An Uninvited Dinner Guest

Every Thursday night the MAF team here in Tarakan gets together for dinner at one of the local restaurants and then we have Bible study at one of the team member's houses.  We were sitting at dinner yesterday at a restaurant that is just down the street from us called B-21.  Our team is fairly large, so we were sitting at a series of tables that had been pushed together to to make one long table.  I was siting at the very end of the table farthest from the door.  I had finished my food and was busy talking to one of the other MAF wives, when suddenly from the other end of the table there was a scream and one of the other MAF ladies jumped out of her chair.  This was followed by others jumping out of their chairs letting out various screams, yells and exclamations in a chain reaction down the table.  I quickly realized that whatever was causing the commotion was heading towards my end of the table, so I retreated to the far wall of the room in pretty short order.  Moments later a medium-sized rodent came leaping and bounding out from under the table!  I was told that it was a shrew, I say "was" because the furry intruder quickly met his death under the shoe of one of the MAF guys.  Shrews are rodents that are larger than mice, but not as big as rats.  They have the gross stringy tail of a rat though.  Apparently the people at the other end of the table had been hearing strange sounds coming from the wall unit air conditioner, and it turned out that the shrew was stuck in there.  When he got out he retreated under the table and created the mid-meal stir that led to his untimely death.  Ah well, one less rodent to root through the dumpsters...there are plenty more to take his (her?) place.  I am trying not to think about rodents in restaurants, ignorance is truly bliss when it comes to food prep here.  Just eat and hope everything turns out okay-so far so good for me!  Anyway, just thought I would share that delightful story-one shrew in Tarakan was certainly tamed last night!

Quick stove update-the "technician" for the Indonesian stove came out to the house yesterday to look at the defective stove.  He didn't actually bring any tools with him and had to ask to borrow a screwdriver, which was decidedly non-technician-like, if there be such a term.  Also he seemed confused about how to turn on the burners.  After he pulled a bunch of parts off the stove, tried to fix it, and cut his hand in the process, dripping blood on the stove and the kitchen floor, which he used my dishrag to wipe up (blood-borne pathogens anyone?) he announced that yes, it was in fact not working.  However, when Chris went back to the store to get a refund and arrange for them to pick the stove up from our house, the woman who runs the store claimed she never said she would give us a refund, even though she had given that guarantee several hours previous.  She said that we had to keep the stove because we broke it by trying to turn it on.  Chris was like "Um, how could we know it was broken unless we tried to turn it on?"  They went back and forth and the conclusion is we have to talk to the owner of the store who is out of town until Monday.  So we currently have two stoves in our kitchen-both broken except for the burners on the American stove, which I have been able to use, thankfully.  The Saga of the Stove continues!  We are praying that we will be able to get a refund-we will find out on Monday.  I will keep the updates coming.  Thanks for the prayers and encouragement!  I am just laughing at the ridiculousness at this point-it will all work out.

That's all for now...time for bed!  Have a great weekend!