We were already in bed.  Grateful to have been able to get an early start on the night.  Our guests had been invited out for dinner which is why we had such luxury.  I was pulled back to semi-consciousness by the doorbell.  Reminding myself that the guard was on duty and would let the guys back in the house, I rolled over and settled in for more badly needed sleep.  (We've been meeting ourselves coming and going for endless busy days...loving every minute of interaction with this great group of helicopter mechanics, but wearing down to a frazzle.)  

Just as sleep was claiming me, the doorbell rang again.  Now who could that be??  Before long there was a knock on our door.  Stifling a groan, I rolled out of bed and threw on some cloths.  

"Mama Alice, there is a man at the gate who is looking for a room for the night," Joseph reported.

"Tell him it's late.  He can come back tomorrow at 8 a.m.  No, wait...there is someone else coming in tomorrow.  Tell him the house is full," I replied.

"But Mama Alice, there is a white man with him."

"A white man?? At this time of night??  OK.  I'll come down with you."

Taking Joseph's flashlight out of his hand, I began shining it in the crack between the metal gate and the cement block wall.  That crack has saved our bacon more times than we can count.  We conduct all kinds of business with people who are trying  to  seduce us into letting them inside Shiloh through that crack.  We love it!

OK, there are his eyes.  That's what I've been searching for.  The strategy  is to blind him with the flashlight.  Actually I only saw one eye, and I kept the light aimed on it the whole time.  

"Good evening.  I'm Reverend (whatever) and I need a room for the night.  I'm sorry to be arriving so late, but I've been walking around for a very long time, looking for a room for the night.  I've been going all through the neighborhood searching and searching.  Finally I found someone who talked about Shiloh.  But they didn't know where Shiloh was.  So I began asking everywhere if someone could direct me to Shiloh.  Finally I met the Koreans.  The Koreans told me they know where Shiloh is.  The Pastor (you know...M.E.C.K) tried to direct me to Shiloh, but I couldn't figure out where it was.  So he sent his son to guide me here.  I'm here with his son.  So please open the gate and let me have a room for the night."

This may not seem like a flaky story to the uninformed, but I could drive a Mac truck through the holes in his tale! At that point I needed to be extremely careful how I responded.  Any information a thief can inadvertently collect will be most useful for him next time around.  And the eye I was blinding clearly belong to a bad guy.  No question about it.  Won't bore you with the list of indicators in his narrative that screamed he was up to no good.  Suffice it to say, we've been around the block a time or two and can't be so easily taken in anymore.

I simply let him know that it was very late and we don't open our gate to anyone at this time of night.  It is dangerous for him (well, not HIM in particular...HE'S the dangerous one!) and it is dangerous for us, too.  

Once inside the house, Joseph told me that he had already told the man that it was too late, but the man insisted that he had to talk to the person in charge.  And that is what confirmed that our suspicions were correct.  Only a "bad guy" would act like that.  If he was on the up and up, he would have politely apologized for disturbing us and gone on his way. 

And the white person Joseph saw??  We have no idea who that was, or what that was all about.  I only saw the eye of a non-white person.  We're just grateful that God once again protected us from what would surely have been a theft, or worse.