Tales at Hotel Towfighi

I had mentioned previously that we had some interesting adventures during the conference. There are times when the guests who stay in our home during the conference are low maintenance, and there are times when they are not. Over a two week period, we had 12 different people stay in our home (and as many of 7 of them were with us at the same time). For most of the Ankara conference, though, one of the teachers, a family of 3 stayed with us. This family, though not low maintenance, was memorable!

The mom, Sita, took the opportunity on several evenings to give me parenting lessons. For example, I learned I am not caring for Nathan as I should because I don't allow him to be diaperless for at least 2 hours a day. He will walk with a waddle for the rest of his life because I don't do this. And sadly, he will not be as healthy as he could have been because I did not blowdry my stomach for at least an hour a day nor expose it to natural sunlight while I was pregnant. And Jenna will have chronic sinusitis because I let her go to bed with wet hair. Fun times...admittedly there were a few evenings I retired to my room a little earlier than I normally do. Oh, and there was the one evening she announced that we were guests in her home and told us we needed to go "home" to our room!

In any case, her 8 year old son Sina is a bit feisty. We entertained him with the other kids in the nursery while his parents attended the sessions. For the most part, things were okay until a woman named Romina stumbled across our conference on the 5th (of 6) day. We discovered she is a seeker who lives in an outer city, and she has a feisty 4 year old of her own named Tina.

Tina, meet Sina.

[The following encounter took place the next day when Romina once again found her way to the church.]

Tina: "I don't love Jesus."

Sina: words weren't necessary. He opted to let his fist speak for itself, and he punched her in the face.

Tina: (an hour or so later when the opportunity arose) "Mom, that kid punched me!!" (this was news to me, too)

Romina: "Sina, Christians are supposed to love other people and not act mean."

Sina: "Well, she should love Jesus. She deserved to be punched!"

Romina: "If you aren't going to apologize for what you did, you no longer exist to Tina or me."

Sina: [staredown time!]

Tina: "I DON'T SEE YOU!!!!"

Sina: (chasing Tina and Romina around to get in their faces) "What, you don't see me?!? See me now? Huh??"

Sita & her husband: ??? Once they got involved, I took it as my cue to scoot!

I thought that since the conference was over, so was our time with Romina and Tina. Think again! They asked Joe if they could stay in our home because they really wanted to attend church the next day (their city has no church). Given the fact that her daughter had been punched in the face, Joe felt he had no choice but to agree. But.

Remember Sina, who no longer exists? The trouble is, he is staying in our house. So...Sina and his family packed up their things and spent the night at Armand and Jean's house.

Romina and Tina spent the night with us.

We thought we'd just bring the two to their service and skip the English service that day. However, Romina found out that there was an English service, and she begged us to bring her. I suggested that Tina could stay with her in the service or go to Jenna or Andrew's class instead. Tina would stay with Romina. Or so we thought.

A few minutes into the service, Tina started to make waves. Thus we headed up to the nursery to keep her entertained there until it was time for her class to start. But Romina was itching to participate in the service, so she insisted we leave Tina in the nursery with the young kids and the 2 nursery workers. Romina asked me to teach the nursery workers to say "Be nice" in Tina's language since Tina knows no English at all (this should have been a big clue that I should NOT have agreed to leave Tina there).

About 3 minutes after we had returned to our seats, we heard a terrible commotion coming from upstairs where the nursery is. It was clear that Tina was screaming and crying, so Romina ran to find out what happened.

It turns out Tina can give punches as well as receive them. First she started bullying the kids in the nursery. And when an adult tried to grab her hand to get her to stop, Tina, with a closed fist and without warning, punched the woman in the ear. The result was a very bright red ear...at the hands of a four year old.

Romina proceeded to try to comfort her child. The nursery worker got upset that Romina didn't understand the gravity of what Tina had done. I escorted Romina and Tina home. Oh, and then we walked back so that Tina could apologize. And then we walked back home again.

We later returned to attend the Farsi service. While Sina does not exist, his mom Sita still did, and so before, during, and after church there were various verbal sparring sessions between the two moms on the proper way to discipline a child.

Then both families headed off to travel home. And we were left with just the teacher as a guest in our home for one final night.

We really thought we'd likely never see Romina and Tina again. Yet the very next Sunday they were back for the service and the class which is using Bill Bright's book Basics of Christianity. She will soon be able to relocate to America, but we do pray we can share the love of Christ with her while she's here. They, like so many others, need Him.

And we are glad that, at least for now, Hotel Towfighi is closed for a season.

On again, off again

So much for my plan of writing twice a week, huh? There's so much I want to remember about the past month, but I have been so busy living life, I haven't taken the time to write about it. I will try to play a bit of catch up...about Easter, our houseful of guests, etc. Though since I am so behind already, I'll just stick to telling you about our current adventure with water.
Anyone care to take a bath in this?? There are times the water is so orange the drain isn't even visible. Have no fear; we skip bath days when it's this bad. I quickly abandoned the idea of bathing the kids when I saw how discolored the water was that day. The problem has been going on for months, and we've been told that the old hot water pipes are to blame. So last week they started the process of replacing the hot water pipes in the entire building. Oh, the joys of hearing the workers drill through cement. Dust is everywhere. Because they are drilling through the floor, when they work on our upstairs neighbor's apartment, the debri lands in our bathroom, just as our downstairs neighbor gets ours.

For obvious reasons, when workers are replacing pipes, the water must be cut off occasionally. The first few days, it would go off (randomly) and come back on again within a short period of time. Then this week the "real" work began, and without warning, we had no water for two days. Well, I should clarify that the notice of the upcoming water cut was posted half-way through our first day of not having any water! Thankfully friends let us fill up a big jug of water so we could flush the toilet, etc. Wednesday the water was back, but our electricity came and went throughout the day (unrelated to the pipe replacing, and in fact, this slowed down their work. We got a break from the sound of the drills, and they ended up sweeping some of the debri in our bathroom because their work had come to a standstill).

At 7:00 on Wednesday night I bathed the kids as I usually do. With three kids reasonably clean, I was ready to rinse the shampoo out of Jenna's hair when, you guessed it, the workers cut off the hot water! She was aghast at the thought of being rinsed with icy cold water, and I agreed it would be torture. Thankfully there was a little (well used) water still in the bathtub, so I opted to rinse her with it instead. We'll call her clean.

By Thursday morning we had electricity, hot and cold water. But we were scheduled to visit friends that day. We spent the better part of the day with them (in spite of the fact that Nathan was still coughing quite a bit and poor Josh had a fever which had started in the middle of the night. But, hey, we got to eat Philipino spaghetti sauce with bits of hot dog in it...a first for us and a delight to the kids! ) Upon returning home, however, we discovered the cold water had been shut off. This means no dishwasher, washing machine, water for the toilets, etc. We pay a pretty penny for the quantity of water we use from the hot water pipes, so for Joe's sake we are using the water we do have sparingly. We've been told the water will be on again tomorrow night. For how long, I wonder...

I have to say I am frequently being reminded that water is something that should not be taken for granted. Rather than allowing myself to be frustrated that washing my hands isn't as simple as turning on the faucet right now, I am focusing on being grateful that most of the time we have a plentiful supply. It may be orange at times, but it's easily accessible! And I'm praying that the others in this building (my three sweet boys included) will be drawn to the One who offers each of us Living water.