Missions Convention

We just finished a one week missions convention and I'm pooped--but what a great week. We had the Morton's, the Johnson's, the Godbout's, the Hausfeld's, and the Tucker's. This week we tried to give people a better chance to meet with the missionaries personally so we set up small group opportunities in people's home and in the church. I enjoyed hearing from two of the missionaries--what they were doing, where they were going, etc. We also had our second missions banquet on Friday night where we shared humorous stories from the field. Some of the stories were very funny and beg to be shared. Since not everyone could be there I'm posting two of them that were particularly funny.

Mark Hausfeld, area director of the Central Asian Republics shared this story:

Our family had been in Pakistan for a couple months. We went to a community celebration called a "Mela." A Mela has all kinds of foods, crafts and carnival like activities for adults and children. One of the favorite activities is when a snake charmer plays his flute and a cobra comes out of a basket. I had always wanted to see that so I went to the center of the Mela grounds to the snake charmers platform.

There on a platform two feet off the ground was a family whose lives were dedicated to charming cobras. As I stood looking at the baskets of cobras that surrounded the family of snake charmers and watched a little boy two years age at the most pulling baby cobras out of a basket and playing with them like strands of thick spaghetti. Soon there were several Pakistani men around me and in Punjabi, a language I did not know; they seemed to be negotiating a price for him to charm a cobra from a basket with a flute. The each put down 10 Rupees (about 33 cents). Thinking this is what I am about to see I laid down 10 Rupees too.

The father reached for a small straw basket and took off the lid. He reached in and pulled out a baby cobra that was the diameter of a dime and about two feet long. In one motion from the basket he took the head of the cobra and shoved it up his nose. As the head disappeared in his nostril he slides the rest of the cobra's body into his nose. Suddenly he opened his mouth and put his free hand into his mouth and pulled out the head of the cobra with his index finger and thumb.

With one hand he pulled the head of the cobra and with the other he held the tail. Then he began to pull the head and tail with each hand back and forth like some kind of nose floss! Then he concluded his act with pulling the head so that the remainder of the body and tail came out his mouth. Then he took out a handkerchief and wiped the cobra clean.

And I thought I was going to see a snake dance out of a basket...

Don Tucker, director of Africa Harvest shared this story:

In our first term, we shared an old mission station with a caretaker family. They were nice people but had some very invasive goats. One day, we looked up from lunch to see one of the goats butting through the screen door to come inside.

I could tell by the look on Deborah's face that this was a bit too much for a lovely, young, new missionary lady. So, I proceeded to run out the back door, looked for the closest thing I could find intending to chase away the goat. We lived rather close to the city refuse pile, and there, lying near our back door was an empty long-necked bottle. I picked it up and through it in the general direction of the goat, hoping to scare it away. Would you believe it? That bottle smacked the goat square between the eyes and he fell graveyard dead on the spot!

That event became the talk of the town for a few days. You see, Don is left handed. So I threw the bottle with my left hand. In that country there is significant superstition about left-handed people (which I didn't know at the time!). They used my dead-aim bullseye (or rather goats-eye!) to confirm their suspicions that left-handed people have special abilities!

Little did they know how surprised I myself was when the goat passed away so quickly and thoroughly!