Ismael

I haven’t posted for a while, but frankly, we bin busy! A little too busy in some ways … we’re trying to find ways to carve a little rest into the schedule.

Some of the “busyness” is trying and failing to catch up on things that weren’t done over the holidays … some of which should have been done before the holidays … but hey, like everyone, we’re given 24 hours a day and we just have to ask God for wisdom on how to use those hours! 🙂

You may know we’ve had our adventures with minor flooding in the house. For example, if the water jug has a small hole in it, it will leak and cause some big enough problems in the kitchen. Shari caught one leaking the other day, before it did much damage.

Lately, it’s been adventures with toilets. One “exploded” this past summer, one in December. Due to our financial situation, we of course bought the absolutely cheapest toilets we could find. This worked out great the first time, horrible the second time.

Our friend Ismael installed the new cheap toilet, and then returned to fix the new cheap toilet during the holidays (after flood #2 – thankfully, we were home and awake both times, or it could have been much worse than a lot of mopping!).

Then Shari again noticed water pooling on the floor – not like the previous disasters, but enough to require some plumbing. At first she thought it was just water leaking from the ceiling (a semi-regular occurrence – water leaking from the draining of the washing machine on the next floor). But no, it was the toilet again.

So this time I put on my plumbing hat and did the repairs – replacing some ridiculously cheap parts on this toilet with something more normal. It took a couple of tries, but it looks like it’s actually working again. How long it will last, we do not know!

We’ve had fewer roof leaks, because it’s dry season, so that’s nice. Although we’ve had a wee bit of rain the last few days, which is unusual for this season.

But all these things remind me of things to be thankful for. For one, as I mentioned, we’ve been at home when these floods occurred. Even a couple of hours could have caused some damage.

Second, our water has been fairly reliable lately – we’ve had fairly good and consistent pressure (for those who remember some of our problems in the past). It hasn’t been 100%, but usually we have running water – which is a major blessing many do not have!

So there you are, the ongoing story of the toilets. Just what you wanted to distract you on a Monday! But there is much more to be thankful for. We had a good service yesterday, with lots of people and even some new people. It was an encouragement to us all. And God continues to use His Word to speak to us.

And to conclude – to prove that we’re trying to rest once in a while – we enjoyed trying out a new board game called Tierra y Libertad (Land and Liberty), a game about the Mexican Revolution. Fun, and educational! Here are a couple of pictures (because, after all, who wants more pictures of broken new cheap toilets?).