My cute and creepy friends...

Someone once told me a story about a student missionary who woke up sleeping in her hammock because her leg had gone numb. She pulled her cover away from her leg and a snake had swallowed her leg up to her thigh. So, she cut it off (the snake, not her leg)  and went back to sleep. If that happened to me I would NEVER sleep again. Luckily,  The creatures I live do not have the ability of swallowing me.

The first creatures I live with, who is actually not creepy at all, is Guapa. Guapa is our puppy here in the compound. Sara, one other Philippino SMs took him from a student here at school. He's absolutely adorable and loves to play, bite, and play tug-a-war with anything including the skirt you are wearing. The name Guapa means "beautiful" in Tagalog.

Every where you look, whether you are at church, school, bathroom, room, kitchen, town, ANYWHERE you will see geckos. I happen to like them and think they are cute. Apparently there are HUGE lizards in Chuuk that they leash up, I have never seen one and hope to as long as it is ACTUALLY leashed up. There are also large frogs everywhere at night.

We have a rat problem in our apartment here in Chuuk. We have traps set up in each apartment and we caught one rat in the pastor's apartment. I like to secretly believe that it is the rat that occasionally wakes us up in our room at night. After catching the rat, and Guapa playing with it, they drowned it and then took it out and swung it around by its tail. I come from a family that catches mice, feeds them, hair dries them if needed, and takes them out to the country to let them free. Needless to say, it was a little scarring.

The next critter I live with is one of the most common and awful things to see. The Cockroaches here are HUGE. I wish this picture somehow showed how big it is. The biggest part of him is probably the size of a quarter. Cockroaches can live for a week, I think it is, without their heads, and can fly. The fact that they can fly terrifies me the worst. At first, when I got here, just seeing them ruined my appetite, they are SO gross. The other day I got done exercising and wanted to shower but there were two cockroaches in the shower. No one was home but me, so I valiantly got something to smash them with. However, I have a great fear of smashing bugs that make a crunching sound when you smash them. I CAN'T do it. So, I didn't shower.

The next critter I am about to mention is the most terrifying of all. I have dealt with my fair share of spiders in my day, but the one I saw here tops them all. This is a picture from google because I was too frightened to take a picture. I think however, if I remember correctly, that the spider was bigger, hairier, and I remember fangs, but I'm not 100% on that. It showed up in the bathroom the first time I saw it. I only used the bathroom when absolutley necessary! I learned soon, however, that all of a sudden not being able to see it and know where it is, is just as scary. Luckily, I haven't seen this spider again. Stephen however found it on his bed when he woke up, I told him to never tell me stories like that again, even if they are true. Although I haven't seen this guy in awhile, he visits me in my dreams often, or should I say nightmares?

I have a favorite time of day here in Chuuk. My favorite time of day is when the air conditioning comes on in the morning and I can once again pull my sheet over myself and feel cool and dry. LOVE IT. On Wednesday morning, however, I felt something running up my leg. This is normal for me to feel because there are ants and little spiders everywhere. So I reached down to brush it off only to feel it run up me leg faster! It then hit me that this guy had way to many legs to be an ant. I quickly sat up, promptly screamed, and moved back. The bug, which turned out to be a cockroach, then scurried down behind my bed.  Later that morning as I was getting ready in my room the cockroach reappeared on our room wall. This was the moment, I was going to do it, I was going to kill my first cockroach. I picked up the nearest Webster's Dictionary and stood there. Once again my fear of exoskeletons over took me. 

Luckily, my roommate Denden, grew up with cockroaches and played with them as a kid. So I went out to the kitchen, dictionary in hand, and asked her if she could come annihilate the cockroach. She, being the kind person she is, agreed and promptly came in to kill it. The cockroach rushed quickly behind our window frame and hasn't been seen since. 

I began thinking about the events of that morning and how I wasn't able to kill the cockroach myself, but had a friend who was more than willing to do it for me, to help me out. I think this compares to our lives spiritually. We all have "cockroaches" in our lives that we struggle with, whether it be sinful temptations, addictions, or other things that are hard to deal with. We often try to deal with them on our own, thinking that someday we will have the guts to crush them (even if they will make a crunching sound). When the time comes though we can't do it, and the "cockroach" lives on. Luckily we have a Father in heaven who is more than willing to pick up a Webster's dictionary and get the job done. God doesn't ask us to become perfect sinless people on out own, but with His and His strength only. Jesus Christ is my "cockroach" killer.