My terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

Last Thursday was terrible. When I told my sister about it, she reminded me of that classic childrens' story that aptly described my day. I had a plumbing problem - no - a plumbing disaster. There are many comforts that I take for granted at home, and plumbing is definitely one of them. Brief background: all the apartment buildings in Darkhan are about 40 years old, including the pipes. There is little or no maintenance done, the Mongolians just wait until things break to fix them. Here is what my bathroom pipes look like, and the ceiling:

Multiple coats of paint does not qualify as maintenance, in my opinion. Anyway, Thursday morning I got up and took a shower before the ladies in my weekly bible study arrived. My bathroom hot water faucet knob had broken, so I could only turn off my hot water by shutting off the main valve. Here's a lovely closeup:

Around 9am, the ladies started to arrive at my apartment. Shortly thereafter, I remembered I still needed to turn the hot water off in the bathroom. When I went to turn the valve dial, it blew off and hot water started gushing out of the pipe onto my bathroom floor. High pressure, boiling-hot water. By the grace of God - truly - I had 8 Mongolian women in my apartment by that time. They jumped into action, like they had seen this 100 times. Before I knew it, they had their sleeves rolled up, and were scooping water off the floor into the bathtub, and trying to contain the flooding so it didn't spill out into the rest of my apartment. I stood by, helpless, watching them. They worked and sweated for about 15-20 minutes while we waited for the water company to arrive and shut off the water. In the meantime, my downstairs neighbor came knocking at my door, complaining that it was leaking into her apartment, damaging the ceiling and some wallpaper.

Sadly, this is a common occurrence in these apartment buildings. Every one of the women told me they had experienced something similar. Still, I felt very humbled by the whole thing, that I just stood there not knowing what to do. I don't know what I would have done if I had been alone - certainly there would have been more water damage. Those ladies are my heroes.

It took the rest of the day to get the pipe and valve fixed and the water turned back on. While I waited at home all day, I managed to stub my toe so hard that I thought I broke it (I didn't), then my kitchen cabinet almost fell off the wall. There are many lessons that can be learned from such a crummy day, not least of which is an immeasurable appreciation for the Mongolian and American friends I have here that came to my rescue at multiple times during the day. And for the God who provided them exactly when I needed them, in exactly the right way.