It has been great to partner with Let Them LOL and learn about their work here in Sierra Leone. It has been fun to get to know the staff and volunteers who are on our team. It is a reminder that we have brothers and sisters in Christ who are sacrificing to help those in need. Even though we are from different states, and churches, we share a passion for serving Jesus and helping those in need. The work here is very difficult, but Let them LOL is committed to persevering. Kate and Andrew are staff members who are dealing with so much, but it is amazing to see their hearts and commitment. LOL has property in a little town called Mono and they have built children's homes and a school. This is where the barn is to be built, and where we are trying to a drill water well.
Jim and I have been faced with daily challenges regarding both of our projects. The first was realizing that the location where the barn was to be built is not level. We used a transit to figure out that the high side was 3' higher than the low side. There are no backhoes here, so this meant recruiting workers to come and start digging by hand. These guys have been working really hard in intense heat. I am having them dig out just enough area for us to get the posts set, They will have to dig the rest out later. The other project is teaching guys how to operate a drilling rig to drill for water, We started drilling, but we soon realized that a crucial pump would not work. We discovered it had frozen and cracked during its journey from PA to Sierra Leone. Jim and Buh Buh (LOL driller) had to drive to Freetown to see if they could find anything to replace it with. There were no pumps like that here, so they found a machine shop to make parts to rebuild the pump. Thankfully, the man was willing to make the parts that day. So while Jim was gone and the barn project was on hold, I was able to move a shipping container from the road where it had been dropped off a couple years ago next to the school building. I used the large Ford truck with the huge air compressor for drilling wells hooked to a trailer to drag the container into place. Not your normal job for this truck, but when in Africa, you use what you have. This process took several hour and lots of patience to move it into place. After that I was able to accompany the LOL team as they visited some villages who either needed wells or had received wells from LOL. Wow, what a reminder of the incredible needs that still exist for safe water. In each village they showed us their water source before the well. It usually was a muddy whole in the woods where the water collected, I am sure it's just full of contaminated water, but this is their only option unless a well can be drilled. In one case another NGO had contracted some guys to dig a well by hand. They had dug a hole six feet in diameter and were down to around 30' but they had very little water, and they were to the rock and could not dig any farther. This emphasizes the need for a drilling rig that can drill through the rock and motivates us to continue to work through the challenges so the men we are training can return to this village and drill a well some day soon.
Today we installed the repaired pump on the rig and then faced several other challenges, but we were able to do some training and drilling in the well we had started the other day. But unfortunately the conditions in the well had deteriorated while waiting to get the pump fixed ,so Jim and I made the decision to pull out and abandon this well. So tomorrow we will move and try a new hole, now that we have everything working better.
So please keep praying for us that we can be successful not only in our training but finding water that is needed here at the children's home and school to replace wells that are running dry part of the time.
Ok, I am tired of feeding the bugs while I type this outside where the internet signal is. Stay tuned for more to come.
Tim
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