Communist Pipes Ignoring COVID 19

The 50-year-old pipes in the bathrooms at the BOL Children’s Home do not seem to care that we are going through a Pandemic. Little do they care about our decreased donations and cut back renovating budgets. But it is also true that I did not keep my promise to them. Last year, I talked with them and asked them to hold on a little longer because we have ministry friends and teams lined up for 2020 to come and fix them. This year, I told them I was sorry and asked them to last a little longer because this COVID thing completely changed our plans. They were silent at first but then, judging by the sound they made; I realized they could not take it anymore. Feeling the heavy financial burden this crisis would bring upon our ministry friends, we did not want to ask for any financial help. We thought we could do this the Romanian way; patch them up a little and add another layer of paint on the ceiling to get through winter, hoping things will be better next year.

Little did we know that these old metal pipes would veto our plans. Each year before school starts, inspections intensify. One day as we evaluated our most pressing needs at the BOL Home, we realized the water dripping through the ceiling was not from children taking showers but from broken pipes inside the shower walls. Due to the communist style of construction, you pretty much have to destroy the shower stalls to get to those broken pipes. So our “patch and paint the problem” plan had to change. Maybe pipes and metal do not listen to our voice but to the voice of their Creator. Perhaps God already has people blessed and prepared with finances to renovate the bathrooms. We will find out because we have to focus on repairing this right away.

Right now, we are looking at two possible outcomes to this story. We took the step of faith to remove the old communist showers and clean up the room, with our team and volunteers. In the meantime, the girls will have to take showers on the boy’s level with proper tutor supervision. We estimate the material cost of installing new shower walls and the plumbing to be $9300. The first possible outcome would be that help arrives, marked BOL Children’s Home, for the needed amount, and we quickly complete this necessary renovation of the girl’s bathroom. Or, the second possible outcome would be that our Creator wants us to do more, and we can continue the project to complete renovation for both the girls and boys bathrooms. The renovation of the bathrooms for both levels would indeed be a miracle. Although we do not know what the future holds, we are ready to put in the sweat and frugal management to make the Bread of Life Children’s Home a decent warm family home leaving behind the communist era that brings about so many bad memories.

Alin Panican