CAUTION This Blog contains material that may gross you out.  Read at your own risk.

It's been the better part of forever since I last found a spare moment to Blog.  We've had endless adventures that normally would have been blogged about, but they have been washing over us like the waves of the ocean, with barely enough time to gulp some air before the next wave is upon us.  As a result you have missed out on some pretty amazing stories.

But this story takes the cake.  It absolutely does!! If you are sensitive to sights, sounds, and smells that are less than pleasant, do yourself a favor and don't read anymore. Go do something else.  Come back another day when, I promise you, we will have something less offensive to your sense to tell about.

This story began around 5 p.m. last evening. We are in the throes of Harmattan, which is the long dry season.  Dust is practically measurable. Rain is very rare. 

So when it started raining, Jim rushed downstairs to check on things. Did anyone leave anything outside that might get ruined in the rain?  Which direction is the wind blowing? Do we need to close shutters on that side of the house to keep the rain from seeping in under the windows?  These are the questions that were running through his head.

Upon his arrival downstairs he bumped into Dorothy who was coming to look for him.  "Papa Jim," she said, "there is a terrible odor outside in the front of the house.  I smelled it when I went out to take something in from the rain."  Papa Jim and Dorothy grabbed umbrellas and rushed out the front door together.  Sure enough, they were immediately assaulted with a strong sewer odor.  Like brave firefighters rushing into a burning building, they unlocked the front gate, and the strong sewer odor instantly reached gag-able levels.  Questions like "What on earth?!" were swirling in Papa Jim's mind.  Pretty quickly they were looking at the "What on earth!"  

Our neighbor catty-corner across from us, the one in the large, white, three story house that dwarfs our house, had raw sewage pouring out of a rainwater drainage pipe coming out of the lower corner of his wall.  The raw sewage had filled a small portion of the drainage ditch on his side of our little road, where it ran into a clump of grass and other green things which clog the drainage ditch. (I insert here parenthetically that every little while Papa Jim is outside cleaning out the jungle growth and opening up that ditch again.)  When the raw sewage was blocked from its downhill journey via the ditch, it jumped onto the road and continued on down the way.  At that precise moment it was a few feet beyond our front gate.

And thus it was that Papa Jim rushed back into Shiloh, found Mama Alice, and instructed her to CALL GUY QUICKLY!!!  While having been involved in various raw sewage issues in several countries,  he nonetheless had no idea what the protocols were for this particular raw sewage situation. (We're dealing cross-culturally here.)  

Thank the Lord for Guy.  Thank the Lord that it was now almost 6 p.m. and Joseph was just arriving at work.  Thank Almighty God that the raw sewage chose to run down the street and NOT across our little road, under our gate, down our fairly steep driveway, and on into our car port.  That's what our wonderful, torrential rain storm rains always do.  We've lived here for years and years.  We know exactly how things flow.  But our gracious, kind, and loving Heavenly Father protected us.  Imagine the state of affairs if the raw sewage had taken the rainwater path!

But I digress.  Guy instructed Joseph to see if anybody was home in the raw-sewage-problem-house and report the problem to them.  You have to understand that the family who owns the house spend very little of their time being our neighbors.  They have another large house down in Daoula, and that is where they mostly live.  None of us had noticed any signs of life at their place for some time.  But by God's grace alone, Joseph found the owner himself at home.  The man quickly told Joseph that he was aware of his problem, but that he couldn't do anything about it until morning.  It was dusk, and night was quickly falling.  

So we took charge of the problem.  (And trust me when I say that it is times like these that Papa Jim and Mama Alice are SO VERY GRATEFUL FOR WORKER BEES!  Otherwise we are the ones doing the dirty work!) By the time Joseph had linked our two hoses together to make one very long hose which reaches half way to the moon, by the time he had fixed up a bucket of soapy water, collected his flashlight, and gone back outside to begin the dreadful task Papa Jim had given him to do, the raw sewage problem had increased significantly both in quantity and the distance it had now traveled.  Joseph went to work with a will, never uttered a complaint, and spent several hours hosing the mess off the road, back into the draining ditch on the other side of the road, and washing it on down the way as far as his super long hose would reach.  He was simultaneously cleaning up the mess and diluting the odor.  When he was all finished, he began pouring buckets of soapy water into the ditch which further reduced the odor.  When he returned to Shiloh to give us his report on the state of affairs, bless his heart if he didn't volunteer to go back outside and check on the problem every hour or two all night long.  

You probably just heard a door close somewhere downstairs.  That would be Joseph.  It's 4:30 a.m.  He's probably just coming back inside from another inspection tour.  As soon as you and I stop talking (well technically I'm doing all the talking and you are doing all the listening...that is to say if anybody stuck around long enough to listen to this dreadful tale  of woe!) I will phone Joseph and get an update.  Then I'm going to crawl back under the covers and hope to join Papa Jim in dream land before long.  

People on your side of the Big Pond are forever asking us to describe a "normal day" on the mission field.  Maybe we should refrain from describing this particular "normal day" when next we are asked!