Los Baños

Have you ever taken something for granted until it was gone? I'm sure all of us do this at one time or another. It's amazing how little things in life, amenities I should say that we have here in America, are taken for granted. The one I think no one really thinks about is indoor plumbing, including running water and flushing toilets.

This year, my team went to a village that is very remote. All the villages our team visited last year had relatively good plumbing and sometimes even running water. This village did not. They had a community well that the ladies and young girls visit daily to carry water to their house.

The "bathroom" our team used was an outhouse. A legit outhouse. I never really thought that we'd not have access to at least a toilet seat. This outhouse was easy to find becuase even though it is located a ways from our host's house, the smell is unfortunately very easy to follow. Us girls always took at least one other person with us to guard the outhouse because the door was very easy to see through. I am not meaning to be graphic, I'm just telling you what life really is like for some people. There really was no toilet seat at all. Just a big raised up hole in the ground. I must say, one good thing about using the out house is that my lung capacity improved greatly during the 5 days we were in the village :) We stopped at a Walmart on our way home, and my friends and I were freaking out about the fact that there were actually flushing toilets INSIDE!!!

My bathroom buddy Brittney and me in front of our lovely outhouse. We are grinning sweetly but were actually holding our breaths for the picture :)


Just a thought: next time you visit the bathroom or turn on your faucet to get a cold drink of water, think of all those people who aren't able to do that and pray for them. We need to be thankful for all the little things that we take for granted. God has so richly blessed us with indoor plumbing but something I learned in Chiapas is that it isn't a necessity to have that. It's just an amenity. Believe me, I'd much rather have indoor plumbing but it's not something that I can't live without. But at any rate, praise the Lord for my flushable toilet and kitchen faucet!!!!