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WATCH OUT FOR MRS. MOSQUITO!        DO 1831        12/12/82       The Price of Paradise!--A Dream about Tropix Troubles!

       1. AMEN. PRAISE THE LORD! THANK YOU JESUS! THIS IS THE AFTERNOON OF DECEMBER 12TH, 1982 & I'M RECORDING A DREAM that I had just before I woke up from a rather long two-hour afternoon nap. I'd been feeling rather sick & even a little chilled & feverish off & on for the past few days, with my muscles sore & joints sort of aching, & I thought perhaps it was because I was getting too little exercise outdoors.
       2. BUT ONE MORNING THIS PAST WEEK I HAD REALLY GOTTEN VERY CHILLED, & I woke up from a night's sleep fairly early in the morning & was quite cold. Although the room temperature was at its usual level & Maria was not cold, I was really cold & I had to really cover up & had to have her put an extra cover over me & snuggle up to me to get me warm, & I finally got warm. But even after I got up & sat up in my chair, I still felt quite chilly & chilled, so I put on three robes, a pair of socks, slippers & covered up with a heavy spread & finally got warm!
       3. SOON AFTER THIS I HAD MY SECOND BM OF THE DAY, which was rather unusual for me & it was rather soft, which was also unusual, sort of soft yellow, but I never thought anything much of it. I thought, "Well, I just got chilled this morning & I guess that was it, I just got chilled & that affected me & my bowels." Whenever I get sick my bowels seem to be the weakest & that's always where it hits me first. So I went about my business as usual except I noticed later that day I was very tired.
       4. I'VE JUST BEEN GOING OVER MY DIARY TO CHECK THESE EVENTS & SEE IF THEY CONFIRM THE DREAM, & the morning that I am speaking of was the morning of December the 9th & here it is the 12th now. Well, I was quite sick & tired & so Maria requested prayer for me from the Family. I just thought, "Well, I've overdone." I have probably--between getting chilled this morning & being too cold--I've maybe overdone a little, & so I thought nothing serious of it except that I really was feeling pretty sick.
       5. THEN THE NEXT DAY IN THE AFTERNOON & PARTICULARLY IN THE EVENING I BEGAN TO HAVE A LOT OF HEAVY VOLUMINOUS GAS rolling off from my bowels & a few little gas pains, but I chalked it up to the peas that I had eaten the night before or the beans I had eaten that night, & I thought, "Oh well, it's just something that I ate." Also that next day after my first chills we had our water off a good deal of the day, off & on.
       6. SO I THOUGHT, "WELL, THEY'RE WORKING ON THE WATER & the water is coming & going, & who can tell, they're not too clean in these countries & they're not too sanitary about the water. Maybe I picked up a little something in the water & maybe it was the water that was causing me to have this gas & the looseness of the bowels."
       7. THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS IN THE TROPIX THAT CAN CAUSE THIS SORT OF THING, so that I just supposed that it was one of these many different factors, either the chills I had the other morning or something I ate or something I drank or a combination maybe of all three or more, so I thought nothing of it really seriously except that I wasn't feeling very well each day & I've had a few extra BMs that I don't normally have, & I have been sort of sick & aching with my muscles sore with a sort of dull faint ache, & off & on feeling a little feverish or chilly.
       8. A COUPLE OF TIMES I ASKED MARIA TO FEEL MY BROW & BODY TO SEE IF I HAD A FEVER, but as far as she could tell I had none.--Until this morning, when after having had this dream, to see if it was true & to somewhat confirm it, I actually dug out our thermometer--I even had a hard time finding it since we haven't used it for so long--a body temperature thermometer. I washed it in alcohol & stuck it in my mouth & waited to see the results. Sure enough, it was not a high fever, it was not fever high enough to feel with your hand, but it was a fever.
       9. I COULD FEEL IT WITH MY BODY, I COULD FEEL MYSELF THAT I FELT CHILLED & FEVERISH & SICK, but not enough for anyone else to know the difference just by touching me. But my temperature was 7/10th's of a degree above normal, very minimal, a very slight difference, not considered serious but nevertheless indicating that I was experiencing a very slight fever. So I felt so sick this morning & I was thinking perhaps it was caused by a number of other different causes, & I finally had to go back to bed for a nap & I slept for two hours.
       10. JUST BEFORE I WENT TO SLEEP I PRAYED & ASKED THE LORD TO FORGIVE ME IF THERE WAS ANYTHING I HAD DONE THAT WAS WRONG. Maria laid hands on me & prayed for me & we claimed several Scriptures on healing. For when I get sick, of course, I always think well, I'm probably getting punished for one of my many misdeeds or shortcomings or failures or excesses or something.
       11. SO I ASKED THE LORD TO FORGIVE ME & I CLAIMED THE PROMISES that "If they have committed sins, they shall be forgiven them." "The prayer of faith shall save the sick & the Lord shall raise him up, & if they have committed sins, they shall be forgiven them." (Jam.5:15.) And, "Who forgiveth all thine iniquities & healeth all thy diseases." (Psa.103:3.) And, "If we confess our sins He is faithful & just to forgive us our sins & to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1Jn.1:9), & "Confess ye your faults one to another that ye may be healed" (Jam.5:16).
       12. SO WITH THAT PRAYER & THOSE SCRIPTURES I WENT TO SLEEP wondering what in the World was wrong with me that I felt so sick & sore & aching & feverish & frequently chilling, when Maria is usually the one chilling & getting cold. She is so cold-blooded that if she feels the slightest change in room temperature she piles on the clothes even in the Tropics--I started to say the Arctics!--Sometimes she looks like she's in the Arctics when she's all bundled up!
       13. BUT IT'S RATHER UNUSUAL FOR ME IN THIS NICE WARM TROPICAL CLIMATE TO FEEL THE LEAST BIT COLD, so it was quite unusual for me to wake up that morning very cold & chilled & to be chilled all morning & have to wrap up like I did, in three robes & socks & a blanket & feeling sick at the same time.
       14. SO I WENT TO SLEEP THEN AFTER PRAYER & CLAIMING THE SCRIPTURES, sort of wondering, "Lord, what is wrong with me, what's the matter with me? Is it something I ate or drank or getting chilled that morning, or have I caught something, or what is it?"--And I sort of went to sleep with that on my heart.--Or, "Is it a spanking, a chastening because of something I've done wrong?" Well, I guess the Lord had to use extreme measures in this extreme case of my extremity when I was really getting a little discouraged & blaming myself & perhaps others for my sickness.
       15. SO EVIDENTLY HE DECIDED IT WAS TIME TO GIVE ME THE SPECIFICS & TO ENCOURAGE ME by letting me know it wasn't really my fault & that I really had caught something! I even noticed some mornings I had wakened with my throat rather sore & one morning I even coughed up some phlegm, which was unusual for me, right, Honey? (Yes sir!) And my cough was a little worse a morning or two, wasn't it?
       16. I HAD JUST A GENERAL FEELING OF MALAISE--the French or Spanish would call it malaise or de mal or whatever, & I was feeling really very tired all the time, extremely tired & needing to take more naps than usual, a nap almost every day. I'd just go so far & couldn't go any further, then I'd fall asleep in my chair working on my work. So I guess in my desperation & calling on the Lord & really asking Him to please help me & heal me & forgive me, He truly answered with this dream!
       17. SO WITH THE QUESTION ON MY MIND, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME, LORD?--AND WHY?", I HAD THIS LITTLE DREAM! It didn't even seem to amount to very much. I had it just before I woke up, I slept about two hours & then awoke immediately after the dream & I could still see it & hear it, just like those very significant dreams always are! I told Maria the other night that I had had a few little dreams during the night. I'd wake up & realise as I remembered that I had been dreaming about something but I couldn't even remember what it was, therefore knowing that it was not apparently of the Lord, just something unimportant or little dreams from the business of the day or night & sort of wandering about in my sleep in the Spirit.
       18. BUT THIS TIME IT WAS A VERY CLEAR DISTINCT DREAM, VERY VIVID, & I HEARD THE WORDS VERY CLEARLY & I WOKE UP IMMEDIATELY AFTERWARD & REMEMBERED IT WITH EXTREME CLARITY, including the scene & the words, which is the usual case with these significant message dreams that the Lord gives, of which I have had so many, thank the Lord!
       19. IN MY DREAM I SAW A LINE OF WHAT I KNEW WERE SOLDIERS. How I knew it I don't know, because they were actually dressed in hospital clothes, the sort of pajamas they wear in hospitals, particularly in an Army hospital, & they were standing in a row before this speaker & he was talking to them. He looked like a doctor, somehow I knew he was a doctor, & somehow or another...(tape recorder acting funny) Well, I'll try to finish it anyhow. I guess the Devil is fighting this dream, as I was just on the verge of telling it! Lord bless this tape recorder & the tape & me, & rebuke the Devil in Jesus' name!
       20. IT SEEMED THE DOCTOR WAS STANDING ON A SORT OF A DAIS or stage or a platform, & there were some officers in uniform beside & behind him, which may have been one reason why I knew that these men were soldiers as the doctor was talking to them. He said, "This is a medical experiment & you will have some mild reactions but nothing serious."
       21. SOMEHOW OR ANOTHER I KNEW THAT THEY HAD BEEN INOCULATED WITH SOMETHING--that was the picture I got--as they so often do in the Army.--They experimented on us with everything imaginable, from which we often got quite sick, supposedly to protect us from the worst & other real diseases, & it would give us a mild case, but sometimes it wasn't so mild! But he said,
       22. "YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE SOME VERY MILD REACTIONS but nothing very serious, just chills & fever, & aching of the muscles, soreness of the muscles, aching of the bones similar to that experience in Dengue Fever or sometimes Malaria." And he said, "But the reaction should be very mild, nothing serious, nothing to worry about, so don't worry."
       23. THE SOLDIERS WERE STANDING THERE LOOKING AT HIM LIKE DUMB SHEEP, you know, as we often did in the Army, just doing what we were told, sometimes wondering about what we were told since sometimes our feelings seemed to contradict what we were reassured of. They were always telling us, "Oh this isn't serious, this is a very mild reaction", but we'd get sick as a dog & ache all over & our muscles would be so sore! I remember after I got the tetanus shot my arm was so sore I could hardly even move it or lift it!
       24. WHEN THEY GAVE YOU A CHOLERA SHOT THEY SAID, "OH, YOU'LL JUST HAVE A MILD REACTION, maybe a little bowel gas or something", & I got sick as a dog! I was sick in bed for three days with a high fever, aching all over & with the runs. If I didn't have a real case of cholera I don't know what it was, a horrible griping in the bowels etc.! Even when I got the smallpox shot it made me so sick, sick in my stomach, feeling like throwing up & just generally miserable! So the so-called mild reactions didn't always work out to be so mild! We were always told not to worry, it's very mild & nothing serious, don't worry, just like this doctor was telling these soldier patients. But we often found out it was much worse than the doctor admitted.
       25. WELL, RIGHT AFTER HE SAID, "IT'S VERY MILD & WITH MILD REACTIONS & NOTHING SERIOUS, DON'T WORRY" I IMMEDIATELY WOKE FROM THE DREAM. And I thought, "Well, thank You Lord, I guess whatever I've got, You don't want me to worry, these are very mild reactions I'm getting" & all exactly as this doctor outlined in his little talk to the soldier patients--they were patient all right, as we had to be in the Army. But then the question came to me, "But, Lord, how did I get it? If I have something that those guys have as an experiment, resembling Dengue Fever & Malaria, how did I get it?"
       26. AND INSTANTLY THE LORD BROUGHT TO MIND THAT JUST A FEW MORNINGS BEFORE I HAD BEEN VERY BIT UP BY MOSQUITOES or a mosquito, I don't know which, during the night because I had failed to turn on my mosquito repellent stinker or had failed to change the tablet or something, & actually not only that but I think I had even forgotten to turn it on. So somehow, some way, some little lady mosquito had gotten in & decided to suck my blood to nourish her pregnancy so that she could conceive & bear fruit, the little eggs & larvae which breed more mosquitoes & I had noticed several mosquitoes around. They seem to come in, even if they can't come in through the screens, through the doors some times when they're open, & I had even found a couple roosting just above the water line in the bathroom a few times.
       27. THEY ALWAYS LIKE TO BE NEAR WATER, THEY'RE SOMEWHAT WATER CREATURES. Their eggs are laid in the water & they hatch there. They turn into little wiggle tails that look a little bit like seahorses, & they kick their way around on the surface & then finally they have a metamorphosis like a caterpillar & they shed their shell, chrysalis or whatever it is, & they pull themselves out of it right there on the surface of the water or a wet plant leaf or whatever it is, spread their wings & fly away to bite more people!
       28. ACTUALLY MOSQUITOES DON'T REALLY BITE YOU, THEY SUCK YOU, "KISS" YOU, as I told the children, they're not biting. They don't bite at all, they don't even have teeth, they're merely kissing you. They stick their mouth into you & even give you a nice little dose of medicine that dissolves your blood corpuscles, & then they suck them back through their long needle-nosed mouth, which is called a proboscis, whose hole is too small to imbibe whole blood corpuscles even though they're so microscopic you can't even see them with the naked eye! That way she sucks in your blood, & if you leave her long enough on your skin she'll also suck in her serum or medicine or poison which dissolved your blood corpuscles. She'll suck that back into herself with your blood if you let her finish the whole process & it won't even leave a so-called bite or itch at all!
       29. WE USED TO DEMONSTRATE THIS WHEN I WAS A KID IN MIAMI, that if you let them inject you with their serum, which they use to dissolve your blood corpuscles in order to suck them in, then if you let them suck the blood & the serum back into their own bodies you won't notice a bite, it won't raise a swelling or itch & she's finished her little job, she's got the blood she needed & she goes on about her business of bearing more children to make more mosquitoes to enjoy the hospitality of more humans & deliver them of a little bit of their excess blood in a transfusion for herself, for the sake of helping her progeny & her multiplication of her kind in procreation.--In other words, in making more babies, baby mosquitoes. But if she gets shooed away or frightened away just after injecting you with her corpuscle-dissolving serum, it is the serum which raises the bump & the reaction & causes the strong itching, & you say, "I've got a mosquito bite" & it really itches & you sometimes scratch it. I sometimes almost scratch them raw trying to dig it out! The fact is, if you can make it bleed a little bit it will bleed out the serum & it does help, but I wouldn't always advise that because you can also at the same time get it infected.
       30. IT'S A LITTLE BIT LIKE A SNAKE BITE: If you get a venomous snake bite, you can make a small cut, not a great big one, but just a small cut right at the point of the injection of the venom where the two fangs of the snake sank in. If you make just a little cut about the length of the distance between the two fangs right across the fang marks, this will bleed then & bleed out the venom if you can do it quickly enough.
       31. IN THE TROPICS YOU HAD BETTER WATCH OUT FOR POISONOUS SNAKES. We were in our pool one night & I noticed this little tiny snake only about four inches long wiggling along on the surface, & one of the uninitiated of our men, ignorant of the Tropics said, "Oh well, it's just probably a little garden snake, don't worry, it's so small." I said, "Don't kid yourself, it's some of the small ones that are the most venomous, like the little asps & the adders of the Bible & the one which Cleopatra had hidden amongst her basket, her little bowl of figs to bite her & thereby commit suicide!"
       32. SO DON'T LET THEIR LOOKS & THEIR SMALL SIZE DECEIVE YOU, SOME OF THE SMALLEST SNAKES IN THE WORLD ARE SOME OF THE MOST POISONOUS. The small Coral Snake, frequently found in the Tropics, is only about a foot long, never more than 18 inches long, that's a poisonous one & often found in the Tropix & places like that. I don't know what they have in all the other places in the Tropics but I know that when we were in Sri Lanka a visiting Japanese boy, poor fellow, took a little stroll through the Jungle & stepped on a small snake & got bitten on the ankle & nearly died, according to the newspapers, if the doctor hadn't quickly given him an antidote of some kind & made an incision & bled the venom. So just because the snake is small, don't minimise its danger.
       33. ANYHOW, WHEN I WOKE FROM THIS DREAM I ASKED THE LORD, "WELL, HOW DID I GET IT?"--Suddenly I was reminded that I got bit by mosquitoes.--I hadn't even thought of this before in all the time I was sick. I had not even thought about the mosquito bites I had gotten that night a few days ago. Actually it was during the night of the 3rd or early morning of the 4th that I had the mosquito bites. So from there it had taken just 6 days to wake up very cold with chills & feeling feverish & very sick & having to wrap up so much it seemed like I couldn't get warm, & then I've been sick off & on ever since for the past week with the same feeling, sore muscles, aching joints, chills, feeling chilly & feverish & just very tired & sick & not very ambitious, not with much spizerinktum, although I kept going & I kept taking my get-out & doing a lot of things, the things I usually do.
       34. I JUST WASN'T QUITE UP TO PAR OR UP TO SNUFF, so that by the 10th I began to have this voluminous volume of gas on my bowels to the point I had to apologise to people around me, which was rather unusual. I have gas once in a while, most of us old folks do, called flatulence, just from being old & sort of decaying, ha! And maybe it's the food we eat or whatever, but this was really unusual. I was just gurgling & bloating & booming with gas. Then on the morning of the 11th I really exploded & I had to go back & forth to the bathroom several times & had several BMs, very loose but seemingly mostly gas, & then continued to feel sick all day yesterday to the point that Maria asked the Family to pray for me, & then again waking this morning feeling still somewhat sick & feverish & sore & chilled & still not feeling well, with a slightly sore throat & a little phlegm, & again, a couple of BMs instead of the usual one.
       35. I GUESS THE LORD JUST WAS MERCIFUL TO ME because I wanted to know what it was. He allowed it go on long enough that I got desperate enough to really get desperate in prayer, to really pray very earnestly, claim Scriptures, ask the Lord to forgive me if I had done anything wrong, if I was unpleasing to Him in some way, & I guess He felt that He needed to reassure me & encourage me that it wasn't really my fault but He had allowed it perhaps even just to give folks & the Family a little explanation of the dangers of mosquitoes & what could be some of the causes.
       36. IT ONLY TAKES A LITTLE MOSQUITO TO BITE SOMEONE WHO IS SICK & SUCK IN HIS BLOOD & THE GERMS, as they are known carriers of various diseases, particularly the anopheles mosquito, the big one with the black & white or yellow stripes, the black-&-white-striped one.--For one of those mosquitoes to fly away from a hospital & maybe get a little blown off course or with help from the wind to be blown over maybe near where you live & to start seeking some more blood for the sake of nourishing her eggs & babies or herself, & manage to get into your house or your room & attack you or your children!
       37. THERE IS A WHOLE STRING OF DISEASES CARRIED BY MOSQUITOES that you must watch out for & pray about & try to protect yourself from as much as possible by screening & avoiding getting mosquitoes into your house & using insect repellent or these little mosquito machines that heat little tablets to create an odour that they don't like. I don't know that it kills them, some people say it's supposed to kill them, but it'll sure kill you, I mean the smell! I sure don't like it & it sure stinks if you get too close to it & the tablet is too fresh & strong. But you must protect yourself from mosquitoes because they carry a number of serious diseases, anything from the milder ones like Dengue Fever, which used to be called Broken Bone Fever or Milk Fever, which comes from cattle, from a mosquito so-called biting, sucking the blood of an animal which has the disease & then carrying it to you & injecting you with not only her serum but some of those germs!
       38. ALSO OF COURSE, MALARIA IS COMMONLY KNOWN TO BE CARRIED BY MOSQUITOES, AS WELL AS YELLOW FEVER, WHICH CAN BE VERY DANGEROUS, & SMALLPOX, which can also be even fatal in some cases, & a number of other mosquito-borne afflictions which apparently the Lord has allowed to lay upon the Egyptians for their sins. But sometimes apparently these mosquitoes mistake us for an Egyptian. The Lord says, "I am the Lord that healeth thee & I will lay none of these diseases upon thee that I have laid upon the Egyptians" or the World. (Ex.15:26) But sometimes maybe we're a little careless or maybe we act a little bit like the Egyptians, we're a little thoughtless & worldly & not cautious enough with ourselves or our children or our housing, our screening, our protection from these tiny monsters & we have trouble.
       39. IF YOU HAVE EVER SEEN A CLOSE-UP OF A PHOTO OF A MOSQUITO AS WE PUBLISHED ONCE, YOU'LL SEE WHAT A HORRIBLE OUTER SPACE MONSTER THEY LOOK LIKE! (See BOTM 2, Pg.869.) In fact, they are outer space monsters, they come in from the space outside your house into the inner space & they attack you, very slyly. They hide in the dark when it's light & daytime, like under your beds or in closets or even in drawers or anywhere they can fly away from the light. They don't like the light, light attracts them to their target but then once they get there they like to hide from it in some dark corner until you go to sleep & everything is dark & everything is quiet & then they seem to know, & then like the rats & the mice & the roaches & every other little naughty creature, they come out in the dark like thieves & break through & steal!--Steal your food or even steal your blood!
       40. SO YOU'LL HEAR MOSQUITOES HUMMING AROUND IN THE DARK WHEN YOU'RE TRYING TO SLEEP. Maybe one has wakened you during the night & you've heard it humming around your ears, & often I have boxed my ears until I was almost deaf because I was in the dark trying to quickly catch her. Whenever I can I've often killed one this way when I hear one humming right near my ear. I just sock myself right in the side of the head with my hand hollowed to cover my ear, hoping that I'll get him, or her actually--it's not the males that are the problems, it's the females, ha ha! The most deadly of the species are the females, the mother mosquitoes who are trying to nourish themselves & their babies because they have to have human blood to regenerate & procreate & breed.
       41. SO PERHAPS YOU'VE BEEN A LITTLE CARELESS ABOUT YOUR MOSQUITO NETTING OVER YOUR CHILDREN at night. Netting is a good idea if it's babies in a crib--the poor little baby can't very well fight mosquitoes, so you need a mosquito netting such as cheesecloth or something thrown over the crib so that it not only covers the top but the sides & two ends, large enough to cover the whole thing. They have all kinds of various nettings nowadays, I think they have a very light strong nylon. All we had when I was a kid was what they call cheesecloth, it was a very loosely woven cotton material which had all these little holes in it, little square holes about the size of window screening, & we would put it over our beds at night in order to keep the mosquitoes off.
       42. AS I SAY, THEY DON'T ACTUALLY BITE, THEY HAVE NO TEETH! They just have this long needle-nosed proboscis which they can stick into your skin without your even feeling it, it's so small! Unless it happens to strike a nerve you won't even know it's there! The only thing you might even feel or notice is that the mosquito has landed on your skin if they happen to touch a hair, & God has made your hair so amazing that each one has a nerve at its root which can feel the movement of the hair! So if she lands on your skin in such a way as to tickle a few hairs or even one hair, you might feel that little tickle & look down & notice that you've got a mosquito sitting on your skin thrusting in her needle-nosed mouth to suck your blood!
       43. AND AS I SAY, IF YOU CAN MAKE SURE THAT EITHER YOU SHOO HER AWAY BEFORE SHE INJECTS THAT SERUM OR WAIT THEN UNTIL SHE HAS SUCKED IT OUT & HERSELF FULL, it won't itch. You can tell by her body, it gets quite fat & bloated & looks black with blood sometimes to the point they can hardly even fly away, they're so heavy, & they'll just kind of barely fly away & land at the nearest possible point to rest & digest all that nice blood transfusion which she got from you. But normally & quite often they get scared away when they're only halfway through the operation & the poisonous serum is left in your skin & causes an allergic reaction, which causes a bump & it's called a bite & it itches like mad! Whereas the guilty party has flown away & perhaps even been cheated of her blood as well as her serum, you would have been happy not to have had her serum nor to have given her any of your blood & you just as soon she wouldn't have bothered you at all.
       44. SO I SUGGEST YOU DO AS WE DO, USE THE LITTLE ROUND 'SKEETER STINKERS that use the little small rectangular coloured tablets in most countries that fade into white as they burn out. The little stinker itself is actually the heating unit, a very small, very low temperature hot plate, but it causes the gradual evaporation of the chemical that is imbued in this little coloured tablet, & apparently as it turns white it gets rid of the odour & also the odour gets rid of the mosquitoes before they get rid of you!
       45. SO I SUGGEST YOU TAKE THIS DANGER VERY SERIOUSLY IN THE TROPICS & USE REASONABLE PRECAUTIONS TO PREVENT ENTRY OF MOSQUITOES. They usually have a lot of them in almost any tropical area. They breed in the warmth & the moisture of the Tropics & they love the Tropics & the delightful paradises of the Tropics just like you do, & they thrive on it & they also thrive on you if you let them, so I suggest you keep your windows well-screened & your doors shut. Also, before you come into the house be sure you brush off your arms & legs & body in case one is already riding on you that you hadn't even noticed & then enters the door with you!
       46. BE SURE YOU DON'T LET YOUR DOORS HANG OPEN, & THEY ARE MASTERMINDS AT FINDING THE TINIEST LITTLE HOLES they can crawl through, even the tiniest little hole in your screen or door or any place that is slightly open. The lady mosquito, the dear little mother trying to find nourishment for her eggs & infants will sometimes try for hours at the same screen or the same window, trying to find a hole, pecking away & pecking away & landing in all kinds of different spots.
       47. AS A LITTLE BOY I USED TO WATCH THEM DO THAT, & THEY'LL JUST TRY FOR HOURS TO FIND A PLACE TO GET IN! So don't think that just one little hole doesn't make any difference. A good smart lady mosquito will find it sooner or later & will come crawling through & fly directly in your direction! I don't know whether they've got radar or it's a sense of smell or what, but they seem to be able to "Fee Fi Fo Fum--I smell the blood of" well, if not an English-mun at least a Western-mun or even a native-mun or woman, & will if possible, try to even bite you then if they can. But usually they seem to know their chances are slim & they hazard getting slapped & annihilated if they try to do it in light or daylight or even the light of the room.
       48. SO ONCE THEY'RE IN THEY GO HIDE IN SOME NICE DARK CORNER OR UNDER THE BED & wait till all is dark & all is quiet & you're sound asleep, & they just seem to know when & they come out & begin to look around for a nice patch of bare skin to land on for a safe happy landing for them & a sad landing for you. And the first thing you know about it, you feel a little tickle & maybe a little sort of a sting & you wake up & you hit the spot.--Too late, she's already gone!
       49. I'VE GOTTEN IN THE OLD FLORIDA HABIT, THE TROPICAL HABIT OF AUTOMATICALLY SLAPPING AT ANY SPOT ON MY SKIN THAT I SUDDENLY FEEL THAT LITTLE TICKLE that I know so well, just in case a mosquito has landed. I don't wait to find out or even look to see, I just slam it, particularly in the middle of the night when it's dark, & especially when they're buzzing around my ear & I can hear them right there, I smack myself in the side of the head! I try to cup my palm a little bit so I don't hit my ear too hard, but I smack it so hard I often am stunned a little bit for a moment or my ear is a little bit stunned, but I often get them that way!
       50. I SMACK AT THEM INSTANTLY OR AT THE MOMENT OF HEARING THEM OR FEELING THE TICKLE, EVEN IN THE DARK, UNTIL I THINK I'VE ALMOST DEVELOPED THAT HABIT automatically from years in the Tropics, living there as a boy, & the minute I feel that little tickle or sting, BANG! SWAT! SLAP!--Even slapped myself in the face quite a few times when I thought the mosquito was buzzing around my nose or eyes, as they're no respecter of persons or places or positions or spots on your skin, they'll bite you almost anywhere, but they do seem to know where the most blood is located & is most plentiful near the surface of the skin.
       51. SO WATCH OUT FOR THOSE 'SKEETERS! THEY CAN MAKE YOU SICK! Maybe that's why the Lord let this happen to me. "He saved others, Himself He couldn't save"--in order to learn this lesson & teach you this lesson that you must be careful about mosquitoes. Now I think I gave you this lesson a couple years ago while I was still in France, but maybe now that you've come to the Tropics some more of you need it & are new to it & you need to have this added warning & repeated warning.
       52. WATCH OUT FOR MRS. MOSQUITO, SHE CAN BE DANGEROUS! SHE IS VERY SEXY & SHE LOVES TO GET PREGNANT & lay her eggs & have many many more children to suck many more humans--she is great on sucking, boys! Only she sucks until she gets your blood or your children's blood, & she could be infected with some venomous disease, a contagious disease such as the ones we've enumerated, but the less serious ones such as Dengue Fever & even Malaria can be serious, & then of course, Smallpox, Yellow Fever & a number of others.
       53. SO PLEASE TRY TO PROTECT YOURSELVES & OUR CHILDREN! Mosquitoes are particularly active for some reason or other at dusk & sunset. Out in your garden you'll suddenly find them starting to bite away at your ankles, so if you're going out in the cool of the evening they like that too after the sun is setting & it's getting darker. So you better anoint yourself with oil, insect repellent oil on whatever bare skin is exposed, & in the Tropix we have quite a bit of bare skin exposed around here & I presume you do too! So it's actually better for you not to go out at night if you can help it, when the mosquitoes are usually plentiful after dark, even beginning in the twilight in the late evening when the sun is going down & it's getting dark, & they seem to know it & they come out.
       54. THEY ARE APPARENTLY THE DEVIL'S PESTS, evil little creatures, because God's Word tells us that the wicked love darkness because their deeds are evil, & if that is so of people then I should say it certainly is so of some of these critters that attack you in the night, particularly mosquitoes! (Jn.3:19) They are lovers of darkness because their deeds are evil & they can cause you a lot of trouble, if nothing but the annoyance of mosquito bites, but even worse, actual sickness! So try to avoid being out at night when the mosquitoes are fierce, & try to avoid bringing them back in with you having been outside & in the garden. Sometimes your clothing can even be carrying them, so try to shake your clothing out, if you have any, most of us around here don't wear any or a very minimal amount, so just wipe your skin off, look down at your legs & your arms, make sure they're not roosting on you already & don't bring them into the house. Then when you're sure you're free of mosquitoes have someone open the door quickly or you open the door quickly & jump inside quickly without mosquitoes, mosquitoless or sans mosquitoes--try not to bring any in with you through the open door.
       55. BE SURE, IF POSSIBLE, YOU HAVE SCREENS ON YOUR WINDOWS, & IF NOT, MAYBE YOU'D BETTER PUT UP SOME. You can get cheap plastic screening & put it over your windows or even use mosquito netting over your windows. In nearly all the houses that we have stayed in, if they didn't have screens, we have temporarily tacked up some kind of screen, usually cheap plastic screening or sometimes metal screening. Just using small tacks you can tack the screening right to the window frame, you don't have to have anything elaborate or mosquito frames like we used to have in the Tropics when I was a boy. The screens were mounted on wooden frames & during mosquito season in the summer you brought your big screendoors & window screens out of storage & you put them up over the windows & put them on the doors so that you didn't have mosquitoes. But in some tropical countries you can have mosquitoes all year long! In Florida we only had the worst of it usually in about three months of the Summer. They love that warm wet weather! And they love you too, especially your blood! So watch out for the mosquitoes, watch out for Mrs. Mosquito, she can be dangerous!
       56. MAYBE THAT'S WHY THE LORD LET ME HAVE THIS LITTLE EXPERIENCE & THIS DREAM & this interpretation & even get a little bit sick, in order to be a warning to you & others that you must protect yourselves from these tiny little monsters, these seemingly infinitesimal little varmints, so small & almost insignificant! But they can really give you a lot of trouble so you had better screen your windows, & if the 'skeeters are very bad even mosquito-net your beds at night, & particularly your children so that they don't get all bit up.
       57. ALSO WATCH OUT ABOUT RIDING IN PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION, buses, even taxis where somebody who was not too clean may have ridden just before you & you sit down on the seat while it is still warm with either the fleas or bedbugs or crabs or whatever, lice or some of these other varmints that are very prolific & very multitudinous in the warm climates full of very poor dirty insanitary people who may have ridden on the same seat just before you or put their feet on the same carpet before you.
       58. I GOT A VERY BAD INFECTED FLEABITE ONE TIME IN A PUBLIC CINEMA where the bums used to go to sit & sleep for a very cheap price! So it behooves you to watch out what places you habitat & where you go & try to avoid the very poor dirty filthy natives who may not be too clean, if you possibly can, as much as you can. Avoid crowds, avoid public transportation if you can. Of course, some of these things are impossible for us as missionaries, so we just have to pray & ask the Lord to protect us & keep us in spite of it all.
       59. ANYHOW, THERE'S YOUR WARNING: WATCH OUT FOR MRS. MOSQUITO, SHE CAN BE DANGEROUS! I've gotten a little dose of it recently myself & I am passing on my experience & my warning to you & the Lord's dream & explanation of it, interpretation of it & how I got it. Most of the major Tropical cities have been pretty well cured of mosquitoes, & if not mosquitoes at least some of their venomous diseases such as Malaria. You're not as apt to catch Malaria in the urban highly-developed larger cities of the Tropics as you are out in the country where they're very large in numbers & where they breed in swamps & undeveloped territories. But in the cities where there is very little place for them to breed & not as much shrubbery & no lakes or ponds or stale stagnant pools, they're not as frequent as they are out in the country. So watch out for your trips into the country, you may get acquainted with Mrs. Mosquito & give her a little extra unexpected nourishment & you may contract some disease that she has already contracted as well!
       60. PLEASE PROTECT YOURSELVES & YOUR CHILDREN FROM THESE DANGERS, which can be mild in most cases, thank the Lord, we trust & hope. He always protects us from the more serious things as a rule, but they can be serious if you are not very prayerful & careful to avoid them & protect yourself from these dangers of the Tropics & the Devil's pests. So please watch out for Mrs. Mosquito, she can be dangerous!
       61. MAY GOD BLESS & KEEP YOU FROM THESE THINGS & these diseases & these varmints & pests & keep you safely & free of their diseases & all the other dangers of the Tropics, so that you can enjoy the tropical paradise that God has created in the Tropic zone of the World, but which the Devil has infested with his nasty little pests to annoy you because of the sins of man & the curse upon a wicked World! Amen? Praise the Lord! GBAKY & keep you free of these pests & their diseases & inconveniences & annoyances & keep you busy for Him in Jesus' name! Amen! PTL! Hallelujah! TYJ! May the Lord bless & keep you forever!--In Jesus' name, amen!

Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family