Charry and the Offended Rats

Charry has been a huge help in our home since March of 2007. She helps with the laundry (no dryer), cleaning (things get much dirtier here much faster), trash (making compost, burning the rest), and many other things that take a LOT more time to do here. She is only 29 years old, but on Thursday while she was working in our kitchen, she collapsed. It seems that she suffered a mild stroke, and she has entirely lost the use of her right arm. Please pray that the feeling and mobility would return. If it is not God's will for this to happen, please pray that she would remain encouraged as she learns to live without the use of her arm. We are controlling her blood pressure with medication and have taught her some basic physical therapy, but she has a long road ahead of her. Unless things change, she will not be able to work from here on out. Thank you for praying for her family as they adjust to this. We will continue to pay her salary for the next month just to help out, but we are also in the process of looking for someone else at least on a temporary basis while she is gone. Please pray that we are able to find someone soon as I can't keep up with everything without some help!

On a lighter note, we thought you might enjoy this story. Just before we left for our meetings, we caught a rat in the closet on a glue board trap. I had Charry kill it and dispose of it. Then while we were gone at the meetings, the rats did a lot of damage in the house. When we arrived home, we did not have any electricity. It seemed like the rats might have chewed through an electric line. When we mentioned this possibility to Charry, she gasped and said, "That is because you had me kill that rat before you left! I should have just thrown it over the fence!" I replied that I didn't want her to do that because then it would just come back. She said, "But now we have offended the rats! Now the rest of them will rise up against you and destroy all your things. This happened once to us when we killed a rat - the rest were offended and began to destroying everything - even our clothes! You must ask forgiveness from the rats and leave some food out for them to show your change of heart." Steve's response when I told him this? "Well, I am planning on "offending" any more rats that get caught in our traps so looks like we are in for a rat war!" I am happy to report that we have "offended" 4 rats since we arrived home, and it looks like we are winning the war as we haven't had any damage the last couple nights. So do you think we should keep "offending" them or should we ask forgiveness from the rats and start feeding them?