How Many Showers Did You Take?!

This past August 2007,  a group form our church went on a mission trip to Mexico. We went with Bearing Precious Seed.

Steven and Rebekah were the adult sponsors from our church in the boys and girls dorms, but other than that, our whole family (including Wes, Elisabeth and Trey) were in an apartment attached to the main building. There was one bathroom in it, though there were two toilets (each with a curtain in front of them), three sinks, two showers behind one curtain, and each of them had another curtain around them so someone could get a shower while others were in the bathroom doing other things, and neither of them would see each other.

The first night we were there, Timothy went into the bathroom to get a shower, and someone was in there. They wouldn’t be able to see him behind those curtains, but he still wasn’t comfortable with it, so he decided to just forget about getting a shower. This happened several times during the week. Once, he was told to get a shower, so he did, but it turned out to be the only one he got all week!

When we got home Friday, he went to bed wihtout getting a shower. The next morning, we girls were talking about the mission trip, and somehow we got on the topic of showers. We asked how many showers Timothy had gotten. Christa, a friend from Mississippi (who had gone on the trip with us), said that she had noticed that he and another boy both smelled pretty badly! (She sat beside them on the bus). Timothy was called upstairs, and the question was asked him, “How many showers have you had this week?” He rubbed his head, grinned, and said “Hmmmm….let me see………” We knew that was a bad sign, because if he had taken showers everyday he would have remembered, so we asked him which days he got showers on. He told us which had he gotten a shower on, and explained why he had only gotten one. Mom then told Dad, and he decided on a punishment.

Timothy was sent to the bathroom. He had to take seven showers! This is how he had to do it: he would go in the bathroom, get undressed, get in the shower, wash his hair, scrub all over with soap, rinse off, climb out, dry off, get dressed, comb his hair, then go upstairs and yell “ONE!” Repeat the whole process and yell “TWO!” He had to do that seven times.

I think he decided that getting one shower a day was much better than getting seven showers at the end of every week!