St. Michael Missions Trip Pt. 13 Things We Take For Granted

You may wonder why I would show a picture of a common P-trap to open this installment of my blog. Well, in St. Michael, a P-trap is not common. When was the last time you thought about a P-trap? Maybe you never have thought about a P-trap. When the missionary's house in St. Michael froze up last winter the P-trap under the bathtub/shower had water in it as it was supposed to. However, when water freezes, it expands which isn't usually a good thing for plumbing. So, when showers or baths were taken, water leaked onto the floor. No problem you say, just go get a new one at the store or call a plumber. Good thinking unless you live in St. Michael. No P-traps at the local AC and no plumbers either. A little problem becomes a big problem. What you are thinking is that tangle of pvc is probably about $10 worth of stuff. Unless you live in St. Michael. Then that little conglomeration of plumbing is about $130. Let me tell you why. We could have brought one with us, even if it meant that Dennis restricted us to only 20 pounds of personal gear on the plane, but at the time no one knew this P-trap was broken. It was only discovered after our arrival. Such situations are afact of life there.

This man is Ray Schemanski. He is one of the miracle workers we had on this trip. We had miracle workers with flooring, electricity, carpentry, paint and Ray pretty much everything else, plumbing included. The closest P-trap to St. Michael he could determine was in Nome. So Ray called an air service in Nome and asked them to expedite the needed parts to St. Michael on their next flight to St. Michael which happened to be in two days. Mind you, we could have had them fly that day, but that would make the P-trap about $300 more expensive. We were only going to be in St. Michael 4 days, but two days would work. So, Ray spent nearly the entire morning working out an order (try describing plumbing parts to an air service secretary over the phone), paying the price of the parts, the expediting charge, the haz-mat fee (for the cement to bond the parts) and $10 parts quickly become $130 parts. Only instead of arriving in St. Michael they ended up in Elim, another village many miles away. So, more phone calls, more time spent describing the parts, and arrival literally hours before we were to take off back to Kenai.
This is life if you live in St. Michael. It takes a lot of time and effort to do just about anything, oh, and lots of money too. Things we take for granted in the world we all live in are not to be taken for granted in St. Michael. Lots of patience, ingenuity, creative solutions, salvaging, re-purposing and money are needed to live here successfully.
I have included a video I have already posted so you can watch it for something that may have slipped your notice the first time. First, forgive me for the long video. I am learning taking video is much more interesting than watching most of the time. When you watch this time, as we fly over the village, note the silver lines that connect all of the houses all over the village. This is another thing we often take for granted, water and sewer. Those silver snakes that you see in several previously posted pictures and this video are the village's water and sewer system. Yes, it is above ground and the boardwalks and roads all must work themselves around or over this grid. It can't be buried in the ground as the ground is frozen year around except for a squishy top layer in the summer, and if it were to break down or get damaged in the winter, getting into the ground when it is frozen just isn't going to happen. So, one pipe in these silver snakes is for fresh water, which by the way is excellent, coming from one of the volcanic crater lakes in the area, and the other pipe takes alway everything that goes down the P-trap and more. The pipes of course are separate from one another (everyone asks this question) and the rest is insulation around an electrical wire to keep it warm and flowing in the bitter cold of winter. The residents call this their "million dollar" water and sewer system. Not because it cost that much, it cost much more than that, but because that is how much it costs to produce the electricity to keep it from freezing which is diesel generated. All very sobering to think about. However this affords the village with wonderful, safe water to their homes and flush toilets as opposed to hauling water in,in buckets and hauling out everything that goes down the P-trap and more also in buckets. When was the last time you were thankful for your water and sewer? Live in St. Michael awhile and you will think about it a lot and be thankful. 17 people from Kenai who shared one flush facility were thankful!
Without belaboring the thought, there are a lot of things we take for granted in our lives that we probably shouldn't. There being so many of these things that we would be too overwhelmed to try to list them in any meaningful way, we just pretty much forget they are there until something goes wrong and then we get mad. When you support your missionary on the field somewhere, remember they may not have all the conveniences of your home. Keep them in prayer and keep your support for them strong.