Home Safe and Sound - and forever changed!

Hello again, Friends!


Since our last post, we have enjoyed one last delayed flight (3 out of 6 flights delayed... eh, could be worse) and arrived home late Saturday night.  We would like to recap a little of what we found, experienced, and learned in Arequipa.


Our journey began over one year ago with a simple idea - that people need clean water, and Living Waters for the World has a system to address this need.  Throughout the subsequent months, we learned about what was involved, sent four team members to training at Clean Water U, researched many countries, networked with others in the Mission field and at long last made last week's trip to Elohim School in Arequipa, Peru.


We met some amazing living 'Saints' who walk their talk, and teach by example.  We met Dr. Bob from Health Bridges International, who left his pediatrics practice to help heal the children of Peru.  Father Alex, who has an amazing story of service through his order.  Susi, who has adopted Arequipa, Peru as her second home when not in Australia.  Rosa and her husband Jose have given their lives to serve the children of Elohim as the schools director and caretaker, respectively.  Adan who serves La Iglesia Primero de Junio in many capacities, including maintaining the physical compound, delivering food to over 600 in the community, maintain the current LWW system, and drive the Mission House guests to the work sites as needed!  Veronica and Steve, who by humble service, help those who visit the mission house to feel at home and be more effective in our mission.


There are countless unnamed souls giving to their community in ways we haven't even begun to understand.  Through all of this, we have come from a misunderstanding that we have a lot to offer and our Peruvian friends have little, to the more correct perspective that we are all Children of God with our own offerings in service to one another!


Here are some additional photos to fill in some of the gaps from our story - and there are more gaps yet to be filled!  Please join us in May as we present our findings, and our plan for moving forward, to the congregation.






A toxic plume of bacteria, released into a bucket of bleach water
and grown from one of the water supplies we tested on our trip.

  



The local grocery!  Oh, how we can learn to live on
what is available from a place such as this.



The Road to Elohim!  The water truck must carry a full
load of water up roads such as this.  For those of us in
business, knowing the cost of time and maintenance, this
is a significant hurdle to supplying water to Elohim School.



Protesters promoting agriculture over mining in Arequipa.
While we were there, a blockade of fuel trucks by farmers nearly
paralyzed the city by restricting fuel supplies and significantly
increasing prices.  This adds another layer to the complexity of
simply getting water to Elohim.



Missionaries Changed!
(l to r) Father Alex, Ron, Barb, Fred, Veronica, Linda, Janet and Eric.

In departing, our goal was to assess the water needs of Elohim School. Five days later, that simple goal has been revised and enriched!





Faithfully,
The PCB-LWW Team