Like many places where it's warm much of the year, Portugal has its share of lizards. It's not unusual to see one or more sitting on or scurrying around any wall or other surface out in the sun. We see them in the church yard all the time. (And now that we've moved to the apartment above the church, I guess that makes it our front yard as well.) Most of these are skinks or other small lizards. They're pretty cute--although less so when they get bigger.
We were a bit surprised, on a recent Tuesday evening, when we opened the door to the Santa Marta church and found, staring at us before quickly disappearing, a gecko. Geckos are also small lizards, also fairly cute and harmless. We've seen them before, but not in Portugal.
When we served a year in Honduras, teaching at a Christian bilingual school, we learned about geckos and their value. In Honduras, when a person or family moves into a house or apartment, it is an altogether welcome and appropriate housewarming gift to bring them a pair of geckos. You see, geckos eat termites and their eggs, and termites are impossible to avoid in Honduras.
As we've learned, there are also termites in Portugal, particularly in the haphazardly built area of Santa Marta. We've started to see the damage from them in the wood beams along the ceiling of the sanctuary. And each time we move the wooden pulpit to clean under it, there's less pulpit to move. So our gecko is most definitely a welcome guest at the church.
The battle against termites is a lot like the spiritual battle we undertake here on the mission field. Termites are destructive agents, and like the devil's principalities and powers, once they're in place, they are hard to remove. And they reproduce: generation upon generation of destruction, whether of buildings or of people's souls.
But we don't fight this battle alone, of course. God is on our side, or rather, we are on His. We also count our supporters and prayer partners among our contingent. The prayers of those who lift up missionaries before the Lord are among the greatest weapons in this spiritual battle. While it is easy to see and know the problems that are before us, we know even more surely that, because of your prayers, countless other pitfalls and problems have been avoided--taken out of our way before we encounter them, through your efforts and God's grace.
We hope that you don't mind our thinking of you as our "spiritual geckos."
Blessings,
Michael and Carrie (Caty) Hamley
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