My toilet paper has been found, and there was much rejoicing.
Because you do not know what kind of restroom arrangements you will encounter during a mission trip to a developing country, it is always a wise idea to bring your own TP. The easiest way to do this is to buy travel-sized rolls. One of these rolls would easily fit inside the paper tube at the center of a standard roll of toilet paper. The roll comes with a clear plastic clamshell dispenser.
Originally, I found this camper-sized paper, sold in individual rolls under the brand name “Charmin To Go,” in the sample-size and travel-size product aisle at Walmart. I panicked a couple of years later when they stopped carrying it, until I found that they had the identical product, in different packaging and without the Charmin brand name, in the camping / outdoors department. Here, you would get three rolls, with one dispenser, in a bag.
I went to buy some the other night and it wasn’t there. Our local Walmart is in the midst of a store-wide renovation, and various departments are being shuffled around the store haphazardly. So I wasn’t sure whether they had stopped carrying it altogether or whether it just wasn’t on the shelves. Apparently, based on something a Walmart clerk told my parents, the former is true.
Anyway, my new editor offered to look at a sporting goods store in Cool Springs, and he called just now to say he’d gotten me two bags. I was delighted; seldom have you heard anyone so pleased about toilet paper.
ADDENDUM: My editor informs me that he found the TP, not at the sporting goods store, but at another Walmart. My mission trip teammate Jan Schilling also reports that her Walmart has it as well.