Living Water

Sweat dripped down my back and muddy arms as I listened to the words being translated. The little grandma walked slowly and her back was hunched slightly from obvious years of hard work.
Her words were broken with tears as she tried to explain what it meant to have a well in her village now. Adrián, our drill leader and translator, sounded raspy himself as he translated her words from Spanish into English: I have prayed for years for this well. I prayed I would not have to walk miles to have good water for my family. I prayed that we would no longer get sick from the water we drink. I thank God for bringing you all here.
I knew this trip had been one answered prayer after another from before we even started. Yet now we discovered that it was an answer to prayers that had gone up before I or most of our team had ever even heard of Living Water International or thought to come to Nicaragua and drill a well.
When we first heard that Jim, a man in our church, was putting together a team to go to Nicaragua to drill a well, my husband and I instantly looked at each other and knew we had to go. A mission trip was not exactly in the budget for this year, but Jim assured us that if money was the only obstacle, we should trust God to provide it. We were amazed at how the funds came together, almost effortlessly, not only for each member of our 12-person team, but to fund the well itself. We were also blessed with a prayer partner who joined us in praying that we would actually find water when we drilled.
According to Living Water International, a ministry that drills wells and provides hygiene classes in poor communities all over the world, nearly 90 percent of all diseases in the world are caused by unsafe drinking water, inadequate sanitation, and poor hygiene.
Every year, there are 4 billion cases of diarrhea as a direct result of drinking contaminated water; this results in more than 2.2 million deaths each year—many of whom are children. It is estimated that every day, water-related diseases claim the lives of 5,000 children under the age of five. That’s roughly one every 15 seconds.
These statistics became all the more real when we arrived in the village outside León, Nicaragua, and met families with illnesses, saw how far the distances to the nearest clean wells were, the condition of the roads that led to them, or played with and were loved by dozens of children who have never seen indoor plumbing.
Eight members of our team, including my husband and me, spent each day on the drill team in the hot sun with hard hats, work gloves, shovels, a trailer-mounted drill rig, and lots of mud. The other four members of our team taught the women and children about hygiene and how to properly use this new, clean water. They also shared Bible stories and crafts, teaching them about the love of Jesus; the same love that had prompted each member of our team to help bring water to their village.
A few days before we left the States for this trip, a co-worker had caught me, pulled out a sticky note, and asked me specifically what she should be praying for. Of course there was health and safety for our team; we could get sick from contaminated food and water even easier than the people living there. What came to mind the most was to ask her to pray that we would actually find water when we drilled. We wouldn’t know if we had hit an aquifer until we began developing the well; but we were trusting that God would direct us to clean water.
We drilled one borehole and never hit rock, instead finding only sand and pumice, perfect for filtering water. When we reached 100 feet and began flushing the well, it turned out to be one of the most producing wells the LWI staff had ever seen—rough estimates put it at about 300 gallons per minute.
The whole village got in on an all-out water fight that day as children played in the water and adults filled buckets and doused each other. The excitement was electrifying.
The next day we finished putting the hardware on the well, installed the pump and held a dedication where one person after another spoke about how thankful they were to God for bringing them this well and how long they had prayed for one to come to their village. On the newly installed hand pump, it says, “This hand pump is dedicated to the people of this community by Living Water International to demonstrate the Love of Jesus Christ. A cup of water in Jesus’ Name (John 4:10-14).”
When it came time to leave the village for the last time, I wished I knew enough Spanish to tell Katarín, one little girl who I particularly bonded with, and the other children who clung to me that I would remember them, and be praying for them. Instead, I could only hug them and kiss their heads over and over.
I was comforted to know that despite all the challenges they would face which were so different from mine, they were growing up in a praying community. They would hear the stories as they got older about how their parents and grandparents prayed for that well and how God provided. They would remember the people who came from the United States to get dirty and hot and sweaty because Jesus loved them.
They may forget our names and faces, but hopefully, they will remember that week when prayer stretched across the world and connected believers for God’s purposes.