Grandmother is a missionary to the Congo and is home for a visit to help with the care of her grandchildren (whom Mary Lee and I share with her). Unbeknownst to her, I had cast a longing eye at these reconnaissance-by-artillery weaponized water balloon launchers on sale at Sam's Club a couple weeks ago. (I've been reading We Were Soldiers Once...and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam, so you know my frame of mind.)
Well, all that to say that my children's missionary Grandmother had the same idea and actually bought the thing. But having spent much of her life in the Congo where death, mayhem, and poison-tipped pygmy blowgun darts are as much a part of life as...
earth, wind, and fire, she didn't give the reconnaissance-by-artillery weaponized water balloon launchers to her eldest grandson, but his older sister. Her one concession to girlhood was to give her the pink one.
Her precious granddaughter outwitted her devious grandmother's efforts to subvert sugar and spice and all things nice. No butch warriorism for her, thank you very much!
Dear sweet Aubrielle knew precisely what to do with the whole shebang—especially the accompanying ammunition. She carried the front porch wicker table down the steps and fifteen yards over to the scrub saplings where, with a little help from flowers and a vase and assorted other accoutrements (including three hundred-gallon trash cans and a dilapidated mailbox), she turned her mortar shells into Christmas tree balls daintily hung as background to her own shrine to all that is beautiful and lovely; to all that gives joy to a vacationing seven year old girrrrll.
Tim serves Clearnote Church, Bloomington, Indiana. He and Mary Lee have five children and big lots of grandchildren.
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