Adventures

Chronicles

Fun For Your Family

"This page is designed for you and your children to enjoy some of the adventures we experience on the mission field.  Every few weeks we will be posting a new story written either by Rebecca or one of the children. Our hope is that you and your children will enjoy some of the adventures, stories and fumbles we have as a family living on the mission field. We are going to start with a series of animal stories. Our first series will be the "ANIMAL FABLES"

ANIMAL FABLES #2:  There's an Alligator in the Pond!?

My husbands parents had lived in Ecuador many years and before my father in law's death they were renting a house on an avocado farm.  The house had a pond about the size of a small swimming pool which my father in law had stocked with fish and one caiman (alligator).  When we came to Ecuador it was decided that we would rent this house and my mother in law would find something smaller for herself.  What I didn't realize was that I was inheriting several animals along with the house, one of which was a four foot caiman (alligator). I petitioned my husband, "We aren't keeping the alligator?" He seemed completely unconcerned by my fretting and after a few weeks I saw that my husband was set on keeping the alligator and that it wasn't aggressive. The kids thought it was "cool" having an alligator in their pond, the dog thought it was great fun to bark in his face, and the alligator was indifferent to us all.  I resigned myself to the fact that the alligator was there to stay and so I decided he needed a name. I named  him, Sebastian, otherwise known as, Johann Sebastian But... if he gets much bigger, I am getting a new pair of boots!

Sebastian spent his time either under water or sunbathing just on the edge of the pond. The dogs (for we had now bought a boxer) loved to bark in his face until he would eventually tire of the noise and return to the water. Our Samoyed had a love for the water and would spend much of his time swimming around the pond chasing a duck. When he would run out of breath he would rest in the shallows of the pond where he would unknowingly position himself with his tail at Sebastian's submerged nose.

It was obvious that Sebastian had plenty of fish that were willing to swim right into his mouth when he was hungry so he was not tempted in the least to any aggression. The children got used to playing at the pond's edge, catching the guppies and gold fish.

One morning, I was in the kitchen and Tony (age 5) came running in soaking wet. If it had been a cartoon, his eyes would have been sticking out 12 inches from his face and his heart would have been jumping out and back from his chest, stretching out the skin to about 2 feet from his chest, in a cute little heart shape.  I said, "Son, what happened!" Tony gasped, "MOM! I fell in the pond!" His older sisters came running in on his heals laughing and giggling. They said, "Mom, you should have seen it! It was a miracle! Tony fell into the pond and he was so afraid that the alligator might get him that he bounced off the water!"

MORAL OF THE STORY:  Sufficient desperation creates an atmosphere for a miracle.