Imagine the scene: you have been a missionary in a river community in the middle of the Amazonian jungle for nearly ten years, and, among other things, have spent over four years teaching the children from Genesis to Revelation.
But now some of the children are entering adolescence and you have decided to begin a Friday evening club to take the older ones ever deeper into the Word. As your wife busily prepares the after-meeting meal, you silently rehearse your notes – an introduction to the Sermon on the Mount. Expectations are running high as the veranda begins to fill up with excited teenagers, all arriving by canoe in the half-light. You thought eight to ten might attend… but in no time 25 have arrived!
The clock strikes 19:00. It’s time to begin. All eyes are on you. But you are distracted by something that just twitched in your peripheral view: there is a tarantula the size of your hand on the wooden ceiling above the unsuspecting young people.