A Fire Ant from God (?)

I hear Texas can be very nice, but apparently we’ve never been meant to live there. The first opportunity happened years ago when we were eight months pregnant with Beth, our first child. My mineral exploration company decided to close our Spokane office, and we were to be transferred to Texas. Perhaps it was hormones, but let’s just say that one of us had an 'allergy' to Beth becoming a Texan. The other (after much prayer) finally decided that the change was from God, and I went looking for a different job here in Spokane. God DID provide another job, and it turned out to be our ‘stepping stone’ to missions: an engineering position where I worked with computers.

Ten years passed and another Texas opportunity came along. During those years, Paul was born, we joined Wycliffe to serve in Guatemala, and had come home on a missionary furlough. On our way back to Guatemala, we traversed the U.S. and stopped for a short time near Dallas, Texas to help out at the International Linguistic Center.

Our time in Guatemala had been wonderful. I gained a lot of hands-on experience computer-processing finished New Testaments prior to their publication. This included checking the Mayan text for spelling and consistency, and formatting it into the final print form. This field approach was pretty new to Wycliffe at that time and the Printing Arts people in Dallas had trained and mentored me. They were Wycliffe's NT publishing experts and the translated Bibles from around the world were processed there. Truth be told, they liked what I did and hoped that I might serve with them in Dallas.

In the missions context, there is no such thing as ‘wining and dining,’ so the Printing Arts folks arranged the next best thing: a potluck picnic in a nearby park.

The Linguistic Center near Dallas is very hot and dry in July. Hills dotted with thirsty scrub oak surrounded our picnic area. It was near a reservoir, and honestly, I thought Texas people might go there on field trips to see what a lake is like!

Compared to the cool, forested Pacific NW and the lush tropical mountains of Guatemala, I couldn't help but wonder why people chose to live in Texas in July. I imagined they perhaps came during a pretty time of year, when the bluebells were out, and then couldn’t leave and had to just make the best of it.

It happened at the picnic: God spoke to us, sort of. It wasn't the 'still small voice' that we had heard about, though.  One of us received a stinging 'revelation' through the mouth of a tiny fire ant. Ouch! Hmmm...could it be that the ant was sent* to help us with our decision? After more prayer, we finally decided that we were not to stay in Texas and we continued on to Guatemala. We helped with Bible translation there for several more years before returning in 1994 to serve with Wycliffe in the U.S.. We're thankful that God has guided us back to Spokane where there are no fire ants.

*Okay, no fire ants appear in the Bible, but... didn’t a donkey warn Balaam? :)

https://wycliffe.org/partner/cjsheeran