amos the churchmouse: amos goes to anchorage

Editor's note: Lately, Amos has become obsessed with the thought of missions. One day, he walked across a picture of a starving, orphaned mouse in India, and he claims that the innocent little fellow's gaunt face and emaciated whiskers have haunted him every night until he decided to do something about it.

For one thing, he replaced all of his "Cheeses of the World" posters (which lined the walls of his cozy matchbox home) with pictures of gaunt, starving animals from all over the world.

In addition, he has become a regular contributor to the Worldwide Three-Blind-Mice Aid to the Disabled Fund and has started shipping all his old woolen mittens (which he found once upon a time but thinks they must have belonged to three little kittens) to all the poor Eskimo mice in Alaska.

He even doubled his donation to the Lottie Mouse Christmas Offering, but he still felt that he should be more personally involved in the mission effort. When the opportunity opened for him to go with an educational mission team to Anchorage, Alaska, his eagerness to go bubbled over into this week's column.

amos goes to anchorage

the lord has told me to meet

him in anchorage alaska boss

that s where he said the great

harvest will be

at first i was so excited boss

i nearly forgot to pack my

bible and then i was so ashamed

of my forgetfulness that i

debated whether i ought to

take me or not

it didn t take the devil long to

pick up the message on his

new-fangled intercom system

and when he approached me he

wasn t dressed in anything so

recognizable as a fire-engine

red serpent s suit

wrapped in a kindly old saint s

shawl he offered me a green

stomach that trembled all

the time

he came to me again in

explorer s boots and a knapsack

brandishing for me a heart

inflated with lusty adventure

retreating then to the saintly

shawl he came to me a third

time looking more like a

gangster s moll than a kindly

old saint - and he tommy-

gunned me down with

my inadequacies

while i was lying in a heap there

at the bottom of the valley road

jesus passed by and gave me

enough strength to look to him

and in looking to him i was

lifted up and filled to

balloon-size with

his spirit

there was a big hole in my

balloon and his spirit kept

flowing out but i never

deflated

and my balloon is flying me to

anchorage town boss but

sometimes my tail hangs down

and drags the ground the devil

steps on it once in a while but

one of these days he ll get a hot

foot for what he s been doing

amos

p s - next time i ll be home

boss keep the coffee brewing

the cheese of life sure has a

nice flavor here