The Toilet Explosion

Happy Birthday Jennie!!! Eighteen years and nine months ago from this day, God set-out to do something He had never done before -- create the most godly, beautiful, sweet, caring woman He had ever created. After meticulously working on the mold of "project perfect," He poured life into it. Once He stepped back and saw what He had made for His glory, He broke the mold so that no other could be like Jennie. Man, I miss you Jennie! I can't wait to get to see you again here in a few days. I love you so much! We're gonna party like it's 1699, right? I wish I could be there to celebrate your birthday with you, but we can celebrate both of our birthdays together once I come into town on March 25th.

I will be in town from March 25th until April 13th and then I will be home for good on July 20th.

It hasn't rained even once the entire time I have been in Guatemala. Don't worry -- it's not a freak-thing, but Guatemala is in it's "dry-season" right now. When it's in the rainy season, it rains about every day. Well, because it hasn't rained in so long, the Guatemalans take a few measures to prevent a water shortage, like shut off the water at night. A few days ago, I woke up at my normal "wake-up time" of 5AM to get ready to go to school. As I turned the knob to the shower to get the water warmed up, nothing came out. I have woken up before here and not had cold water, but this was the first time I didn't have hot water. So, I turned the knob off, and went into my room to do my QT to wait and see if they would turn the water back on in a little while. After about 30 or 45 minutes, I went back into the bathroom and turned the knob on once again. This time, the showerhead made all kinds of loud, weird noises and spit out a few squirts of nasty, muddy water. I turned the knob off once again, and waited for another 15 minutes or so.

Now, my conundrum was that it had to work now, or I wasn't taking a badly-needed shower at that moment. As I turned the knob one last time, more muddy water came spitting out of the shower head. After leaving it on for a few minutes and realizing that the water wasn't going to clear up, I turned it off. I ended up getting a big glass of purified water to at least wet my hair down so I could style it.

So after teaching that day, I figured I would take my shower that night so that I wouldn't have to worry about there being no water in the morning. After a nice, hot shower, I needed to use the toilet, after "doing my business," I pushed down on the handle of the toilet only to see the water in the toilet rise upward instead of downward. As the water level kept getting higher and higher, I started to freak out as it reached critical-level. I thought to myself, "Surely it won't over-flow." But I was very wrong. As the water started to pour over the sides of the porcelain bowl onto the floor I was standing on, I quickly tried to locate and turn off the water that was supplying the monster.

I finally got the water turned off, but there was a mess of nasty water on the ground. I brought in a bucket and soaked up some water in an old towel, and squeezed it into the bucket. After doing this about a million times, I looked at the toilet which was full to the brim of nasty water. Mark has a plunger that has a one-foot handle, which means if your water level is more than a foot, you have to stick your hand into the murky, fickle-matter infected water. The water in this situation was greater than a foot. After plunging for a while and noticing the water level going down a bit, I decided that it was time to try and flush the toilet once again.

As I turned the water back on to the toilet, I stopped and took a deep breath before pushing down on the handle of the toilet. "Here goes nothing!" I thought in my head as I pushed down on the handle. Suddenly, the water in the toilet explodes onto the floor and something like Niagara Falls started pouring from the sides. When I reached down to turn the water off, I turned it the wrong way and made the water full-blast as gallons of water started gushing onto the floor. Mark was frantically dumping towels at the entrance of the bathroom as a dam to keep the water from moving to the rest of the house. Once I finally got the water turned off, I stepped back and looked at the mess that the bathroom was now in. After squeezing towel-fulls of water into my little bucket over and over again, I eventually got everything cleaned up. Ever since that day, I have been scared out of my mind to use that toilet -- and I haven't used it since then.

I went to Antigua with Ivan again this weekend. It was wonderful because I met this German guy who was learning Spanish there at a Spanish school and I talked with him in Spanish and German for about 30 minutes. There was this other guy from Boston there and I was able to share my testimony with both the American and the German. I hope I will get to see them next weekend (my birthday is this Saturday so I am getting a bunch of people from the church and school to go to Antigua with me to hang out in Antigua.)

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