Guatemala - Living Water International May 2013: Water wells and hygiene classes and Love in action

In May, I was back in Guatemala for a week of vacation with Living Water International to drill a water well, give hygiene classes, and share a love that I’ve learned through understanding and knowing Jesus and His love for mankind.  I was back in the same area of Guatemala, called La Máquina, with the same drill leader (Manolo) as last time.  This trip was the same routine as last year – driving from the main city of Antigua on Sunday after church for 5 hours until we reached La Máquina where we would wake up Monday morning at 4:45 am to start drilling and teaching in the community.  This trip was also, though, very distinct on numerous levels.

WHO IS LIVING WATER INTERNATIONAL?

I’ll start with briefly describing the purpose of Living Water International, a Christian non-profit organization based out of Houston (www.water.cc).  Living Water International (LWI) exists to, first and foremost, spread the Good News – the Gospel – of Jesus Christ to those in need.  They do that by helping empower North Americans to travel abroad and meet a physical need (of water) while also not forgetting the spiritual need that is so much needed throughout the world – to know God and understand what he really did through Jesus Christ, and let Him cleanse and transform you for His greater purposes.  LWI focuses on Jesus Christ being the living water for us, a water that never runs dry and that quenches all thirst.

REMEMBER YOU CAN CLICK ON PICTURES AND THEY ENLARGE.

Living Water also empowers locals in their native countries to be a part of this movement.  LWI is located in Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia.  Guatemalans are employed to lead the Gringos (another term for Americanos) on these trips, helping us to help their people.  This year, the hygiene leader was Blanca, a spunky and very motivated Guatemalan woman who was born in Antigua, Guatemala.  The drilling assistant was Manuel, also from the city of Antigua, who just started with Living Water a few months ago and speaks almost no English (but he’s quickly learning!).  Then there’s Manolo, the drill leader who was born and raised in the countryside of Guatemala – right in La Máquina! 

Some of the PVC tubes used in the final stages of drilling the well.  These go deep into the ground.

MEET THE GRINGOS!

Last year I went on my first LWI trip without knowing anyone, but this year I had the privilege of traveling with 2 of my closest girl friends.  One is Kim, my girl from Dallas, who I met when I lived there for Milwaukee Tool in 2010.  Also, Melissa, my friend from the beautiful island of Bermuda, was part of this trip.  You may remember Melissa from a 2012 blog post when I ran in the Bermuda Day Half Marathon, blazing the island with Milwaukee red (jerseys) while running with a bunch of Bermudians from one end of the island to the other.  Kim and Melissa both met me in Miami, and we were able to fly together down to Guatemala and serve side-by-side on this trip! 

From left to right: Melissa, me, Kim!

Also on the trip were a mother and her son from San Francisco, a father and his son from Wyoming, and then 3 business owners/fathers - 2 from Wyoming and 1 from Minnesota.  Ryan Kotula, the owner and CEO of Northern Tool, is from Minnesota and decided to go on this trip when he ran into his friend, Ryan Igo of Igo Construction, on a vacation in Grand Cayman Island last year.  I’m not sure exactly how the father and son from Wyoming or the other Ryan (also from Wyoming) decided to go on the trip, but they all knew each other and were connected in some way.  They are involved in the oil drilling up in Wyoming, so the water well drilling sparked an extra interest in them.  So do you think, with the owner of Northern Tool on the LWI trip to Guatemala, that I was able to not talk about tools for a week?  Haha, no.  It’s ok though, luckily Ryan Kotula and Northern Tool are big believers in Milwaukee tools…it was all positive conversation.  Also on the trip was Sarah, a lady about my age who works at the LWI Headquarters in Houston, who was on my trip last year, so that was great to be with her again!  Needless to say the group was diverse – 4 young women (3 single…Sarah’s married), 2 pairs of parent/child, and 3 other grown men.

Some of the guys drilling.

IN THE COMMUNITY

We drilled in Community C-2.  Last year I was in C-6.  The communities are all in a line along the 2 major rivers in this area of the country, so they are just simply named C-1, C-2, etc.  We drilled the well at the future site of a clinic.  C-2, four years ago, had a well drilled at their primary school, and they had now requested that one be drilled about 1 mile down the road (remember the communities are literally in a line – one road – along a river) at the future site of the clinic.  We arrived, introduced everyone, prayed together (in Spanish and English) and the drill team got to work.  I, not by choice, was on the hygiene squad for this trip.  I will be honest when I say how reluctant I was, but 1 of the 3 of us (Kim, Melissa, myself) had to be on Hygiene, and Kim and Melissa wanted to drill since it was their first trip.  I had drilled last year, and so I agreed to hygiene.  The water well is the highlight and the ‘cool’ part of the trip, so I prayed for humility and a positive attitude and for God to really use me on Hygiene.  Honestly, from here moving forward I will always do Hygiene.  I LOVED IT!  I was honestly in my element, and of course hygiene is where I should be.  With my corazón latino (Latin heart) and passion for the culture and speaking Spanish…and the fact that I think I will someday be a teacher…of course I should be on the hygiene side…duh!  That is where my passion and talent is best-served.  It was awesome…spending time with the children and explaining simple hygiene concepts and facts that we take for granted, having snack and recess with them, talking to them about their families, praying with them, walking them home at the end…it was all such a blessing.  Like Debbie (the San Francisco mom), Sarah, and Blanca said – we felt like we got more out of it than the children!  Two examples of what we taught are the following:



Flies are dirty.  When we do not use bathrooms or latrines or the ‘pits’ in the ground to go potty and poop, flies eat the poop and then can enter our houses (or outdoor kitchens) and land on our food, contaminating our food.  That’s why it’s important to 1. Cover your food and 2. Defecate in the proper places.

Here is the hygiene team, modeling how to properly use the water well (me).

Many things can turn the clean water from the new well being drilled into contaminated water.  1. Animals roaming around the well. 2. A dirty bucket. 3. Not covering the bucket of clean water. 4. Animals drinking out of the clean water in the bucket.  We guarantee that the water in the well is clean when it comes out, but we need to take care of the well and keep the area clean and use caution when pumping out  water.  

Chicas bailando!  Girls dancing!  We were on a little break, stretching and dancing around.

In the morning we had 150 students from grade 1 to grade 5, and in the afternoon we had 20 middle schoolers and a few women from the village.  We used lots of visuals to make the teaching more real and to keep their attention. 

We used a fake rubber fly, Play-Doh, and glitter to show how easy it is for germs to spread.  The fly landed in the Play-Doh (poop) that had glitter (germs) on it, then the fly went and landed on people’s hands and people’s food, spreading the glitter (germs) everywhere it went.

We also taught on how to treat diarrhea.  We used an empty Gatorade bottle with a face painted on it to represent a child.  There was a hole in the bottom, and we showed clean, clear water leaking out (represents healthy pee), then added a little dirt and shook it up in the bottle (representing a sickness internally) with the dirty water leaking out (diarrhea).  Then we showed what happens when you take diarrhea medicine (it clogs up the hole and the contaminated stuff in your body does not flush out) versus what happens when you just let the diarrhea run its course while still hydrating with a simple ORS (Oral Rehydration Solution) of salt/sugar/water (essentially Gatorade…which keeps you hydrated and eventually cleans you out).  Dehydration is one of the most common ways that children die in underdeveloped countries.  We ended by giving them all a double-sided plastic spoon that shows the correct sugar:salt ratio to put in one glass of water. 

These are just some of the lessons.  We also ended every lesson with a story or parable from the Bible.  We did a little bit of dancing and singing, too (thanks to Milwaukee Tool for allowing me to bring my battery-powered radio that plays an iPod!), as well as lots of time in the hot, sweltering sun teaching children how to throw Frisbees and blow bubbles for the first time in their lives.  And of course, lots of fútbol (soccer).  The children humbled us all: their appreciation for us playing with them, their respect for our belongings and the crate of balls and toys we brought (they would gather together and peer in the crate and get excited, but not take anything), their need for love and attention (sometimes lacking at home due to typically large families…among other reasons), and their willingness to be in school and to learn and to want to participate in what they’re being taught.  Needless to say, the children captured my heart.  And, I hope, gained knowledge from the hygiene lessons and felt the love of Jesus through the Bible verses and stories and time we shared together.

ONE REASON LIVING WATER INTERNATIONAL STOOD OUT TO ME

I’ll share one brief reason why LWI stood out to me when I started doing my research on organizations last year.  It’s one thing to go and do a good deed, whether in the U.S. or traveling to an underdeveloped country, and leave feeling fulfilled because you met a need and made an impact and were also most likely humbled and changed.  But sometimes you don’t know if the work you did will stay long-term.  Now, there’s an element of faith that plays a role, where you don’t question everything and take steps in faith when making a decision.  But, it is also necessary to use your wisdom, common sense, and due diligence.  I had heard about many well-drilling organizations that do not follow up after drilling a well somewhere in the world, and the wells dry up, break down, sometimes within months, and the physical need you went to meet was terminated.  LWI has maintenance teams in every country who go around to already-drilled wells and maintain them.  Sometimes they break down, and sometimes the aquifer that was drilled into did not have as much water as anticipated (usually aquifers will hold enough water to last for over 50 years).  One project the LWI Guatemala Maintenance Team is doing right now is going around and changing older wells from galvanized pipe to PVC pipe.  They recently found that the iron content in the water was a bit too high, so they’re changing all of the piping.  Now, it’s sometimes a really good thing in these underdeveloped areas of the world to have water with high iron content in it as iron is hard to come by in some of their common foods, but it’s more important to understand how the people will react.  The high-iron water tastes funny, therefore the people will assume it’s not pure and clean anymore, and they tend to go back to their old, shallow wells that taste better but that are contaminated.  The maintenance team in Guatemala is currently fixing this issue, while a Guatemalan woman working on the LWI hygiene team spends that week in the same village, teaching more hygiene to the women and children while their well is being maintenanced.  Instead of just forcefully telling these people to drink the water whether it tastes funny or not (which they could do because it’s not contaminated, but we know they won’t because it simply tastes ‘not right’ to them), LWI meets them where they’re at, changing galvanized pipe to PVC pipe, knowing that this will ensure more people using the well with the pure water.

This is one of my favorite pictures of taken with me in it - ever.  We were walking the 1.5 miles straight down the dirt road from the drill site at one end of the town to the elementary school on the other.

MANOLO’S STORY

I’d like to share a bit about Manolo’s testimony.  Manolo is 29 years old and was born and raised in La Máquina.  He grew up getting sick and witnessing friends and family getting sick because of drinking the contaminated water.  About 4 years ago, Living Water came to his community – C-2 – to drill a water well at the elementary school. This would be the first Living Water well and first guaranteed, deep well that would be drilled in C-2.  He was one of the local guys helping out the Gringo team and Guatemalan drillers employed with LWI.  He inquired with the drill leader, Jaime, about getting a job with LWI.  Jaime, who was and still is currently the director of Living Water International of Guatemala, told him that they were not hiring anyone right then, but he gave Manolo his number and told him to call in a year because they may be expanding and need drilling assistants.  Well, about a year went by and Manolo was even debating moving to the United States, to find work and better support his Guatemalan parents and siblings from afar in the ‘land of opportunity.’  But, this didn’t happen and one day he decided to randomly call Jaime.  Eventually, Manolo was hired as an assistant drill leader to Jaime!  Manolo knew no English, but that changed quickly.  Four years later, in June of 2012, Manolo became a drill leader, leading a team of Americanos, using the English he slowly but successfully learned through those 4 years and also using the knowledge of drilling and the drill rig and the earth that Jaime had diligently trained him in.  Without going into too much detail as I do not know the complete story, Manolo will tell you that working for Living Water was the best thing that ever happened to him.  His relationship with his parents, notably his father, improved immensely, and he got out of a job he was doing in Guatemala for outlaws who used violence and people at their expense.  He has said that he went from sometimes having a gun in his hands and witnessing terrible evil to leading groups of North Americans to selflessly serve and meet a need among his people.  God truly plucked him out of darkness and placed him on a solid rock, through Living Water.  Last year, on my first trip, I was a part of Manolo’s second-ever group where he was the lead driller.  It was neat to see him as a leader with his Guatemalan people, especially to see him this year in his own community where he grew up, C-2.  The way he spoke from the heart on our last day in C-2 during the well dedication ceremony – speaking about how grateful we, the North Americans, were for the hospitality of the community all week, how grateful he was to his people for showing love and patience to him through all of his years living there (on his off-weeks, he still goes home and lives in C-2 and will now use the water from this new well as it is about 50 meters from his parents’ farm), and finally how grateful he was to God for providing this opportunity to work for Living Water and more specifically to be able to drill in his community surrounded by his family.  God is using Manolo to touch the lives of both his Guatemalan people and countless groups of Gringos that come and go throughout the years.  Needless to say, if Manolo ever decides to get a visa from the Guatemalan government and travel for the first time to the United States, he will have people welcoming him into their homes from all over the country. 

That's Manolo, in the  blue t-shirt.

GOD IN THE DETAILS, PIECING EVERYTHING TOGETHER

Now that you know about the North American group I was with, know about the community, and about Manolo, I want to share how the details all fit together beautifully.

So, I really feel that many things worked together for the good of Manolo’s community in a way that is more profound than your typical LWI trip.  First of all, Manolo being able to drill in his own community was an encouragement for the entire community being united on a deeper level than before.  It touched our hearts in a deeper way to witness this.  Ryan Kotula, the owner of Northern Tool, and Ryan Igo, the owner of Igo Construction, saw a need they could meet with their resources  – Mr. Kotula in relation to Manolo’s family and Mr. Igo in relation to the children of the village.  They found out that I would be returning to Guatemala in July for work, so they asked if I could be a deliverer of some stuff for C-2.  The fact that almost no child has a soccer ball in the community will be changed, because Ryan Igo shipped 40 soccer balls to my Miami apartment that I deflated and brought to Guatemala in July.  Then, Ryan Kotula saw the need Manolo’s father had for a set of hand tools on their farm, so he had me pick up a big tool chest from the Northern Tool in Miami and take it down to Guatemala.  These 2 Ryans also discussed helping to fund the clinic that C-2 is currently raising funds to construct.  I’m not sure of the progress on that, but knowing that those who have resources and desiring to use them for those who do not have is serving like we are called to – like we are expected to.  Ryan Igo talked about raising funds for C-2 in a few short months to fund the entire clinic – funds that would take the C-2 community over 3 years to raise (typically in these situations, the people will save some money, do some building of the clinic, save some money, do some more building…and it takes years to complete a project).  It is not often that CEOs and owners of U.S. businesses go on these trips.  But the fact that a much greater physical need than a well was needed on this trip is no coincidence and men with these resources were placed on this trip.

“ … From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”  -Jesus (via Luke 12:48 in the Bible).

Manolo has dedicated the last 4 years of his life to Living Water, traveling back and forth with Americans week after week, being away from his family most of the time, coordinating and preparing communities to receive the well-drilling and hygiene-teaching teams.  It has gone full circle because not only does Manolo’s community of C-2 now have 2 wells, but they have received some physical necessities (tools, water, potential financial assistance with the clinic) due to people on the team who have the resources to meet those needs and felt compelled to give out of their abundance.  And what a blessing it is to have my job where all I do is fly, so I could check 4 huge suitcases full of soccer balls and tools and other necessities - free of charge.  And just the fact that I went back to Guatemala for work 6 weeks after this LWI trip was pretty awesome timing.  Lastly, while I just mentioned so many physical needs met, the interaction of Guatemalans and North Americans hugging and playing soccer together and listening to each other and praying for each other has so much purpose – it brings joy where there is sometimes sadness, it brings light where there is sometimes darkness.  We are truly humbled to remember everything we have in the U.S., physically, and so many times we are also humbled to see the faith that some of these people live on because they don’t have all of the physical stuff and all of the distraction we have that turns our eyes off what is important – love, a selfless serving love that is perfectly displayed in the life and death of Jesus Christ:

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” –Jesus, via John 15:13.

 In conclusion, I write all of this not to say “go drill a well and go do some good deeds and you’ll get to heaven.”  God is not keeping a tally of our good deeds that will be weighed on our deathbed to determine what we deserve after we pass.  Jesus came as a sacrifice for mankind – to take the place for all of the imperfection we have.  We don’t work on perfecting ourselves – we simply surrender to this truth that brings freedom to our lives.  We don’t do good expecting something in return (whether you think it’s karma or blessings or self-gratitude or your ticket to heaven) – we do good because we simply want to and feel compelled to.  Whether it’s listening to a lonely person open up, or walking a 5k while raising funds for breast cancer research, or helping your next door neighbor, or crossing the U.S. border to serve in another country – let’s serve out of pure love, without expectations, understanding that a perfect Love was displayed in Jesus.  Then, if details like free soccer balls or tools fall into place, we celebrate even more.

C-2 Living Water Guatemala Drilling Team, May 2013

Thanks for reading, everyone!  Love you all!
-Anna Banana