen door, sweaty and breathing hard. “Gotta put away this shield,” he said, tossing it on the porch. He and Glenny had been pretending they were natives. “We’re gonna throw rocks at the bulls.”

 

Bulls? That didn’t seem like a good idea—or even a sane idea—to me so I tagged along to investigate. In the softball field below our house stood two Brahma bulls, white-gray, with humps on their backs.

 

Glenny must have sensed my concern, so he explained that local vaqueros (cowboys) let their cattle feed off our grass, and the kids threw rocks to herd them away from homes. Matt had such fun chasing those bulls that he didn’t even notice he’d lost a loose tooth. (See photo below of one of the neighborhood Brahma bulls.)

 

Little by little, we acquainted ourselves with all things Lomalinda, sometimes through experience, other times through stories. We soon learned that Lomalindians collected pets—not just dogs and cats and aquarium fish and snakes. They also opened their homes to anteaters and naughty monkeys and tropical birds, like toucans and parrots.

 

Many pet parrots sang songs, and one of them even practiced the scales. And up at the Cromers’ house, every time their dog barked, Patt yelled, “Bonnie, shut up!” Once when they were parrot-sitting, the parrot learned to bark like Bonnie, and then holler, “Bonnie, shut up!”

 

And then there’s the story of a couple of parrots living near a chicken coop—and they started clucking. Other parrots called out, “Knock, knock!” when people arrived at the door, and some laughed like their owners. People told stories of the two parrots that talked to each other in Spanish and English, and the obnoxious ones who flew away calling, “Bad bird! Bad bird!” Another hollered “Volleyball!” at five o’clock when Lomalinda’s offices closed and people headed to the volleyball courts.

 

There’s much more I want to tell you—stories about howler monkeys, and boa constrictors, and anacondas, and about swimming with huge stingrays and pirañas (piranhas).

 

Be sure to come back next week for some awesome stories!

 

God understands our awkward lurches and still loves us

 

Have you ever watched baby birds learning to fly?

 

I’ve marveled while watching a mama bird train her little ones in our neighbor’s yard. It’s as if she chirps out, “Watch me! Do what I do!” And then she flies from birdhouse to telephone wire, and her little birdie flails its wings and follows. 

 

Next, she flies from telephone wire to rose bush, her baby flapping its way to her side.

 

Then she soars from the rose bush back to the roof of the birdhouse. The babe flutters its wings, hesitates, wavers, flaps those wings hard, lurches upward, and stumbles onto the roof with a less-than-graceful plunk.

 

In Lomalinda, I was like a baby bird learning to fly. God blessed me with a number of “mama birds,” lovely people who gently showed me how to live life there in that out-of-the-way place—people like Karen McIntosh, Ruth Hockett, and others I’ll tell you about in coming weeks.

 

Their generous help reminds me of Deuteronomy 32:11 and God caring for Israel the way a mother eagle cares for her young: she hovers over them, spreading her wings. She gets them going and watches over them, carrying them on her wings.

 

That’s what several Lomalinda people did for me—they got me going, and in the process, I made some wobbly attempts and suffered a few awkward lurches. They checked in on me and kept cheering me on, “Watch me! Do what I do!” And, when necessary, they carried me on their wings to soften my less-than-graceful plunks and thuds.

 

God was so good to send those dear people to me. And now that I think of it, no doubt they, too, floundered and got flustered when they were new to Lomalinda. No doubt even the seasoned ones didn’t get everything right all the time.

 

They had already experienced what Teddy Roosevelt spoke of: 

“It is only through labor and painful effort, 

by grim energy and resolute courage, 

that we move on to better things.” 

They were modeling for me how to live that way.

They, like me, were recipients of God’s generous, gentle grace.

 

No matter what our struggles were, 

or are, or will be, 

we can live day by day wrapped in His loving arms. 

We can enjoy His approving smile. 

We can live with hope.

 

As A.W. Tozer said, “We please [God] most not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but [by] throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections and believing that He understands everything—and still loves us” (A.W. Tozer, The Root of Righteousness).

 

Learning from those willing to take knee-buckling, breath-stealing leaps of faith

 

Agreeing to apply to Wycliffe Bible Translators required me to take a scared-out-of-my-wits leap of faith.

 

Agreeing to move to South America took another hysterical, blind-eyed leap of faith.

 

Getting on that plane in Miami and flying into Bogotá—that required a brave-but-wild-eyed dive into the scary unknown future.

 

And then walking into the scene of, and hearing stories of, the Marxist-guerrilla bombing of our Bogotá facility that had occurred only days before—that plunged me into a terrifying reality. Dear God, what have we gotten ourselves into? Putting one foot in front of the other, and taking the next step, one foot in front of the other, required another sobbing, howling leap of faith.

 

Over the next three years I would witness those around me—my new neighbors and colleagues and friends—live their lives with ingenuity and patience and stubborn perseverance and hope.

 

They faced ongoing tests of faith. And every time, I witnessed their willingness to take knee-buckling, stomach-cramping, breath-stealing leaps of faith.

 

What I faced, in settling into Lomalinda,

was nothing compared to what many of them

had already faced

and would continue to face for decades.

 

It used to be, in the first half of my now-long lifetime, that Christians spoke of and wrote of dying to self and instead, living for God and His purposes and plans. Dying to self: setting aside our own hopes and dreams and plans and dedicating ourselves to God’s hopes and dreams and plans.

 

But in recent decades, I haven’t heard our Christian leaders and teachers calling us to die to self and instead to live for God. Perhaps it’s no longer a popular way for Christians to live. What a shame!

 

God gave me and my husband and our kids the great privilege of spending three years with a couple of hundred men and women and their kids who, over and over again, chose to die to self and instead, to live for God.

 

They didn’t talk about that much—I rarely heard anyone verbalizing that. No one strutted around with a holier-than-thou attitude. They just kept slogging along, trusting in God.

 

Taking a clear-eyed look at the challenges

and real dangers they faced,

recognizing the uncertainty of their wellbeing,

plunging forward into an unknown future,

they kept taking more mindboggling leaps of faith,

dying to themselves and placing God first.

 

Lomalinda’s people stayed faithful to the divine urgency

God had placed in their souls.

A number of them, some now well into their eighties,

 are still working on behalf of Colombia’s indigenous people,

still working to provide them with Scriptures

in their own languages.

 

They put their faith and deliberate trust in the Lord with all their heart, not relying on their own understanding, welcoming His grace and mercy, His strong hand of blessing to guide and hold them (Proverbs 3:5, Psalm 48:14, Psalm 139:10).

 

Theirs was, and still is, a glorious, sacred journey, 

a testament to the steadfastness of them all 

and to God’s love and faithfulness.

 

“Here is my mind—think through it to show me what love demands; here is my will—guide and direct all my words and actions; here is my heart—come and live in me. . . . Thank You, Lord, that with this commitment, I have died to myself. . . .” (Lloyd John Ogilvie, Silent Strength for My Life)

 

The value of asking questions—and getting answers

 

Lomalinda and I hadn’t gotten off to a good start—in fact, it was traumatic—but after a few chaotic days, I’d turned a corner.

 

The time had come to steady myself and take a calmer look at all that seemed so foreign, to look toward an unknown future—the next hour, the next day, the next week—with maturity and optimism.

 

The time had come to embrace a can-do spirit. I could make progress by breaking my duties into small chunks, by taking deep breaths, and by asking questions of those who had lived in Lomalinda longer than I.

 

Sometimes pride has made me hesitant to ask questions, insecurity has made me reluctant to ask for help. But asking, and getting answers, can go a long way in solving problems, eliminating mysteries, and making much-needed progress.

 

Asking questions of my new colleagues, seasoned Lomalindians, reminds me of an experience I had on one of my first days in Lomalinda. And the memory makes me smile. Oh, the myriad things I had to learn! And how surprising some of them were!

 

“Wednesday is vegetable day,” Karen MacIntosh had told me. “A big truck brings produce based on what we order the previous week—I put an order in for you already. Next Wednesday morning, drop off your basket at the commissary. You have a great big basket, right?”

 

I nodded, remembering how the commissary manager, Esther Steen, insisted I needed one. Now I knew why.

 

“Good,” Karen said. “When our crew delivers your fruit and veggies Wednesday afternoon, I’ll come over and show you what to do with them.”

 

What to do with them? I wondered what she meant. What’s not to know already about fruits and vegetables? I’d been cooking since I was a kid.

 

Sure enough, Wednesday afternoon an aged truck lumbered and whined up and down Lomalinda’s hills delivering bulging baskets of produce, and soon Karen Mac arrived.

 

“First, we scrub them in soapy water,” she said, filling the kitchen sink.

 

“Then we’ll soak everything for twenty minutes in Lugol, an iodine solution to kill parasites. Those nasty little bugs can really mess up your digestive tract. And cause a lot of embarrassment in public.”

 

While I stood beside her scrubbing, I didn’t recognize some of the produce. I puzzled over some round fruits, yellow or gold in color. “Are these miniature grapefruits?” I asked.

 

“No, they’re oranges,” Karen smiled. Oranges? That was a surprise.

 

My questions continued until I worried I’d asked too many. But then I spotted small round things, green and covered with thick, warty skin. I had no idea what they were, but pride welled up and I told myself, You’ve asked too many questions. Don’t ask again.

 

Eventually, though, curiosity got the best of me and I blurted, “What are these?”

 

Karen laughed. Maybe she remembered asking the same question years earlier.

 

“They’re lemons. Watch this,” she grinned, slicing through the green rind. It was orange inside.

 

Oh, yes, I had so much to learn

about living in Lomalinda,

and some discoveries,

like what a lemon looked like,

made me laugh out loud.

 

And laughter is always good medicine.