Today I Carried 480 Pounds of Water

Today I carried 480 pounds of water.  I did this 5 gallons or 40 pounds at a time.  So 6 trips.  Why?  Because today there was a planned electricity outage in our region of Guatemala.  Our water is pressurized by an electric pump; so no elecricity = no pressure = no water.  While this was a planned outage, we did not know about it so we were surprised to learn of it.  My initial reaction was that this was not going to be a big deal.  We were not going to be at home anyway.  Then I realized that we needed to hand wash the dishes and be able to flush toilets.

We had enough bottled water for the dishes and brushing teeth, but with four extra people in the house there was a lot of toilet flushing that needed water.  So I trekked down to the neighborhood swimming pool and toted a few 5 gallon containers of water for the flushing.  I was surprised at how the inconvenience of having to carry water made me feel towards my host country and my landlord.

Yep, I said swimming pool.  We are blessed to rent a house in a beautiful little neighborhood and the owner has a pool.  The total distance for the round trip was probably 100 yards.  So as I am carrying one of the containers  I was struck by the Holy Spirit saying - "really, you want to complain about this and talk about how your landlord is too cheap to buy a gas powered generator for days like this.  How about the millions of people that walk every day for their water.  People who walk for miles on trips that take hours, to get water that is less than pure and likely to make them sick."

When the Holy Spirit was done with me, I could hear one of our friends saying to her 14 year old son - "you need to have a happy heart about this situation."  I made the most of the situation and had the opportunity to transparently tell Parker what I was processing.  We had a conversation about how we have made sacrifices to be here in Guatemala, but there are people that have very little hope of their circumstances changing and would do almost anything to walk 100 yards to dip cool water from a filtered and chlorinated swimming pool.

If you want to learn more about the global water crisis check out the folks at  charity: water (http://www.charitywater.org/whywater/).  If you hear the Holy Spirit talking to you take a minute to make a difference by getting involved.