This morning Francois approached me and said there was a problem with the cistern. Back up one day: yesterday we finally had a truck who was willing to deliver water in our area to unload 3,500 gallons of water into the church’s cistern and our tank. I followed him up to the cistern and when he opened the hatch it felt like someone had punched me in the stomach, I couldn’t breathe. At least half of the water was gone. What had held close to 3,000 gallons of water just a day ago now held a little over 1,000. The cistern must have a crack or crevice somewhere along its interior that allowed the water to seep into the ground overnight. While this doesn’t seem like a huge deal it was definitely a huge blow to my spirits. Water is a daily struggle for us. Bathing 18 kids plus cooking and cleaning and flushing toilets requires a lot of water. Sometimes kids are late for school because they spent most of their morning waiting for enough water to be brought up from the river for them to bathe. You cannot imagine how ecstatic I was when FOHO donated the money needed to purchase water and my friend Simon arranged for a truck to come up to us. The morning the truck rolled up all I could think was, “Okay our struggle with water is over for a little while. Things will be easier for a little while.” I was so wrong.
Francois, some of the older kids, and I formed a bucket brigade and spent a couple hours moving the approximately 1,000 gallons of water from the cistern to our tank (the tank was only partially filled by the truck) and some large blue barrels. I guess at least I got a little upper body workout. Even though working with Francois and the kids was kind of fun I was still disheartened by what has happened. So of course I called my mom. I knew she couldn’t help me or fix things magically but I just needed to tell someone. And I am so happy I did.
She told me Satan knows I’m here trying to do God’s work so he is going to throw anything he can at me to make me give up. If I was living a life for myself, not trying to help anyone or make anything better, things would be easy. But I’m not, so life is going to suck sometimes (my paraphrase). Her words made me realize that of all the things I accomplished yesterday I guess losing water isn’t the worst that could have happened. Ednel and Ezechiel’s family agreed to the boys being adopted to a family in the states someday. The construction boss and I worked out the last details of finishing my room/classroom without going crazy over budget. I still feel bad it happened, especially since FOHO donated the money for that water but I can’t dwell on it. I have more work to do, like finding out where this leak is in the cistern and getting it fixed.
Keep praying for all of us up here and the center. And pray that I can resolve this cistern issue so someday soon we can again have 3,500 gallons of water and be able to use every last drop of it.
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