We left Mauritius two months and two days ago. I miss the people we met there, and I'm very grateful for the time we got to spend on such a beautiful island with warm, hospitable people. God taught me a lot in the time I was there, and the trip and lessons learned are continuing to impact my life.
One big lesson I learned was that I don't have to do it by myself. I had this mentality that I was responsible for many things, maybe even everything. And that's not true. I felt responsible for being responsible, responsible for saving the world. But that's God's responsibility. The world does not rest on my shoulders. I don't have to do it by myself. I have team members, family, friends, God. Other people are working for the same goal. I'm not alone in this. It was hard to let go of my independence, but it was so freeing knowing I didn't have to do it all!
And now, for a story from Mauritius. . .
The day we arrived in Mauritius, we were sure we had landed in Paradise.
Beaches, palm trees, warm weather, flowers everywhere, birds singing, banana trees in our back yard.
Look at this picture to get an idea.
Yep, Paradise. But that evening we were sitting outside eating supper. And the giant spider appeared. It was a female huntsman, about the size of a 12-year-old's hand. It was crawling on the ceiling, and we couldn't squish it, because it was carrying an egg sac. If you squish the egg sac, you get thousands of teeny-tiny baby huntsmans. Ew. Aurélie and I were not impressed. Ok, we were shrieking and pulling our legs up on to our chairs. Spiders don't bug Céline. Eventually the spider ran away, and we nervously resumed eating supper.
Then it was time to go to bed. We were super jet-lagged, and very excited to sleep. Until we saw another huntsman in our room. Spiders in the dining area outside are one thing. Spiders in your bedroom when you're trying to sleep are another, much more frightening thing. Aurélie and I were freaking out. Even though we had huntsmans in Australia, I never liked them. To make things worse, the spider disappeared into the light fitting, and we didn't see it again. The thing I hate more than seeing a spider is seeing one and then losing sight of it.
So Aurélie and I decided to pray. We figured since God is the Lord of everything, He's also Lord over spiders, and He could tell the spider to leave. I also remembered a story about a girl in Costa Rica whose friend prayed every day that there would be no cockroaches in her bed, and there never were, even though the other people around her had bugs in their bed. So we prayed that the spider would go away, and that God would keep the spiders out of our room for the whole trip, and that we would be able to sleep unafraid and peacefully.
We didn't see the spider again that night, and slept well.
A couple evenings later, Aurélie found this:
EW! Aurélie very courageously carried the glass with the spider in it outside, where she flung the water and the spider as far away as possible.
So, you may say that God didn't answer our prayer. Well, He didn't answer it in the way we expected. Aurélie grew in courage that night. And here's the fabulous thing. The whole two months we were in Mauritius, we had a spider in our room only one more time. And that night was the night we were sleeping under the stars anyway, so it didn't count.
God answers prayer, even strange prayers from scared girls, asking Him to keep the spiders out of their room.
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