Come and Eat by Bri McKoy

Author:Bri McKoy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsChristianPublishing
Published: 2017-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

I don’t always camp, but when I do I make sure I am in a rainforest in Australia. Unfortunately. After I graduated college, I felt restless and wild. I had a job at a marketing firm, but I could barely breathe through the days because it was such a demanding job. I was going from being a creative, energetic young lady to being a woman well worn with the cares of this world. I was dimming, so I quit and signed up to do a six-month stint with Youth with a Mission (YWAM) in Australia. Part of that commitment included two weeks of camping. I must have completely skipped over this requirement or had a bout of blindness when reading everything this mission consisted of. But there I was that October, in Australia with my team, loaded into buses and then dropped off in the middle of nowhere.

We marched to different areas of the rainforest and received instructions about where to set up camp. After numerous tries wrestling with my tent unsuccessfully, I took a deep breath in complete frustration and looked up, hoping for a sign of peace. Instead of receiving reassurance that God hadn’t left me alone, I saw one very large black snake coiling around a tree. This, my friends, is the opposite of peace for me. This is the height of me needing the laying on of hands and the strong prayers of the saints.

The thing about the rainforest is, you can’t not be under trees. And rainforest trees are large, and their branches reach out into the branches of other trees, creating a web so one can barely see the sky. And with these large, interwoven rainforest trees come snakes. In sheer panic, I stepped backward, almost knocking into a girl standing behind me with her camera TAKING PICTURES. I wanted to remind her that the only appropriate response to spotting a big black snake is to run.

She looked at me and said, with effortless fascination, “Cool, huh?”

I darted a look at her that I’m sure conveyed, “Totally cool! Death. By. Snake. I mean, amazing, right?!” Moments later, the whole team gathered together to go over ground rules. The following is an accurate depiction of what I heard from our leader:

“Okay, everybody, we’re here for fourteen days. This is a real rainforest filled with real animals that are very dangerous, but if we’re careful we will all be safe. First off, snakes. Most of them are poisonous, but they like to be in the trees, so just let them be. Kangaroos can kill you with one kick. If you see one, stay still. Do not run. Do not move. It will lose interest and move on. Also, there is a leaf in this forest that causes paralysis, so please do not brush up against it. Most of the spiders are poisonous, so make sure to shake out your sleeping bag real good before going to bed.”

After this important public service announcement, we ended in prayer,

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