Someone once described sin to me…

Mark and I recently moved into our new Dalian apartment. I have to admit, the place grabbed our attention when we were house hunting because it had dark redwood floor panels, lots of windows to let in sunshine, a (small) washer/dryer, 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, and a kitchen. Another big draw was the fact that we’d be a short walk away from our newly found American buddies.

The night we transferred our belongings to the new place, we noticed that the water hadn’t been activated. Our rental service company stopped by to try turning the water on for us, but failed, and thus called the owner to swing by. Before one of the owners arrived, the pipes under the kitchen sink started dripping. The owner arrived at 8pm and tinkered with the pipes and valves. Suddenly, the dripping turned into a leak and then into a full on spray; the owner had snapped one of the valves out of place. The only way to stop the spray was to somehow screw the valve back in, which the owner attempted to do for more than an hour. Finally he gave up and got me to hold the valve in place while he called for backup.

The deal with the valve was that if I didn’t hold it in place, our entire house would be flooded. That’s how much water and pressure was coming through this little hole. Holding the valve there was a bit hellish as there was one angle that let the least amount of water out. This is where I started thinking about the nature of sin. Someone once described sin to me as missing the mark. No matter how close to the mark you get, or how good you are, one little deviation from the mark is imperfect. That’s how I felt when I was holding the valve in place. Often times my hand would get tired and an occasional squirt of water would hit me, but even when i had the right angle, it was far from perfect. Water continuously crept through the hole filling the kitchen with water. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t plug that darn thing!

Finally backup arrived and they ended up cutting the entire building’s supply of water to save our apartment. The day’s ordeal lasted for 4+ hours! Mark and I got to bed around 2am. Enjoy the pics of our nice apartment which is 5x bigger than our old dormitory like place.




Living Room


My bedroom


Kitchen, with dry floor ;D