Perhaps you are expecting a delightful story of how we were able to minister to the Nepali people with a red bucket. Or maybe we received a vision from God of a bucket and it somehow came true. Nope. This story probably belongs in the horror category. Because my first week and a half of ministry was centered around this particular red bucket. The Red Bucket of Horrors. It’s existence will forever be scarred in mind.
Before I begin, the names have been changed to protect the identities of my fellow teammates… Just kidding. We’re just gonna be super honest here today.
After discovering our ministry and having a day of briefing, we took a four hour jeep ride to a village in the middle of nowhere. We got settled into the sanctuary where we were sleeping. In just two short days we would begin hiking to local believers homes to pray for them and encourage them. The night before our first scheduled ministry day, I was hanging out with Gloriel in the sanctuary. Pretty soon she confessed to not feeling very well. Before I knew it, she was hanging out right by a window (a second story window, mind you). I get up to check on her and this what she tells me…
“Melissa, I’m gonna pass out. No really. I think I’m gonna pass out… I’m…. gonna…. pass…. “
She then proceeded to blow chunks out the window. Twenty feet to the bottom. Thankfully that was the one mess I didn’t have to clean up. Afterwards I got a bucket for her to use in case she had throw up again. And so it began. She threw up four more times that evening. And just proceeded to feel sicker and sicker to the point where she could hardly move. I did my my best to care for her and get her sprite and crackers. I emptied the bucket every time she used it. I moved my sleeping pad by her so she could wake me up in case she needed anything in the night. It only got worse. Unfortunately when one gets sick, it’s not always limited to one end or the other. And the teammate who is to sick to stand surely can’t make her way down the stairs to the squatty potty. You can guess what the only option was. The red bucket. And so every half an hour, I would feel a hand nudge me. I would get up and empty the bucket. Thankfully by morning, most of the side effects dissipated. But we both stayed behind from ministry. Her to get better, and me to sleep.
If only the red bucket fulfilled it’s purpose that night. Sadly it continued. It was two days later when I went to bed early feeling bloated and sick. The bucket was moved to beside my bed instead. Several hours later, I grabbed it and ran outside and proceeded to empty my stomach of what I thought was all of dinner. Two hours later, I realized that my stomach wasn’t completely empty yet. And so my month was changed from that moment. I never fully recovered. It was almost a week before I felt I could eat again. My stomach still turns at the sight of Nepali food. While I was never sick enough to be bed ridden, I wasn’t healthy enough to go on one or two hour hikes. And so my ministry looked different then I ever thought it would for the month… More on that in the next blog.
In case you’re wondering, I was not the last to use the red bucket. It maintained a permanent residence in our room until the week before we left.
