Water

I am ready to be back in the normal routine of life.  Christmas was a great break and all, but by Saturday you could tell that our whole family need normal.  We were all cranky, even Noah, which is saying something.  With a great sigh of relief he went off to work this morning.  He was glad to be back in his office and out making ice and all other manner of prep for this coming weekend.  Oh, and if you think about it, praying for snow here would be good.  There is nothing on the ground and retreats start Friday.  And really, when kids come to winter camp, they really do want winter camp.  Not some weird mix of summer and fall activities in weather that is too cold to enjoy it.  Tubing is much more fun than a ice cold hayride.

So, we are back to life as normal, except we have no running water!  Yeah, fun times.  Yesterday we woke up to nothing coming out of the pipes and after a full day of trying, the maintenance department concluded it was time to call in the professionals.  So, I assume sometime today the well guys are coming to diagnose the problem.

And as to what the problem is...well, I am praying it doesn't include drilling a new well.  Yikes!  But I am assuming that we are without running what for a while now, as in at least days.  And that 4 gallons of water I have tucked away for a power outage, yeah, those were used up pretty quickly.  It's amazing how much water a family can use. 

I am so thankful we have options.  Noah hauled water from the dinning hall in a convenient water cooler and 5 gallon jugs we use for the over nights.  The spigot on the cooler works well in the kitchen and the blue jugs are prefect for the bathroom.

And I was able to take a load of laundry over the East Side dinning hall basement.  While it was washing, we all took showers and baths.  We really could live like this for a long while.  It wouldn't be convenient, but we could do it.

This all has brought to mind the world at large.  We still have access to clean water.  Water that won't kill you.  Noah was trying to explain to a niece the other week that there is water that looks clean but it will make you very, very sick.  And most of the world deals with that every day.  Water that they bath in they cook with.  Water that cows poop in they are giving to their babies to drink because there is nothing else.

Sigh.  Sometimes the wrong in this world is so very overwhelming.  Why do I get to have clean water to cook and bath in, to give my babies, and there are people dying because the water they need to use to live is contaminated?  In Honduras, everyone has to buy bottled water, assuming you can afford it.  And 20% of the rural areas don't have any clean water access.    And that's assuming you have money to buy it.  I've seen figures that 1.2 billion people in the world don't have access to clean water.  And something like 80%  of diseases are linked to contaminated water.  It's the the second leading cause of death in kids under 5 in Central America.  Yikes! Oh and get this, the normal person in the developing world uses about  2.5 gallons of water every day for drinking, washing and cooking.  In developed countries, the average person uses 13 gallons per day only for toilet flushing! What?

And why oh why oh why do people BUY bottled water here in the US?  Really?  The place that has the cleanest, safest water in the world, piped right into our homes, and we are out buying bottled water by the cases so we can fill the landfills with the bottles.  The money we spend needlessly on these cases and cases of water could be used to help others have clean water.  How backwards the world is.  Sigh again.

I know there are many good organizations doing something about this.  One in particular is Compassion International.  We have partnered with them in the past to help a child in India.  What we like about Compassion is they take care of the physical and spiritual needs of people.  Because if a person has clean water in this life, but not the Living Water, what does it matter?  Here's a link to there water filter donation page.   Whatever God leads you to do about this is just right.

I long for the day when God will put everything right.  Where there will be no more injustice and where all the bad will become untrue! And until His return, He uses us to change things.  And you better believe I won't be complaining about the inconvenience of not having running water at my house.