Trying not to wake the...

What you’re about to read is no beautiful missionary story about an incredible crusade or event that saw thousands come to know Christ. It’s the true stories, the untold legends, those uncovered secrets that never make the front page of an update newsletter. Here’s how it happened.

My “friend” who happens to also be a missionary was staying at some people’s house in the cold snow covered mountains of Romania. Now whatever ideas you’ve already gotten in your head about Alpine ski lodges, Mercedes SUV’s and hot chocolate by the fireside you can quickly forget. This was none of those.

He was staying in a pastor’s house with four of the remaining nine children, the pastor and his wife. The house was “warm” compared to the negative “freeze-your-digits-off” outside weather, but it surely wasn’t anything that would make you think of having ice cream after dinner. The only bathroom in the small house was downstairs next door to the kid’s room, two teenage boys and two teenage girls, all sharing the same room.

After most of the family had gone to sleep, save one girl sitting in the living room/ dining room/ family room, he quietly made his way to the bathroom trying not to wake anyone so he could take a shower.

Now whatever ideas you just got in your head about an actual shower that you can stand up in, stand under the faucet in, or actually consider a shower you can quickly forget. This was a bathtub with a house coming out of the faucet that you have to hold with one hand while trying to position yourself so less water gets onto the floor and surrounding fixtures, oh yes, no shower curtain.

Now whatever ideas you may have in your mind about the bathroom being as warm as the rest of the house you can quickly forget. The cold tile on the floor is one reminder that the warm water will feel especially good.

So my friend looks to the faucet. This is an old metal one that has two nozzles, cold on the right and hot on the left. Except something is missing, the cold water handle. That’s ok he thinks, the water wasn’t especially hot last night, crank it up!

As the water heats up and the steam builds he carefully navigates the high cold tub walls and steps in. The water instantly sears his sensitive feet that have suffered mild frostbite (or so he claims to all the workers in Florida) from that day’s journey.

As he kneels in the tub, because standing would expose you to the outside world through the open window located shoulder level to him, he realizes this water is not just hot, it’s near crying out in pain hot. Which isn’t acceptable due to the fact that the family is asleep.

So he begins the sprinkler splash, which is an ancient missionary trick that entails one hand holding the hose while the other splashes scalding hot water onto his cold body. After that method failed, he tried quickly grabbing some water with one hand to use as a temporary washcloth to rub down whatever parts of his body he wanted clean.

After applying some shampoo to his partially dampened hair he realized that getting the stuff on would be a lot easier than getting the stuff off. There would have to be a considerable amount of water involved to rinse out his hair, which would create an absolutely intolerable situation. The search for an ulterior method begins by the perusal of the bathroom amenities.

Now whatever ideas you may have in your mind of bathroom items and amenities you can quickly forget. There was a washing machine, a sink and a toilet. All of which conjured up frightening images when the paramedics would have to arrive to retrieve his cold naked body from the clutches of said items.

As he continued his search in vain, trying to look around the cold room and letting his imagination work, he realized the obvious. Honestly, what other options are there for rinsing this stuff out of your hair when you’re kneeling in a cold bathtub at 1130 at night trying not to wake the…

Then the noise, a piercing metallic sound of a solid metal object falling, scraping and bouncing off the cold walls of the tub he is in. Coming to rest under his leg is the handle to the hot water nozzle.

A thousand thoughts from a thousand places hit his mind at once. He envisions the family all waking suddenly and running into the bathroom to see what happened. He pictures stern and shocked looks as they stare to see this intruder who has broken their prized hot water handle. He thinks to call out that everything is ok, but realizes he never learned how to say “It’s only the handle to the hot water nozzle, go back to bed don’t worry about me” in Romanian. But a surprising thing happens and no one wakes.

Slowly his mind puts the pieces together, he realizes that the one handle, works both the hot and cold nozzles. He realizes that by removing it from one side to the other he can obtain hundreds of different temperature settings. He realizes that in his over-assuming mind of how poor and backwards other people are, they’ve actually kept things simpler.

In a small cold bathroom, in the high Carpathian Mountains, in a local pastor’s home, the family sleeps soundly as the missionary laughs quietly at himself. The simplicity and reality of the situation strikes as he thinks of all the people at home who might somehow understand if he tries to relate this story to them. And as he types out the story at 1230 at night, he hears the pastor downstairs snoring loudly.

Of course, this is the story he told me, so I don’t know if it’s true or not.