Back together!

Our family was reunited yesterday afternoon and it is great to be back together. It was especially fun to see how the kids were excited to see one another.   Tomorrow Randy and Tori leave again to go to Cotonou to pick up the Bailey family who arrive on Saturday night. They will be staying with us for 2 weeks and we are so excited! The Baileys are our former team mates as well.  They arrived in Benin 10 years ago this past month in June of 1996.  They served and honored the Lord well here for 4 years and have many special friends who are eagerly anticipating their arrival.  There are also many people in the Kingdom because of the Baileys willing heart to come to Benin and spread the news of salvation found in Jesus Christ.   Greg and Melanie have 3 girls, Jessica Grace, Faith, and Hope.  Stay tuned this week for pictures of their family!

Okay I have a little story of something that happened while Randy was gone! Who knows how this story might have been different had he in fact been here!

For several days I had been noticing that there was a mouse in our house.  Believe it or not this is not a regular problem.  For 2 days we had set a mouse trap in the kitchen, the first night with cheese and the second night with peanut butter.  All we had attracted were ants.  The mouse was obviously still around but was not tempted by our American mouse cuisine.  On Wednesday night before Sossa left, I asked him to set the trap.  He set the trap with a small fish that he had heated up so that it had a nice fish scent….nice as in the mouse would think that it smelled nice.  Sossa then went home for the night.  Jonathan and Lael were soon asleep.  Around 10PM that night the power went off.  And of course J and L woke up. Thankfully around 30 minutes later when the power had not returned, Sossa returned to our house to start up the generator for me.  Just as he left and I was returning Jonathan to his bed, I heard the mouse trap snap. However, I then began to hear a lot of noise in the kitchen.  I walked up to the kitchen somewhat hesitantly only to find that the trap had caught the mouse, but only one foot.  The mouse very much alive and no where near death was running frantically all over with the trap attached to his one foot. It appeared to me that he was latching on to the legs of the kitchen table with one leg trying to pry off the trap with the force of his body. Could a mouse be so smart?  When he saw me he immediately began looking for another source for help.  I was beginning to feel a small panic about what I was going to do.  I got a broom thinking I would somehow know what to do with it but my courage failed me.

I then had the great idea to ask our dogs for help.  Our dogs have been such a blessing to us in the years that we have been here, alerting us to snakes, scorpions, strangers, and using their overall energy to protect our family!  We think they are Super Dogs! What I was about to ask was really just a small favor compared to some of the things they have done for us before.:)

I opened the front door and called out for them.  They immediately came to the door but refused to come in.  When Booker was a puppy we had trained him to stay outside and he has never once come in the house in 6 years.  Now with an open invitation before him, it was like there was an invisible wall. He wanted to come in but his body would not let him do it.  Sparkle actually took a few steps in and Booker pulled her back. They were barking like crazy and the mouse was flipping all around the living room behind me. He had now worked his way under the couch.  I reached down and picked Booker up and brought him in the house. He couldn’t believe it but he went straight to work. He began to sniff the trail.  When he got to the couch, I lifted it up and he immediately pulled the mouse from the trap with his mouth and turned around and pranced out the door!  I was so relieved and so proud of Booker.  And I had no one to share it with!  It was hard to settle down after such excitement.  Fortunately it was just a few minutes later when my mom just happened to call!  I had fun replaying the story for her.  She mentioned that it might be fun to share it here as well.