I SEE THE LIGHT, DO YOU?

These are the days you know you can't escape.  Being on the mission field is not supposed to be easy by any accounts.  It all started last Saturday.  I have slowly been redeveloping the heat rash I had gotten at the beginning of my stay here in Nicaragua.  Now it's back again.  This time mostly on my legs, particularly around my knees.  There is just no convenient place to get a rash.  As I write this piece my ankles will not stop itching.  It seems like there is hardly anything there but the more I scratch the more it itches.  Hydro-cortisone cream is a joke.  It has never worked for me.  I just stared at the doctor today as she prescribed it for me.  I reminded myself I could not lose my testimony over a tube of cream.  I waited for two hours in the sweltering heat of the waiting room as I watched the intense sunlight of the Nicaraguan sun pouring through the door.  The view of the coconut palm outside in the distance did not provide any sense of being in a tropical paradise.  Two hours later I had prescriptions for hydro-cortisone cream 1%, prednisone 50 mg,  and some banana flavored syrup called ketotifeno.  I already was self-medicating with the first two.   I hope the syrup makes me sleepy like she said.  In fact I know it will.  I tried it when I got home and I crashed in a hammock after dinner.  I hope I can make it last until this rash is gone.  Why didn't she just give me the cortisone I.V. like the last doctor did that I told her about the last time I was there.
Well, to go on with the rest of why these are The Days Like These Would Come.  So back to Saturday, it all started out like normal.  A slightly warm morning that I know will grow into a hot and sunny day.  I, Jimmy, Darel and the YWAM team took the ferry to Rivas to buy paint for art projects around the grounds.  The ferry was packed as if it was evacuating the island.  I looked back at the volcano to be sure we hadn't missed a warning siren.  Nope, no smoke or ash.  So we're out in the lake and I look outside and I see a swarm of gnats hovering over one of the trucks in back. I thought it was an isolated incident.  Later I found out that the annual swarm is on.  By the time we get back to CICRIN there are gnats everywhere.  My room is filled with hundreds of dead gnats and they smell like dead fish.  I mopped and cleaned and it still has a slightly fishy smell.  So my room besides always being hot now smells like a can of cat food.  Back to Rivas.  I don't understand how or why the Spaniards chose to found Rivas where they did.  I guess I would say that about most of the cities here.   What could they do.  It's hot everywhere.  I would have just made it one block wide and clinging to the entire lake shore.  Well, a trip to Rivas is the same as working in the fields all day.  By the time you get back to the island with all your purchases you are dripping with sweat, thirsty, exhausted, deranged, and wanting a shower.  To add to this all the sweating exacerbated my rash and now it's moved to the next level.  I don't want to wear clothes; not an option.  I hardly slept that night.  The electricity keeps going out so the fan stops.   I can't be in my room without a fan so I walk outside in the middle of the night several times.  Needless to say I had little sleep.  In the morning I could not eat breakfast from the heat and lack of sleep.  I changed pants twice to find the coolest ones and for the first time I didn't wear shoes.  I don't care if they judge me or I cause someone to stumble, I wasn't about to put shoes on too.  I wore chanclas.  Probably the first brown-skinned man to do so in that church. I guess it didn't phase anyone.  I also slept through part of the sermon.  I couldn't fight the heat and lack  of sleep.  Back to the orphanage; back to the sayules (gnats) and the heat.  This had to be the hottest evening of the year.  I helped Hellen set up a Pay Pal account in here air-conditioned office.  I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my time in Nicaragua in that office.  I forgot to mention that there were hundreds of sayules in the office.  They were on the computer screen, covering the desk (I kept blowing them off onto the floor) and continually pouring in through the a/c vent--seeking the light too.  There is so much spiritual parallelism going on here that I fail to mention.  The sayules are seeking the light.  They are a pestilence and they swarm in with you whenever you open a door-or a window.  Earlier in the day while I was pacing the rancho trying to find the coolest place with the least amount of sayules I kept thinking, but this is God's creation in action.  These little gnats are glorifying God in a way that I am unable to appreciate.  I see that they demonstrate is power to mass produce life.  They drop dead by the hundreds every minute that they're on the move.  Such an insignificant creature.  Such a successful creature.  God is so good.  I'm told that when the sayules come they stay for a while, a temporada, at least until it rains.  That night it poured.  He does answer my prayers.  I have been praying for the early rains.  You don't know what it meant to me to not have to irrigate that day.  It's not as easy as just turning on the faucet.  We didn't work very long today.  Until this rash goes away I have to try to sweat as little as possible--I know, what a joke.  Still, with the itching and the sweating, and the renewed appearance by the white fly once again attacking our garden I have to say I am greatly blessed.  If my biggest complaint is I itch, I have no problems.  Even though I was seriously contemplating making this a five months on-five months off missionary life just yesterday.  The best part, the sayules are gone.  No gnats in my teeth, covering my white tank top, in my coffee, in my eyes.  I don't know if they will come back, but I don't think so.  I just stepped outside to give Magdaleno, the night watchman a cup of coffee, and the night sky repeatedly lights up from a distant storm.  It is quickly moving towards us.  I hope it pours again tonight.  Insurance that the sayul swarm is over for this year.  I'm told that they are followed by swarms of leaf-cutter ants, the ones you see creating trails of green in the rain forest documentaries, and finally by thousands of frogs once the rains are regular.  Bring them on.  I already know I have the privilege of praising God for being able to witness some of His spectacles of nature, even if they resemble the plagues of Egypt. 
Last night before it rained, I stood outside the first time the electricity went out.  For the first time this year I saw the fireflies signaling each other above the tallest trees.  Again, God shows His symbolic glory through His 'insignificant' creatures.  Their flickering now reminds me that His light will always shine through the darkness.  Their appearance immediately before the first rain storm of the season seems to remind us that His light comes before the storm.  I didn't know it was going to rain last night.  It's a good thing to take notice of His light before the storms hit.