Most of us have never had to experience being without water, read to the end for my 24-hour challenge. But here in the desert of Guatemala where our ministry is located, this is a daily reality. Many folks walk miles each day to fetch water that is not safe to drink and bring back to their homes. Thankfully, through our Living Waters Projects, for over 5 years this village has had clean safe drinking water. We were blessed to have at one time a total of 4 wells here in the village we provided water from. Below is our new well already connected and providing water, with the new pump house being built around the well to protect it.
As more and more families moved here, and as more and more families had children, two of the wells just did not produce enough water. Those wells were turned over to the families where the wells were located and provide just enough water for their needs. Then earlier this year it was discovered that one of the other wells that is close to a black water sewage stream, was severely contaminated and we had to shut that well down. We also had to replace all the pipes in that part of the village due to the contaminated sediment lining the pipes. Then after a severe earthquake here in January, our main well here at the clinic which we never had any problems from, began to struggle to keep up. It got to the point we could see the pumps in the bottom of the well and the safety floats on the pumps, would shut the pumps off because the well had run out of water. Below is the nearly finished new well pump house.
This began the campaign to find a new well site to not only provide the future water we need here for the campus, but also for the growing village. Praise God the new well site is 20 meters deep or 65′ all hand dug. We have 10 meters or 33′ of water in a 3′ concrete casing, which gives us over 2641 gallons of storage. The well was tested, and with 2 pumps running non-stop for over 4 hours, it still only drew the water down about 5 meters or 15′. We are praising God for the abundant water supply. This water is actually pumped over to our existing well so there was no need to do any modification to our existing system, other than some programming. I have designed a simple yet complex system to manage and automate all the water valves and pumps I will post in a separate story in the future for others to use. Below is a pic we took of the water being pumped into our old well, which has also become a storage tank. But we cannot praise God enough for those who gave to help with this project.
We still have another mile or so of water lines to fix and replace. We have no more funding to begin to fix these problems. We still have debts from this last project we still need to pay, because the credit card they are sitting on was used due to the emergency. We need at least $4000 to properly do the other half of the village. If anyone would like to help, just click on our donations tab for ways to give. Again, we truly appreciate your prayers and support for these projects.
May I challenge you to experience the need for water as Guatemalan’s do, do not use any running water in your home for one day. Take a bucket and containers and go to your outside faucet and fill them and bring them back in your home and use this water instead of your faucets for everything. This is your only water supply for everything in your home for the day. Doing laundry by hand, forget flushing your toilet homes here have outhouses (so that is the one exception for you), your shower is a 5-gallon bucket and a bowl to splash water over you, washing your dishes, brushing your teeth, cooking, cleaning, any water related activity from a bucket and containers, filled from outside your home, for 24 hours. This will give you a new appreciation for your water source, and just a fraction of the daily struggles here and other places around the world.
