Living Water and Our Angels
For the last eight years, we have struggled to get water to our orphanage site. In 2004, the Rotary of Wilton, CT agreed to provide us with $4,000 to help buy a generator that would power the pump to a well. Since that time, we have constructed the first phase of our orphanage project, opened our school, purchased a generator and connected to the national power grid, but not until this week were we able to get a supply of water out of the ground. Our water supply has been directly from the sky via the capture of rain water from our roof tops and down into cisterns only to be pushed back up to the roofs and gravity fed down as needed. In the meanwhile, over the years we hired three different contractors to dig wells for us.
After five failures to find water, we were about to give up and try digging a mile long pipeline to our neighbors land. We employed Haiti Outreach, Inc. to do a satellite survey of the land to find the most likely spot at which we might find water. We even used Google earth coordinates to locate the land for the satellite. We were told that we might have to dig up to 250 feet or more. We had no choice – we needed that water. Fortunately, for us, the drillers found an adequate supply of water at about 160 feet. We celebrated the find until we were once again confronted with the problem of getting the water out of the ground.
The problems were multi-faceted. First we did not have enough electrical power from the generator to run the water pump. That problem was solved when we went on to the national power grid. Then we found that the pump itself was not adequate to pump the water from the bottom of the well. It is at this time Pastor Bob Guffey of the First Baptist Church of Conway, SC and a member of our Advisory Board, introduced us to Roger and Nancy McGuigan as part of a larger group of people from his church that would be coming to our site to visit. Roger has extensive experience with digging wells and installing water pumps. However, even his trip came close to being delayed when for other reasons his colleagues had to postpone their trip to visit our site.
Roger worked very closely with Jean Gabriel, our Executive Administrator-Hinche, before arriving in order to make sure he would have all of the necessary equipment to properly install the water pump and make the well operational. Upon arrival, Roger immediately went to work with Jean Gabriel and others, in 90 degree plus heat, to solve the problems on the ground. When he departed one week later, we were blessed with an abundant water supply that could not have been more timely in light of the 3-month drought we been experiencing at the site.
We do not know God’s timing on things and we’ve learned to have patience. Although it has taken 8 years, thousands of dollars and tens of people to bring water to the site, we did not suffer from thirst. For all along we had the living water of Jesus ever present in our times of needs. Roger and Nancy were among the angels sent by Him. Thank you Lord and thank you Roger and Nancy.
