Final Posting!

Your Westminster Living Waters for the World team  is safely home after a very successful and fulfilling trip. We came home in shifts as needed,  with Carson and Bruce home on Monday, Beth home on Wednesday and Suzanne, Terry and Dennis home today. When planning our time in Peru, it is difficult to know how much time will really be needed to do our work, but we are proof that our “Divine pilot” covers that, too.

We were able to successfully install 2 new installations(each system providing water for communities of 300-400) , educate over 150 children and adults in the use of their new water and the importance of cleanliness, and provide our annual maintenance for 2 other systems. Our commitment to each operating partner in Peru is to maintain a three year promise to check on and help trouble shoot their systems in order to provide them sustainable systems. As you can imagine, the environment and their understanding of maintaining their new systems and support equipment sometimes can be challenging.

It is with our  heartfelt  appreciation and thankfulness  to WPC for supporting such an incredible mission to bring clean water to more of God’s children.

Blessed Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad and Bendiciones!

Peniel Church

Picture of team after dedication of I.E.M Peniel Church water system, Iquitos, Peru 12-4-2011. Pastor Roger Teagua on left, Marcos, kneeling .

Sunday, December 4

Children learning about the creation story and the goodness  of creation and how God intends all of creation-including water- to be good.

Friday morning update!

It is Thursday evening, Dec. 1. We have completed our first installation in Kawai at the Boys Home over the past  5 days.  The men worked long days into  most nights, along with staff that will be operating and maintaining the equipment, to build a good system.  We have all learned more about being flexible, innovative, resilient and reliant on God's will as problems came up and then somehow were solved. The boys and staff were attentive and appreciative while learning about germs, washing hands and the use of their clean water. Suzanne, Terry, and Dennis will go back to Kawai on their last day in Peru to do some additional work on the pump to be sure all goes well after we are gone.

Yesterday Carson, Bruce and Rusty left to get a head start in Iquitos and today Suzanne,Terry,Beth and Dennis  followed. Iquitos is in northern Peru at the headwaters of the Amazon River and is  the largest land locked city in the world (accessible only by boat and air). It is a much different city and people than Lima. This installation is at I.M.F. Peniel Church which sits in the middle of a poor community of family homes. We have worked over 2 years to establish a relationship  with this church and community, building trust and understanding of our covenant with them. They have worked faithfully to get their site ready for us and are looking forward to having clean water. 

We are all thankful to be healthy and to have hot water for showers and comfortable beds to sleep in tonight. 
We send our blessings to all of you from Peru!

                              WPC team with our translators and maintenenace crew


We are on our third day at one of the The Scripture Union  boy's home , in Kawai, which is a 2 hour drive south of Lima on the coast. A beautiful setting for this home for 40   abandoned boys, age 6-17 years old.
Scripture Union, one of our covenant partners in Peru,  "rescues boys abandoned by their families or abuse at the hands of their parents, the police, or others-the throwaway kids of our modern consumer society and the little ones who cry at night in their hiding places, hearing only the echo if their own voices".

Many years ago someone generously donated to Scripture Union, one of our covenant partners in Peru,   the land to be used  for a boys home. Wisely they determined to use only part of the land for the home and establish the land closest to the ocean with guest haciendas as income producing. It is typically used by  middle income families in Lima during the summer( December - March). In spite of the setting, the needs of these boys are very great.  Their is no clean water except by boiling  for 20 minutes(very costly) or buying very expensive bottled water, so sometimes they just have to drink the unclean water. 

 We are well on the way to building the Living Waters water filtration system in  a building that they prepared for us. They will be able to use it for the boys  home and also hope to sell it to the guests at the haciendas. Carson, Dennis, Bruce, Terry along with Rusty Edmondson ( Sara's husband) are working like trojans and progressing so far with just a few surprises. Suzanne and Beth along  with  other translators Kate and Charo, and Sara Armstrong ( our PCUSA delegate in Peru that many of you met while visiting in Nashville)  are providing the education for how and why to use the clean water and  the basics of  simple germ theory. Amazing on what we take for granted! 

Please continue to pray for the safety of us all and that the bodies, ears and hearts of the recipients are open to the gift of clean water!

 

Boys acting out Moses story of water from the rock. Note bruce on roof top in background putting up water tank.

                          Bruce, Dennis and Terry working  on setting up "wash station" 

                                                        alcove holding water system

I have borrowed this computer but will probably not have access  until Thursday...Beth

      

Safely in Lima!

We arrived safely late last night and we are in Lima preparing for our drive later today down to Casa Girasoles (Sunflower House) Kawai, where we will begin our first installation. We are excited to begin working and to meet the children and staff there.
 
Carson is speaking right now with a Peruvian man whom we have just met, and he is thanking us for what we are doing for the people of his country. He is a member of a large church in Lima with 7,000 members! Even though we have just met, he has volunteered to help maintain the system at Kawai if needed! We are blessed with an ever increasing network of friends and helpers here in Peru.

Blessings from Peru to everyone at Westminster!
Suzanne

And they're off.....

Sent by Beth as the team departs Nashville....Traveling Mercies, dear friends!