by Ed Lyons, Director of Ministry Advancement
Some days, I really love my job—especially when I get to report good news. A brief glance at my Facebook feed reminds me that we need a lot more good news these days!
I recently received a report from our Sudan field director on the success thus far in 2019 of our Emergency Borehole Repair Team in the war-torn Nuba mountains… success that can be attributed to you, our ministry partners, for your faithful and generous support.
The report was pretty technical and revealed a lot of information about the condition of each well pump repaired, where it’s located, what was broken and needed replacing, etc.
But in this report, an additional column was added to the spreadsheet labeled “Number of People Drinking from Borehole.” Our engineers recorded actual impact of the well on the surrounding community. Conflict displaces people, so communities experience a lot of inflow and outflow as people move around to find what they need to survive. So we don’t always know how many are benefiting from your “active compassion.” This time was different
The technical side of the report was very encouraging. It showed 61 well pumps repaired so far in 2019. But the last column was what brought tears to my eyes. “There are 1,800 people drinking from this borehole.” “There are 1,300 people drinking from this borehole.” “There are 190 households drinking from this borehole.”
The list went on and on. Sixty-one communities. More than 60,000 people now with safe, clean water to drink.
What must they think? One day, they are drinking muddy water from hand-dug holes in the ground. Then a Toyota Land Cruiser pickup arrives with a team of guys carrying pipes and heavy tools.
A few hours later, the men are gone and the village has crowded around the pump with plastic jerrycans— the sheep and goats muscling their way through the crowd to get a cool drink. Even the wasps and bees swarm over the miniature ponds made by cow prints in the mud from the runoff of the new well. It’s a beautiful site that I’ve been privileged to see hundreds of times.
We have reported a lot about our major ministry focus in 2019: completing a Maternity Ward for the new hospital we are helping to build in a place called Gigaiba.
The hospital is certainly a priority for us… but it’s not all we’re doing — by far. After all, one of the greatest contributors to community health in the Nuba is safe, clean water. More than 80 percent of diseases in Africa which send people to hospitals are water-borne.
We are now into the fourth quarter of 2019, and our team in the field is sprinting to complete all outreaches before the Christmas holidays grind everything in East Africa to a halt.
Our guys are doing such a great job; please pray for their safety and continued success. Pray that God will continue working through the compassion of His people to make sure our teams have the fuel, supplies, provisions, and everything else they need to keep working to end of the year. Thank you for your important role in this Good News!
