Covenant!

Hello once again, Friends!

Wednesday, we began with a bit more haze in the air than usual, which was a welcoming way to enter a day which would be full of work.  So you can follow our journey in a new way, please enter the following coordinates into a map program such as Google Maps:
Mission House: -16.325243, -71.538563
Elohim School: -16.397652, -71.483289
I've found that you can get some pretty crazy driving directions - and the drive really is a bit crazy!


The road to Elohim!

 Now that you can visualize the road, let us share a little of what we did when we arrived with our shopping goods.

When we arrived we met Susi and Rosa, and were introduced to Rosa's husband, Jose, who takes care of the school.  Our group took a tour of the details of how their water is dispersed and managed, and then split into groups to focus on our tasks at hand.  Most of us moved in our materials and started organizing our engineering creation while our "LWW 101" Team sat with Rosa, Jose and Susi to review and sign the Covenant - a promise to one another in what we will do to provide clean water to their children.

This Covenant is the key component of our Living Waters system.  In this document, we promise to one another as partners - what we will do to provide a system, and what they will do to ensure it's continued operation.  In our discussions, this included that we work together to ensure a consistent water supply, without which we could not proceed!  Since the water is delivered by truck, and only one provider in the entire city of Arequipa is willing to make the trek to the school (see the above road photo), we needed to make it worth his time and expense to continue to provide the basic water to the school.

The materials we purchased were to this end.  We created a way to streamline the delivery process with all manner of piping and valves, significantly reducing the amount of time the water truck driver waits for his load to be distributed.  This is an immediate solution, along with better planning, to keep the water flowing, as it is, at Elohim.  We continued modifying our design as we talked with Jose and the methods he has to maintain water to the Kitchen, Students and Bathrooms.  He had some great ideas, which made our job easier, and we were able to either complete or guide Elohim in completing all the tasks we set for our partnership!  The extensive details of this gadgetry will come to you at our presentation in May, but here is a little picture of some team members at work.

Ron and Fred apply PVC Cement to create one
of the junctions in our water delivery system.

In these material tasks, we made another two trips to hardware stores - up and back - to ensure that we had the materials to do the job correctly.  As a partnership team, we broke bread together at lunch, talking about who we are, what we feels is important in life, and that the mission of our Covenant is to enhance the lives of the children!

Wednesday evening was another long one (notice, no Blog entry yesterday), having some truly passionate devotions and discussions on what it means to be here instead of helping in a town next door.  What we each bring to the trip and what we are taking with us.  Why we are here, and how we feel God leading us to return!  We went to bed physically and emotionally exhausted, but spiritually energized!

Thursday continued this Mission from Wednesday, with the renewed energy of the previous evenings spiritual exercises!  We once again focused on our specific jobs, with our testing team taking more water samples, our teaching team working through a plan to educate teachers and children how to stay healthy with water and hygiene, and our work team continuing with our erector set projects.  We finished all we needed to, and left Jose with quite the task list for how to continue to improve their water situation until we can return with a Clean Water system designed specifically to fit their needs.

Before returning to Arequipa, we enjoyed the company of a few of the students who reminded us, yet once again, why we are here!  You and I can make choices and take care of ourselves, but these children are counting on us as providers and role models in life!

Two of the 170 reasons we are here at Elohim!

Thank you, as always for reading our story.  We crave your responses, and are energized by knowing that we are not just the six of us here in the Mission House this evening, but a family of faith working from the US and around the world as well!  Please know that our hearts are warmed by being a conduit of faith between you and the children of Elohim, and our hope is that we can continue to build this friendship we have, and that you can meet some of the saints we have worked with this week!

With faith and gratitude,
The PCB-LWW Team