Last year we meet with some wonderful Lutheran missionaries who spent many years in Hanoi before moving to Phnom Penh and who had gotten to know the Mennonite Central Committee Vietnam team quite well. When they saw Charlotte wearing a MCC shirt at a churchgoer’s birthday party they immediately connected with us.

Later, when we visited their home, we noticed that they had the most wonderful magnetic mosquito door nets. These epic fortifications protected their home from insectoid invasion but, when I asked how I might procure some locally, they shared that had gotten them from Amazon.com during a home leave in the United States. We had just returned from home leave a few months before so it slipped from my mind.

Then, a few weeks ago, everything changed after I realized that my darling soon to be born baby was going to be bitten by vicious bloodsucking mosquitos. Even in the dry season there were far too many of them lurking in all of the dark corners of our house. So I purchased a measuring tape, then measured the doors, and then ordered the mosquito door nets to Aunt Emily’s. She then shipped them to us.

Soon afterwards Caleb Daniel arrived and, horrifically, the nasty little mosquitos did bite my darling baby even though he slept under a mosquito net and we were vigilant while holding him. Our anti-mosquito defenses were inadequate to protect our baby.

Then, when Caleb was 12 days old, a package arrived from Aunt Emily in far away Virginia long before we thought it would get here!

I quickly erected the anti-mosquito fortifications on the door leading to our balcony and then on the downstairs double door leading to the courtyard. There were still many mosquitos lurking in the dark corners of our home so, at first, it didn’t seem that the new fortifications had made a difference.

But then I noticed that there was a swarm of about 35 insects hovering outside the downstairs double door. Some were mosquitos and some were gnats. I destroyed them. A few hours later there were more. I destroyed them. This repeated again and again. In the morning, when I opened the doors, they were there. There are gaps between the double doors and the floor, so they must have been squeezing into dark cool interior of our house. It took about a week but they also finally stopped swarming outside the double doors downstairs.

After a few days the number of mosquitos in our house plummeted and we’ve been only been spotting the rare mosquito now. Compared to before, this is a dramatic improvement! We did it for the baby but really should have done it before. All of us are a lot more comfortable without having to worry about swarms of little bloodsuckers.