Before I went to India and Nepal two years ago I rarely appreciated a 'western style' toilet, that is one that has a toilet bowl, seat and a flushing mechanism. I just took it for granted and never considered it a luxury. It was when confronted with squat toilets (hole in the floor) that I started to be thankful for 'western style' toilets. I remember when our mission team was travelling and we would get really excited when on one of our toilet stops we found a western style toilet, I remember shrieks of delight. A friend of mine had sent me a surgical mask, more as a joke than anything else, at the start of that mission. It's the kind of mask that goes over your nose and mouth used by dentists and surgeons. When I first started using it to keep out the dust and pollution while on the road, one of my team laughed at me until...on our way to Delhi one evening we stopped at a gas station for a toilet break. The squat toilet stank so badly, I had to hold my breath but I couldn't do that for too long; hold up my trousers and balance myself over the hole in the floor, trying hard to avoid falling into it or into the stuff on the sides. I was again so grateful for the mask! And then the same teammate who laughed at me, asked, so where'd you get that mask?
Moving on a couple of years later, and I'm in Peru sharing a western style toilet with about 14-15 other people and there's no running water. I am so grateful to actually have not just a hole in the floor but a toilet that flushes, except there's no water. When I first got to the house where I was going to live for four months taking care of 12 children, there was no running water for a week. It was just Yeny and I then and we used the water that was brought from the stream and stored in large buckets. We boiled water for a squat bath and filled the toilet by hand. It was not so bad with just the two of us. But when the children started arriving, it was different. We needed more water, more often. Cleaning teeth became a time consuming process that had to be supervised and assisted instead of something simple the children could do on their own. Then the water would eventually come on again and we'd quickly forget the hardships and joyfully get back to flushing!
But the water would stop again and we were back to the stream to top up our buckets and bath the children. Washing the dirty clothes of at least 15 people by hand was not possible as we didn't have the amount of water needed to get it all done, so it just had to wait. Washing the dishes was another struggle, filling large jugs with water and using a cup to rinse off each item whilst trying to be wise with how much water we used. The children each had chores to do and one of them was to wash and dry the dishes, it was off course difficult for some of them to do it without running water. So I often stayed with them to show them how to do it and usually by the time dinner dishes rolled around I was ready to drop into a heap.
One day I prayed and said God, we have no water, please help us. And He replied, you do have water, just not running water. I was struck by the reality I failed to see. Yes, we did have water, sure it wasn't coming through the taps for our convenience but we had the stream. I suddenly realised we often think, we have nothing, but having nothing actually means having NO THING. Having no water, means there is absolutely no water, no stream, no river, no reservoir. But we did have water. And though it was difficult to keep going to the stream, which was not as nearby as we would have liked, it was still accessible. Though we were not able to flush every time someone used the toilet (which made for some interesting smells) we could flush every now and then, which was better than no flushing at all.
God was faithful in it all, maybe not in the way that I expected, but He never allowed us to be without any water. The water flowed again and even when I was in middle of my shower, standing there, shivering, praying for just a bit more water, I had peace. Whether it came quickly, in a matter of days or from the stream, there was water, somehow.
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